Yo what up
Work has been pretty busy. Though I was lucky and got a few days off just after getting really sick on my birthday. It was so gross lol. I don’t usually celebrate my birthdays anyway.
With this said, I would like to wish every father out there a happy father’s day! I don’t know why people don’t celebrate it as much, but I treat both mother and father’s day with equal.🥺 So I took my dadda out for food today.
* * *
Typical Bobby Day
I usually wake up between 5am-6am. Come home from work at 5-6pm. If I have time, I might take a nap before I dinner. I’m a pretty big homebody. So even on my days off, I’m usually at home doing introvert things like watch movies, read, write, or play some video games. I’ll also go out for drives, walks, and other casual recreations. Sometimes, friends will invite me out to do stuff on weekday evenings. It’s usually dinner, a round of disc golf, movies, ice cream, or something else. I’m easygoing as long as I’m not too tired from work, or the place we’re going to is not full of excessive amount of drunk and loud people.
* * *
Why I Quit Academia
My intentions for attending grad school changed throughout my 20s and it’s too long to share on here (I will explain part of it later in this post). But it’s mostly because there is too much competition for job prospects. There were also other personal circumstances. The competition in tenured teaching positions is exceptionally fierce. A lot of PhD graduates spends their entire life looking for a full time job at the university. I’m not exaggerating when I say “entire life”. But I don’t need a PhD to do what I do. It’s mostly a passion pursuit for me these days. Though it would be cool if people gets to call me Dr. Booby. 🤡
Maybe when I get older, I will consider going back for one. I’m open to the idea and it had always sat in the back of my mind, but not right now because I have other life obligations. Getting a PhD is a huge commitment and it takes most people 4-10 years to complete. Knowing me being terribly ambitious, I will write my PhD thesis on something original and crazy at the same time. Honestly? Probably something cheesy like difference, love, and truth—but it would also be original and rad.🥺🥺
If there is one thing that I can say I love, it would be my love for big ideas that stuns me out of this world. There is nothing more brilliant than when you’re in the middle of reading a difficult book or writing something important to you, and a thought just lights up and animates your entire universe! Whenever I write big psychoanalytic and philosophy posts on here, I always aim to leave you, the reader, a similar effect. In fact, I give myself this effect when I write them too! It is like love, or a surprise that shakes you up and changes how you see the world. I always have to make my writings connect to me on a personal level. Otherwise the words are meaningless to me.
* * *
Car Detailing…
is a huge rabbit hole LOL. The good news is it makes your car showroom clean if you know what you’re doing. One product I recommend for everyone is Optimum No Rinse (ONR). They’re cheap and they last a long time because you dilute the product into many gallons. You can use it on almost anything on your car as a cleaning agent. From spot cleaning bird poop all the way to wheels, glass, interior cleaning, or washing your entire car without rinsing with water. During water restrictions, you will be the only car on the road that is clean.😎 ONR is a staple for every detailer. It can be used as an APC (All Purpose Cleaner) with the right dilution. Some people even use it to clean their house floors and appliances.
Detailing gets expensive fast. There are ceramic coatings, maintenance coatings, all sorts of cleaners, conditioners and protectants for different surfaces, quick detailers, shampoos with different pH levels, polishers, foam cannons, brushes, applicators, microfiber towels, and even fancy spray bottles. Many strong detailing products destroys cheap plastic bottles and nozzles. People probably thinks detailers are crazy when they spend $20-30 on a spray bottle.🤣
Honestly, you only need 3-6 products tops. The rest are redundant. Sure, they’re specialized and does the job better, but it’s not needed if the car is well maintained. Nowadays, I find tire cleaners useless when I can just spray P&S Brake Buster on my tires.😵💫 Interior cleaners are also useless when I can just use ONR or soap water.🤷♂️ But my car is also very clean 90% of the time.
P.S. I’ve been leaning on an AWE Touring catback exhaust. It removes my factory valves, weighs around the same as stock, and only sounds aggressive on cold starts and on wide open throttle (WOT). But I don’t WOT as much anymore because I want to keep my driving record clean LOL. I’m beginning to understand why people likes to driver slower enthusiast cars. In the R, if I red line it from a dig (full stop), I will be near 100km/h by the time I get to the end of 2nd gear. Whereas you can punch it for longer with slower cars and run through a few gears while staying in speed limit.
* * *
Good books on Art
Dissensus on Politics and Aesthetics by Jacques Ranciere is a good one. It’s a difficult book, but it pretty much talks about what the title implies. Art should be about dissensus as opposed to consensus. It shouldn’t be just some pretty picture or art. It should confront its viewers one way or another, form opinions, challenge politics, unite, and divide.
The Conspiracy of Art by Jean Baudrillard is another good one. It talks about the death of art as mass reproduction destroys its authenticity (i.e. digital recreation). Basically, art has become a simulacrum where people uses machine to remake art. For Baudrillard, Andy Warhol is one of the most famous example of this.
The Death of the Author by Roland Barthes. It’s a book that talks about interpretations and reading in multiple ways through different cultural meanings instead of reading through the author’s life. This one is a classic and also a pre-req if you want to get to the big boy major philosophy works like Jacques Derrida’s Of Grammatology.
Fifteen Theses on Contemporary Art by Alain Badiou. This one is not even a book, but literally 15 bullet points. Else where in his other texts, for Badiou, art is one of the conditions for philosophy. Similar to love, art is like an event that ruptures out of contingency and forms truths.
This reminds me of an old colleague of mine who slaughtered a chicken in the cafeteria at school as performance art while others were having lunch. It stirred a huge public reaction. Some people got really mad on the spot. I thought it was clever. I believe he was also the same artist who hung the “SOS Venezuela” sign under the Peace Bridge in Calgary just right after it was built as a form of protest back then.
I feel like once you’ve been to art school, it’s hard to get weirded out by what most people considers as “weird”. It opens your mind to many ideas that people don’t talk much about and puts them to question. You just have to look at it with a critical eye. Back then, there were people who took photos of themselves having sex, and others who turned their rape trauma experiences into art.
* * *
Neurosis or Psychosis?
Neurotics are split subjects. Their subjectivity is alienated and barred off by the Other. And since the neurotic is barred off (repressed), where their jouissance is regulated by the Other’s desires (language), they do not know what they really want and are usually found uncertain of their real desires. It is common for neurotics to have perverse fantasies where their unconscious desire appears in an inhibited way. It is also common for them to produce Freudian slips. The base of neuroticism is hysteria and the question that neurotics must ask themselves is: “What do I really want?”. Yet this question can never be completely answered due to the subversion of our desires.
As Gerard Wajcman once pointed out, there are only two positions that you can take to answer the question of hysteria. You either answer the question and produce knowledge and miss the point, or speak the truth and not answer the question.
On the other hand, the psychotic is not a split subject. The subject fully appears uninhibited, where the Other fails to prohibit the jouissance of the subject. One common outcome that arises are symptoms like hallucination, where “someone else” appears to be talking to them in their head. This voice is not like most of us with an “inner monologue”. It’s more like a real external voice.
* * *
People who have the same symptoms don’t have the same cause
Just because people who have the same symptoms doesn’t mean their cause of desires are the same. A group of people who likes to play video games or goes partying every weekend doesn’t mean they are unconsciously doing it for the same reason.
This type of systemic categorization is more commonly seen in modern psychology than in psychoanalysis. Such as if this person exhibits X or Y, then they must be this or that disorder, etc. where they might give you medication and call it a day. But this is one of the more unique dimensions of psychoanalysis that materialist approaches don’t account for.
Psychoanalysis considers a much broader clinical structure of the individual and don’t simply focus on one or two symptoms (i.e. Are they a neurotic? psychotic? a pervert?). This is to say that psychoanalysis accounts for each individual’s personal history thoroughly and the way they desire. Our symptoms springs up from our desires from a bundle of drives.
When someone goes and sees an analyst, the goal is to take something away (castration) and give them something else. It is like the clinical case of Jeanne who took up her mother and father’s desires in her adult life and forgot what she used to enjoy; which was art if I remember correctly. The analyst who sees this will try to, by using their clinical relationship, redirect her desires and help her find enjoyment in things that she used to enjoy. It is to take away some of her symptoms and give them a better symptom.
I think one of the biggest mistakes people make in psychoanalysis are people taking ideas from the discipline and make shit up with other fields. Sometimes, these fields makes sense and “should” exist, but most of the time it’s like, “What’s the point?” LOL. It’s peak simulacra simulation.
Psychoanalysis is first and foremost a clinical practice. It isn’t just some “conspiracy theory” where some “scholars” made things up from reading books or watching YouTube videos. It was invented through a century of clinical observations where people went through free association. For example, why does Freud say that everyone is unconsciously in love with their mother? It’s because one the most common slips of the tongue during clinical analysis for married heterosexual male is accidentally confusing their spouse for their mother. Freud didn’t make it up. It is clinically observed in real life repeatedly for decades. Love is transference.
P.S. I was reading random websites on psychoanalysis where people were describing love and I realized some just copied the stuff I said on here lolll. 🫠 I guess I’m an influencer now. 🤡
* * *
“Why do you think ENFP/INTJ is more popular despite ESFP/INTJ being ideal matches? Why not INTJ and ESFJ?”
There are many reasons why INTJ/ENFP are more common. The main reason is intellectualism. Last time I said ESFP and INTJs are not opposites, but are a mirror-like inverted type. The opposite of the INTJ is actually the ESFJ. If you look at their cognitive function stack, they share nothing in common. In real life, it is not unusual for INTJ and ESFJs to easily clash.
Other common reasons why ENFP/INTJ is more popular then ESFP/INTJ are:
1. Different theories favor different ideal partners. But ESFP/INTJ is more commonly found online in MBTI community. From real life observation, most ESFPs ends up with other sensor types such as other ESFP, ESFJ or ESTP, ISTP, ISFP, and ISTJ. But if you do Google searches, you will notice a lot of ESFPs who are involved in the MBTI community have INTJ, INTP, and INFJ partners.
2. Little chance to meet. You will never find an INTx in places that are dominated by ESxx types (clubs, parties, or any major social gatherings etc.). You are more likely to run into them at ambivert places like coffee shops, libraries, museums, art shows, or places and events that are low key social-non-social type of settings. The ESFP and INTJ will either have magnetic attraction or find each other weird at first. It could even be both at the same time.
3. Underdeveloped ESFP will find INTJs too intense and serious. And underdeveloped INTJ will find ESFPs too emotional and childish. Keep in mind that “some” ESFPs lives up to their negative stereotypes for being promiscuous, unloyal, addicted to attention, lack boundaries and commitment, etc. But from personal experience, not many are actually like that in real life. I think ESFP/INTJ will only work if both learns to communicate. Maturity and love plays a big part. When this type of pairing works, their complimentary functions makes them a power couple.
4. INTJ’s are “locked in” types of people. When they focus, they are really focused. Hence they might come on too strong at times. When they love someone, they only love that one person. It’s unquestionable. Whereas ESFPs are happy go lucky types of people and gets along with almost everyone. They’re always happy and giddy. But they can be flaky and lack critical foresight (i.e. they have trouble foreseeing problems from their actions). They can even be too outgoing for INTJs. This means the ESFP will have to be okay with not doing everything with the INTJ and give them space to recharge. Sometimes, sitting with them in silence means much more than yapping all the time.
5. If you think about it, the chance of an ESFP encountering someone who they are attracted to and are also an INTJ is incredibly rare. The same can be said with all of the rarer types. While the chance of an ESFP meeting an INTJ is 1 in 100, they might not be attracted to the first one they meet—both ways. This means the chance of an ESFP meeting that one INTJ, or the INTJ meeting the special ESFP is probably more rare. And this is not considering all the other types the ESFP runs into along the way. Just think about it. What if the INTJ that the ESFP meets speaks a different language? What if the ESFP is taken? What if the INTJ is taken? The probability of any ESFP running into this person is now more like 1 in 10,000.
* * *
I’ve Gone to Some Dark Places in Life….
This is probably one of my biggest scars in my 20s. I remember I briefly mentioning it to some guy I spoke to. I also mentioned this long time ago back when Eashel still spoke to me, where she asked whether I’ve ever had a mid life crisis because she thought she might have one soon. Good thing she said she falls asleep every time she thinks about it LOL! I was actually going to write about this back then but decided not to.
Last time, I spoke a little about my 20s life in photography and philosophy. But there was another side to it that not many people knew. For me, learning philosophy didn’t just become one of my intellectual passion, it was a rude awakening. I’ve been in school for a decade where I tried to become the smartest version of myself. I’ve studied and studied a ton of philosophy—much more than what most people might imagine. What did it teach me? That knowledge is a curse and a gift at the same time.
As mentioned last time, before I went to grad school, I completed a bachelor of design as my undergraduate degree. Studying art and design can sometimes be said as one of the least practical degree. But it taught me how to think critically and learn to see the world in entirely new ways. In fact, it is something that I’ve held onto which made me who I am today. I honestly wouldn’t trade it for anything. It taught me the function of art—which is not just some sculpture or photograph with a pretty girl or nice sun set in it. Art taught me that life is much more than just making money or what you do for a living. It is much more than to beautify everything.
I met some incredible people during this time. I encountered a teacher who helped me discover the world of philosophy. I still remember the day in school, after asking her a bunch of questions where she said to me, “Bobby, I’m so happy that you are starting to think critically!” I looked at her in awe because I realized how my inquiries in philosophy began to change how I saw the world, for better or worse. I also came to realize that good art is really just philosophy in visual form—it’s a sort of visual poetry, if you will. You just have to learn how to see it, not necessarily in an ocular sense, but intuitively, metaphysically, and conceptually.
I think philosophy really makes you learn to think critically. But it can also potentially taint your world views because you may eventually realize that our world is messed up in so many ways and there is not much you can do about it in the grand scheme of things. It’s almost like, you know what’s wrong with this world, but what are you going to do about it?
The saddest part is that most people can’t even see it all that well. And if you tell them, they will just think you are crazy, turn it into a joke, ignore you, or say something generic like, “It is what it is”. And you know what? They’re right. It is what it is. Then soon, you realize everyone is living in their own little bubbles distracting themselves from things that actually matters in a world that we all took part in creating. Or they’re jabbing away on their phones chatting people up trying to get laid and are somewhat clueless and ignorant—sort of like the slaves who are locked up in Plato’s cave (I am referencing the Allegory of the Cave).
It’s because in our youth, we are taught in schools and by others on how we should know X or Y. We are trained to memorize knowledge and methodologies for exams or learn about certain “truths” in regards to life. Worse: we just assume these things are true. We don’t even question them and the power it has over us.
Our success in school is determined by a letter, number, or your awards and scholarships, where people will judge you based on it. At times, their level of respect for you is also determined by it. And at the end, we are only taught how to acquire “useful” knowledge to make money, network, make a living, or establish “connections”, AKA make fake friends where people are in it for themselves and want something from you. I mean don’t get me wrong, it’s important for our survival. And it’s easy to meet people who will giggle, laugh and have fun with you. But to have someone who will be there when you are at your lowest? Good luck.
Then we also have this “career mindset” drummed into us, where a lot of it (not all) are really just modern slavery with extra steps. Only that now, we grew up convinced by those around us that it is for our best interest to perpetuate and normalize the ideologies of an incredibly questionable societal system where greed, profits, power, control, and money are put before anything that has to do with human life. And so we volunteer without resistance. Other times, many of us do it because it is a necessity—and I understand, because I do it too. We all do. It’s the reality of life and there is no running away from it.
Meanwhile, all our talents in the arts, philosophies, or scientific discoveries are used to generate capital by people selling them at universities or making YouTube videos or podcasts. There is no escaping from it either. Everything is just money and done for the sake of generating more money. And every time some new technology gets invented, everyone thinks it would change human life for the better. And you know what? They sometimes really do. People are so flipping smart. It’s incredible. Yet at the end, it always ends up affecting us in a different way than we initially thought, where some asshole uses it to make themselves even more money by stripping away some of the most vital elements from other people’s lives. The pharmaceutical industry is a good example of this.
Then our success and who we are as a human being is determined by our jobs or how well we follow some “life timeline” set by cultural gatekeepers, where by this age, you should be like this or like that. As adults, we are also defined by another set of numbers and letters such as how much money we make or our job title; and by how well we can get through the “rite of passage” of owning a house and having a pretty wife, husband, or whoever. Above all, we learn how to wear masks and lie to ourselves so to justify our desires. What’s worse is people don’t even realize it because they never gave it second thought or questioned it.
Growing up, many of us never learned how to think about our lives in relationship with the world. Many of us were also never taught how to ask the right questions; because learning how to ask the right questions is just as important as learning how to answer it. We were never taught how to question authority—such as our teacher’s knowledge, our friends, our society, school, institution, work, our political views, our cultures, and ethics, along with all the junk that we are exposed to everyday in our lives. We were not taught how to think and how to be curious on a critical level. We never learned how to see the world and how we are part of all these big issues. And make no mistake: no one today is innocent. No one.
I remember when I was 25 or 26, I broke down in front of my dad and cried in the middle of breakfast at a restaurant. I asked him why our world is so fucked up. This was the darkest moment of my 20s. I felt helpless. I was in pain. I really wanted to do something about it to make the world better, but there was nothing I could do. Then I looked at him in the eye and noticed I nearly made him cry. The lady who sat beside us was so embarrassed, I felt bad she had to watch all that lol. But this was as real as it got for me. At one point, I actually hated everyone. There was nothing in this world that hurted me more than seeing it the way it is. And I blamed it on human nature. But since there was nothing I could do about it, I learned to change the way I saw it….And you know, when I first wanted to attend grad school, I was naive, ambitious, and really wanted to change the world. I thought I really could. But I eventually gave all that up mid way through. I realized my idealism got the best of me. Even when I was the best at what I did in school, the very best; there wasn’t anything I could do.
As I got older, I learned to let it go and focus on smaller things that I can control, and not things that I can’t. Life really is about perspective. Dwelling on these problems will only eat at me. Now I just keep one eye closed and have a good laugh about it. Maybe that’s why I find everything funny—even the most inappropriate things. I learned to find humor and joy in things that used to cause me a lot of pain and depression. It’s quite sadistic and masochistic if you think about it. In psychoanalysis, this is one way people cope with trauma: by turning it into a joke!
All of this made me a lot happier, and it was a dramatic change on my mental life as I removed the problems of the world off my shoulders. Not to mention I also recently found joy in things that I used to have when I was little, such as cars. I still remember lugging my Hotwheels suitcase full of toy cars with me to Hong Kong when I was 8. I didn’t know better and took it through the metal detector at the airport where it went crazy. The customs agents thought it was a bomb.😅
Nowadays, I realized most people don’t think and see things like me and that’s okay. But they’re not stupid either. They’re just a little different, but not even by all that much. They’re just better at keeping one eye closed than I ever will. Where people study things, I study why they study these things. Where people studied recurring themes of history, I study why history repeats. Over time, things like, human nature, desire, love, madness, and consciousness has become the center of my intellectual interests. Maybe those who have read enough of this blog will get it. Or maybe they don’t have to read it to get it. I’m honestly surprised that I’ve been getting 15,000-25,000+ unique visitors on here annually lol.
And you know what? With time and maturity, I’ve grown to appreciate a lot of people’s sensory enjoyments in life. The famous saying that “ignorance is bliss” is a double edged sword. It was like talking to Eashel. I briefly mentioned this long ago. But back then, I saw beauty in some of her outlook on life. Someone who falls asleep the moment she thinks about a midlife crisis is wisdom to behold! I’m not even joking.🤣 She might not know, but I thought she was the most innocent, precious, and beautiful lady when she said it to me. I still remember she did a really cute “snoring” imitation after she said it Lol. I would never want her go through the things I did. Of course I’m not saying she is my therapist or anything, because it has been 10 years since all this happened. But I saw something in her that I didn’t have that day. I think she is magnificent.
I’m telling y’all this not because I want your pity. Most of it don’t matter anymore. But someone who is going through something similar might appreciate my insights and experience. Plato was right when he famously said that philosophy corrupts youth. It definitely corrupted mine. But the older Bobby today would like to think otherwise.🫡