Why am I always thinking in derivatives?
Hello, I don’t really know where to post this but I feel like jungian thinking helps me conceptualize and compartmentalize some things about life in a practical way so I’m gonna post it here.
Hopefully I can explain myself well enough!
Lately I find myself thinking about why some things are the way that they are, where does it all come from and c. Euphemisms, cliches, why people think what they do and say what they say, or the etymology of words.
Here’s an example of what I mean. Say someone shows me a recording of a comedy performance, or a song, but really could be anything. Instead of focusing on the content or experience or “now” or whatever it is, my mind immediately wants to know “when was this?” “Who are they?” “Where are the roots of this idea/meme/joke/word/song/way of speaking and acting and thinking/childhood/parents/grandparents/back and back and back and back?” If I sit with it long enough it’s all the way down to the evolution of the mitochondria and the birth of the solar system and the false vacuum and how electrons don’t really spin and how uncomfortable my chem 101 prof 15 years ago looked when I asked do because the math problems stopped making intuitive sense to me and he said something like no not really, they have a quality that has to be something or something else but has no subjective analogy at all so we just call it spin because that was the first wrong idea someone had about what it might be
On the one hand, I feel like my inner mental life can be rich and fun to live in thinking about all these things, but on the other it’s a bit like I’m squinting and the abyss all the time because really that’s where that train of thought leads if you follow it long enough in the objective way which *is* why I am posting this in here, now…
I’m of sound mind and live a relatively stable life and I know how to be resilient in the face of hard times and get through them with my sense of humor intact but lately I am seeing things in a way that’s a bit too… I don’t even know how to put it… cold? Chaotic? Nauseating? If people are interested in talking about this but I haven’t explained myself well enough I would like to have discussion and clarify myself with more examples of how this plays out in the real world of my self/brain/soul/whatever term is in vogue for you guys here in my day to day but I’m being super wordy as it is.
If I were to read this I might want to accuse myself of edging nihilism a bit here, but I think it’s more nuanced than that because at this point in my life I know in my heart of hearts that i could never live as a nihilist. It’s frustrating because I feel like I have all the emotional tools so to speak to deal with this but I’ve somehow forgotten how to use them over the years.
I know the sparkle is there but I’ve lost my glasses and can’t see it properly now, so to speak.
I’ve been toying with the idea of using mushrooms or lsd to help me sort this stuff out but I haven’t tripped in many, many years at this point and have some irritable bowel problems now that might make that not super productive along with other set and setting considerations that make me less keen on the idea. even the act of doing such a thing with so specific an intention and *plan* like ooh la la let me do a psych with the goal of “fix brain” seems a bit wrong and contrary to the whole whimsically important spirit of the matter at hand and now we’ve come full circle… again!
Happy to chat in the comments (tomorrow) if you’ve read this midnight ramble all the way through.