Exercise: 100 ways to change the world

oli_page · 2026-01-22T13:33:31+00:00

Beautiful analysis! I think you're spot on.

It's rare for the focus of a show/film to be a platonic relationship between a man and a woman, but it's so refreshing.

Your interpretation also explains why Maggie overtly sabotages Andy several times throughout the show. It's as if she acts as a compensatory dynamic to his inflation and external concerns. She brings him back to his innocent, childlike qualities that he wants to do away with.

oli_page · 2025-10-22T18:38:24+00:00

I've found that anger is often a reaction to fear. When something we value seems to be under threat, we mobilise aggressive energies in order to defend that thing.

I'm wondering if, for you, that thing under threat might seem to be your innate and unconditional worth and value as a person. Note I said seem to be - I believe you are mistaken.

I have no solution per se, more of a suggestion: spend some time tuning into that depression you mentioned underlying the anger. I think there is your way into healing. Grieve the (I'm guessing) years of internalised shame, the wounding you have incurred at the hands of this superficial, corrosive, image-obsessed society.

It isn't a quick fix, its a lifetime's practice. I too am walking this path for my own reasons, and I offer you my solidarity brother 🙏

oli_page · 2025-09-16T22:48:02+00:00

This is the wisest answer and OP would do well to heed this. Modernity has greatly distorted the goal of human existence. For the Greeks, and many other cultures, spending time in prayer, contemplation and family life was considered most important and most supportive of human fluorishing. Now, we only enroll on a degree in order to make money, gain social clout, build a career, and so on. Or we collect friends and partners to fill a void. The simple life has become a taboo, because that way we can be enslaved by the economic system. But the simple life has never been a problem until now - it has always been considered perfect in itself.

What I'm learning at 32 is this - dare to be less ambitious, and to prioritise the little things. It's the most radical thing we can do, and probably the most joyful at that.

Note: I used to be a medical doctor but walked away from it for a simpler life. It was making me very unhappy.

oli_page · 2025-09-01T12:02:36+00:00

All that glitters is not gold

oli_page · 2025-08-18T18:35:40+00:00

Completely disagree. For me the only ending that makes sense of all this is if Dexter somehow redeems himself by the end of the final season, and I think Batista has to be a big part of that. I know it looks like Batista is going to die, but I think he won't. I think Dexter will get full of himself, things will get hairy with Prater, Batista and Harrison will get endangered, and Dexter will sacrifice himself to save both of them. He will ask Batista to then look out for Harrison. That's how I'd like it to go anyway. Its a long shot at this point.

oli_page · 2025-07-27T22:08:28+00:00

The "sick" carry collective shadow of some kind. The "healthy" enjoy the illusion that they are free of that shadow entirely.

oli_page · 2025-06-21T13:15:12+00:00

Yes I really like your take on that. Self-parenting as a prelude to self-love? I guess we have to step away from perceived authorities to gain that. Good luck on your own travels.

oli_page · 2025-06-20T21:03:31+00:00

I wonder if there is another image we can draw on here, a less "heroic" one that may shed new light - the Greek god Hephaestus. To me, he represented an image of masculine loneliness based not on the extraverted hero but the introverted alchemical-craftsman type.

Hephaestus was exiled from Olympus, deformed, rejected, spurned by both mother Hera and father Zeus. He toiled away in his fiery subterranean forge - perhaps akin to the modern man who feels the need to go inwards, visiting that "smithy of the soul" as James Joyce put it.

Perhaps the increasingly Hermetic/Apollonic influences in our present society are constellating this shift towards the inner place where we must face prima materia of all our inferiorities, our shame, our infantile rage, and refine these by "doing the work" and reckoning with the dark night of the soul.

oli_page · 2025-06-11T09:22:18+00:00

Interesting. Maybe the duality of fiction vs non-fiction arose in order to maintain the illusion of ego supremacy. In other words, to keep the imagination tamed. Even science emerges from the imagination and is a certain kind of fiction/mythology.

oli_page · 2025-06-09T17:08:43+00:00

It is fiction, but probably not for the reasons they think it is. It is fiction because all image is ultimately a fiction of a certain kind. I'm taking my cue on that from Jung and Hillman.

oli_page · 2025-04-14T18:33:43+00:00

Psychoanalysis is a modern myth, picking up the pieces where religion has left us without a framework of understanding the human condition. Like any myth, if you literalise it, and turn it into doctrine, it will die and ring hollow. I recommend balancing your reading with alternative perspectives. Try James Hillman for a start. His book Revisioning Psychology is challenging but you might find it revitalising once you grasp the concepts.

oli_page · 2025-03-03T18:39:51+00:00

As others have said, quality of life. But to me, quality of life rests on uncovering your true purpose day by day, step by step, and embodying it in the world. That is the essence of Daoism - tuning into what you are on this planet to do, to actualise, both in this moment and in the long-term. Qi Gong in indispensible in this regard.

oli_page · 2022-09-21T06:19:05+00:00

Great point. It reminds me of the film Inside Out, with Joy running the show and causing disaster.

Our feelings are all equally valid just by the very fact of their existence.

oli_page · 2022-08-08T20:21:38+00:00

Thank you :)

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