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Tom Veatch
Flames of inspiration often leave smoke signals behind.From mine, these.
| N+V Humor Theory | Veatch's 1998 "A Theory of Humor" |
| Bliss Theory and Thereabouts | How psychology must be that bliss is possible. Read about it here. |
| Bliss Theory (Version 1.0) | First, unpublished, draft of Bliss Theory, written in 2012. Breathtaking. This contains a lot I still haven't taken further in writing, some of the most important parts, so it's up front for now. |
| The Logic of Irrational Emotion | Emotion in general, considered evolutionarily and logically. Mathematical notation for the emotional process. Review of N+V Humor Theory using it. Veatch asserts that the process of identifying yourself with an emotionally significant circumstance or role has a binding function whereby the emotional system is bound or required to implement the specific emotion that the system associates with that circumstance or role. That is, identification binds emotion. From this, much follows. Bound, a person harmonizes with others in shared understanding, moral assessment, and feeling, around a shared activity. Bound, a person is not free to experience the moment, the now, the timeless flow, but is instead aware of their status and moral self-assessment. Unbound, wherein identification does not occur, emotional flow states, high performance, spiritual goodness, etc., occur with attention paid to the evolving situation rather than to thinking about how it reflects upon you and tells a story about you. Unbound, the person has access to the unconditioned or irrational emotions of bliss, serenity, transcendence, etc. Veatch's Razor, distinguishing these, is given. |
| Selves | The many things referred to by 'Self', with commentary. Concluding with emotionally disinhibitory goodness. |
| Robot Emotion | On the design of emotional systems for humans and robots. Motivational frames and their relative priorities. Metrics to guide reinforcement learning. |
| Emotional Merger | Emotional change involves the reassessment of circumstances; a process that must come to include new details within the focus of attention, as well as to exclude now-irrelevant aspects of what had previously been focussed. I clarify and define emotional merger and specification as fundamental cognitive/emotional processes in this theoretical essay, which seems to have as great a significance in the cognitive architecture of emotion as humor theory. |
| The Oxytocin Vortex | Implications of hormone science for romantic relationships. Everyone likes oxytocin. But it can mess you up, so know what you're dealing with and be responsible. |
| Grief | A logical decomposition of the Six Stages of Grief using minimal assumptions, but compatible with Bliss Theory. |
| On Suffering | How we torture ourselves, and how we don't have to. |
| Meaningfulness Itself | Where the sense of meaningfulness is understood as transactional transcendence, using bliss theory. |
| On Humility | Just a page. |
| On Hierarchy and Value | Hierarchy and its emotional opposite, Oneness, are explored. How Jordan Peterson agrees with Karl Marx. Why hierarchy is the compassionate, inclusive solution. The geometry of hierarchy. How dominance hierarchy transmutes into admiration hierarchy, creating communities of shared values. Emotion within social hierarchy. |
| A Square Brown Linoleum Tile | A meditation on the transcendent secret of resolute service. |
| Notes from a Forehead on the Ground | After a week, a Friday night program, after the chanting, after the meditation, after darshan, comes a contemplation of oneness. A subset of Darshan Notes, selected for accessibility. Click "Choose One For Me Now". |
| The Ugliness of Beauty | Beauty can also be ugly, an ugly business |
| A Theory of Anger | in which the existence of Anger is questioned, and the current standard of care for angry people is critiqued and improved upon. This one is important. |
| F your Feelings? | Even those who reject (their own, and your) feelings have feelings |
| Postural Anesthesia | My posture trick, which is anesthetic against post-surgical pain. Learn it, try it. An old man once told me, I'm going to use that on my death bed. |
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