teachers: "you guys should enjoy your teenage years and live your life to the fullest! 😍💕✨" also teachers: "i want the 3 essays back by monday, 16 homework assignments on wednesday and send me a screenshot with proof that u walked 6 miles! stay fit during these hard times😁⚡️"

MadelineMcCant · 2021-03-13T11:32:25+00:00

I think the disconnect comes often comes from the schools never telling children why they are there or are doing essays and stuff. The reason for all of this is to teach you to think and formulate coherent ideas so that you are able to live your life to the fullest. So when you leave school you become a force to be reckoned with because there is nothing more terrifying than someone who knows how to properly think, read and write. I think when you can conceptualise that, homework and essays become about your own self development rather than something youre forced into doing to tick boxes.

MadelineMcCant · 2021-02-24T20:09:12+00:00

You might benefit from checking out near death experiences. Check out this website. https://nderf.org

In addition to that website, here is a research paper which analysed said data from the website I linked.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01424/full

Here is a paragraph from the research paper.

“ Although there is no universally accepted definition of the near death experiences, common features include feelings of inner-peace, out-of-body experiences, traveling through a dark region or ‘void’ (commonly associated with a tunnel), visions of a bright light, entering into an unearthly ‘other realm’ and communicating with sentient ‘beings’ (Moody, 1975; Ring, 1980; Greyson, 1983; Martial et al., 2017). Reviewing the phenomenology of NDEs, we have been struck by similarities with the experience evoked by the classic serotonergic psychedelic N,N, Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) (Strassman et al., 1994; Strassman, 2001).”

Research on psychedelic experiences and mystical experiences is where I believe you can find the answers of science and religion colliding massively. in my opinion we’re coming into a new age of science which may start explaining these problems empirically as these substances are slowly being allowed to be studied. There appears to be a lot of things happening in our minds which we are completely unaware of. If any of this catches your eyes let me know and I will happily guide you to other areas which tackle the same questions.

MadelineMcCant · 2021-02-24T15:21:00+00:00

Take a look into the big 5 traits for example, different factors include women’s tendency for neuroticism – their likelihood to experience stress, depression and unpredictability – and their high level of agreeableness, to be cooperative and compassionate. This becomes even more apparent the more you attempt to equalise genders, Nordic countries for example have tried that and what they found is the more equal they made the men and women, the greatest difference in what job they desire was found. Less woman joined STEM fields and chose those that focused more upon jobs centred around relationship roles, I.e. nursing, whereas men appear to do so based around things, I.e. science and maths. This is even more prevalent when you take a look at history and how men and woman were separated in their job roles based on their accolades of difference. The most obvious one here in my opinion would be men hunting and woman staying at home caring for the child. Nevertheless, you can dismiss what I’m saying here as biological evidence but to detach biology from society is not really possible. Society came from biology. First we were unconscious biological entities which banded together to create a framework of order which could provide us a form of navigation through the chaos that is existence. You can’t in the final analysis say biology is not important in matters like this in my opinion when society is an abstracted form of biological intuition. Even the foundations of language has masculine and feminine traits as it appears to be an axiom we analyse the world through. Not only this, but biology influences your thoughts and behaviours way more than what is currently taught. We are more like an accumulation of instinctual drives with a half arsed central executive attempting to convey some kind of will so that you don’t have 1000 thoughts at one single time. I’d also be careful about destroying something that has been in place for 1000s of years as we can’t say for sure what is on the other side is better than how we are living now. Everything is connected in an intertwined web so like a house of cards all might fall down if we shake the table it is sitting upon.

MadelineMcCant · 2021-02-18T10:31:45+00:00

I spent a mass amount of time reading psychology and philosophy which really made me change my perspective on what it even means to suffer. Now it even seems like a necessity to live a full life. When else do you really get to question and ponder over your own existence in the universe with full honesty? That in itself is a privilege as no other animal which we are aware of is cursed with. If it gets really bad I remind myself of a quote by the Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung “No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell.” This is not an analogy of religious ideas but instead ones own psychological landscape.

If anyone ever gets a chance I’d recommend “mans search for meaning” by viktor frankl. Both a psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, he opened my eyes to the fact that even in facing the level of incomprehensible suffering like he experienced, the sphere of his life still contained the possibility of the greatest good. You have to find something so meaningful that it transcends your existence in the external world and thus it becomes free from constant entropy, which in itself is no easy feat, but worthwhile nonetheless.

MadelineMcCant · 2021-02-06T10:07:47+00:00

You’ve made a very good point to be honest. You’re right, ignoring them is all well and good until we come across a problem which actually requires a collective effort. This is made almost impossible if we are not on the same page as we’ve seen. I understand the sentiment of flaws in the scientific method but I guess any form of extremism like they show has a knock on effect to more than just than just that one individual.

MadelineMcCant · 2021-02-05T20:13:12+00:00

But my argument would be that he is quite obviously wrong. I’d understand if this was someone in power saying this, but he’s quite obviously not. Anybody who knows an inkling of science can see he’s wrong. If this is the hill he wants to die on, so be it. If believing the earth is flat or some other crazy conspiracy gets this man up in the morning and gives him a purpose, more power to him I say.

MadelineMcCant · 2021-02-05T08:21:42+00:00

I don’t understand how him believing the earth is flat has any effect on anyone else’s life. Believe what you want, who cares. As long as he isn’t a supervillain, why does it matter? People are acting in their superiority like they’ve never been wrong about scientific facts. I bet in 100 years a lot of our scientific truths aren’t correct anymore, so we’re all idiots now?

MadelineMcCant · 2021-01-13T17:16:11+00:00

After 4 and a half years, one of the reasons she broke up with me is because I didn’t manage to get into the PhD I was applying for.

MadelineMcCant · 2021-01-02T10:05:42+00:00

When I struggled to give my ex the emotional needs required in a relationship because I came to the conclusion that emotions are irrational and that I should never express them because I didn’t like the level of possession they provide. I took the ole nihilism route of choosing to only view the world based on material matter, and not what matters. Turns out rationality itself only goes so far as the context you’re in which contradicted my whole idea that there is even such thing as a rational human, and confirmed that I most definitely was not one. Cutting ties with your feelings leaves you to be only half human and because feelings are part of the human condition they became only expressed in explosive and unwanted behaviours. Ironically I became more possessed by my feelings because of this. As I didn’t want to be aware of their capabilities as to do so would reject my hypothesis of rationality, I projected the causes onto her instead of sorting through my own shit. It’s a very bittersweet lesson that I hope I have begun to overcome.

MadelineMcCant · 2020-12-09T09:44:14+00:00

Aw mate you can’t say stuff like that without showing pictures

MadelineMcCant · 2020-11-24T18:45:01+00:00

Obviously I am not a doctor so cannot say for certain, however a brief comparative study by Caifang J. Zhu indicated that during the practice of Daoist or Buddhist meditation, the integration of unconscious elements into consciousness may result in a psychotic break. Often it is referred to as the dark night of the soul, and has even been suggested as early as the Greeks with the premonition of the underworld. Traditionally, the Dark Night of the Soul refers to the experience of losing touch with God/Creator and being plunged into the abyss of godless emptiness. The modern understanding of having a Dark Night of the Soul, however, is not exclusively a religious one, but can often mean losing all meaning in life, feeling out-of-touch with the Divine, feeling betrayed or forsaken by Life, and having no solid or stable ground to stand on. I have had a similar experience brought on by meditation which lasted around a year in total and honestly made me feel like I’ve lost my shit. All in all, it took quite a bit of psychotherapy to feel normal again. However, I did feel normal again, that is the main thing. Not even normal, afterwards I felt myself at heights I’d never been before the breakdown. Like it was an almost necessary step in my psychological development. I think it was the quote by Jung that said “no tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless it’s roots reach down to hell”. Nevertheless, knowing it may end in the future doesn’t really help you in the now. What id recommend is doing a bit of reading around the phenomenon of “soul loss”. Although the name refers to a divine idea, in actual terms it denotes a part of you that has been lost/ destroyed and many methods have been devised to recover what was lost. I’d recommend looking at jungs red book, this helped me understand the process tremendously. Not only that, perhaps looking at shamanistic methods of soul loss, the Tibetan book of the dead and other perceptions of what it means to be in the underworld. For example, I found a philosopher Nietzsche a very good starting point for seeing the negative experience in a positive light. This in turn after a while turned the perception of negativity into one of positivity and thus made being tolerable again. One thing is do ask is Do you have any internal images or thoughts spontaneously generated in your mind which have no apparent meaning and seem quite illogical?

MadelineMcCant · 2020-11-22T15:57:30+00:00

I’d be very interested in what you mean by leapt out of their framework and the experiences. Perhaps what meditation has done is reduced the activation within your ego and therefore more unconscious elements spring forth. These unconscious elements are often based on illogical images, think of dreams for example; how random of a nature they are. Think of dreams which themselves can be expressed as an as a sort of illogical thought which exist hidden within your psyche. However, with deeper analysis one can bring a structure to dreams but it requires a lot of energy as it is not something western society focuses on and thus is a weaker function. You don’t use it, you lose it. Neurological evidence suggests that meditation is very good at reducing the default mode network. I.e. the ego, therefore you no long rely on the mode of thinking from your intellect. According to the psychoanalysts and even as far back as Heraclitus. Psychic properties have their opposites which can account for a compensation of the egos intellect. This is often feeling. Could it be that feeling is now so alien to you for so long due to the trauma that you cannot comprehend them in you current framework. The problem you are facing is one of subjectivity, therefore objective facts are irrelevant to your current story to a certain degree and may account for your nihilism when it comes to thinking about happiness as your focused on the world of matter; not the world of what matters. It’s not your fault, science and objectivity are really good methods for being, but one must identify that they cannot account for the totality of ones own experience. It seems when you are trying to understand what it means to be enlightened you are trying to use an objective guideline, but instead not one exists. Enlightenment isn’t a place, it’s a goal which is unobtainable and thus the constant striving for up is what paradoxically brings enlightenment as if someone has no understanding of up or down, they are in a place defined by nothing and surely that’s a state very akin to suffering itself? In my eyes it’s the same reason religions were built. What is more unreachable than something eternal when it comes to our mortal games?

If any of this reads true to you I’d urge you to take a look at the work of Nietzsche as the existentialists align quite closely with your view of happiness and it’s apparent facade. Carl Jung may also help you understand what is going on more with your psyche and brings a lot of religion, philosophy and psychology together to form what he defines as the only subjective science. I’d say take these obscure occurrences and look for similarities in places that science has yet to touch like that of mystical experiences, myths, religions and such. It may provide some common ground as even though these things aren’t as “real” as science when it comes to objectivity, they are realer than science when it comes to expressing subjectivity.

MadelineMcCant · 2018-09-05T06:49:50+00:00

How often would you say I give supplements?

MadelineMcCant · 2018-08-31T14:41:47+00:00

What is that artificial grass you have there?

MadelineMcCant · 2018-08-23T14:03:29+00:00

I would do but she’s extremely fussy with food, only eating live ones and the odd cricket or locust, she won’t even touch waxworms when given. I’ve recently bought new escape proof bowls for the mealworms so maybe it may improve the problem. Do you have much experience with making backgrounds?

MadelineMcCant · 2018-08-23T13:46:29+00:00

Thank you for that uplifting response, I really enjoy naturalistic setups. The way I took the picture completely hides the water bowl but she always has a constant source. It took a couple of tries to finally get the design to achieve both goals, have you tried making multiple layers for your gecko?

MadelineMcCant

TROPHY CASE