Study Notes: Sep 20-Oct 24, 2015: "Beware Systemic Change"

This is commentary. And this is really good. 

What I've been watching and reading in this time: 

• Post, "Beware Systemic Change", by Scott Alexander
• Article, "The dimming of the light", by Sudhi Hazareesingh
• Post, "Contra Caplan on Mental Illness", by Scott Alexander
• Article, "Murder she wrought", Melanie McGrath
• Post, "Baltimore, Leaderless; The Mafia Could Run Things", by Bob Parkinson

Homework for the future:

• Read the posts linked to by "Responses to the Anti-Reactionary FAQ.". Eventually. 
• Still on the to-do list: studying the Austrian School of Economics.
• Finish the reading for "Notes to: Anarchy: Never Been Tried?"
• Finish the reading for "Notes to 16 Articles on Writing"
• Read Fenrir's Shrine. 
• Also on the to-do list: All of those themes that I decide I want to play with, and cool bits that attract me, and things like that? Let's get systematic about that, put them into a single document (might be public, might not) and work with at least one of them every week. Systematic. Systematic. I do it best when I do it systematically. 
• Also, don't forget to flesh this section out a bit more with goals in general, and maybe include a section on which of those goals were accomplished since the last update.

Notes to: Cosmic Pessimism

Material covered: Cosmic Pessimism, by Eugene Thacker

• "I like to imagine the idea of pessimist self-help." 
• "In raising problems without solutions, in posing questions without answers, in retreating to the hermetic, cavernous abode of complaint, pessimism is guilty of that most inexcusable of Occidental crimes--the crime of not pretending it's for real. Pessimism fails to live up to the most basic tenet of philosophy--the 'as if.' Think as if it will be helpful, act as if it will make a difference, speak as if there is something to say, live as if you are not, in fact, being lived by some murmuring non-entity both shadowy and muddied."
• "The very term 'pessimism' suggests a school of thought, a movement, even a community. But pessimism always has a membership of one--maybe two. Ideally, of course, it would have a membership of none, with only a scribbled, illegible note left behind by someone long forgotten. But this seems unrealistic, though one can always hope."