Yooooooo what up internet homies.

This post has a lot of responses to questions and things people say. I also talk about clinical psychoanalysis, metaphor, the logic of fantasy and offer my insights on why love is “a pebble laughing in the sun”.

Booby signing out!

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This will be my last post of 2024 🙂

I will be spending the remainder of this year to work on other projects. I want to thank everyone who stopped by! According to my inaccurate stats, my site traffic has been doubling and tripling year after year. It’s kind of surprising considering how much random stuff I write on here Lol.

Top 10 popular pages/posts of this year are:

1. The INTJ: A Guide to Understanding a Bobby (Why do people still read this?)
2. Lacanian Psychoanalysis: The Mirror Stage and the Wound of Split Subjectivity
3. Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Metaphors of Love and the Limits of Human Knowledge
4. Home page
5. Lacanian Psychoanalysis and the Subversion of the Split Subject
6. On Jean Baudrillard: Seduction, Hyperreality, and the Murder of the Real
7. On Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Clinical Contexts, Theory, and Practice
8. On Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Death Drive, Reality, and Beyond
9. Writing Before the Letter: Jacques Derrida and Deconstruction
10. About page (people are just clicking to see how handsome I am LOL jk)

Thank you!
I hope 2025 will bring you all love and peace.

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Wearing a Mask

“Do you not know that there comes a midnight hour when everyone has to throw off his mask? Do you believe that life will always let itself be mocked? Do you think you can slip away a little before midnight in order to avoid this? Or are you not terrified by it? I have seen men in real life who so long deceived others that at last their true nature could not reveal itself;… In every man there is something which to a certain degree prevents him from becoming perfectly transparent to himself; and this may be the case in so high a degree, he may be so inexplicably woven into relationships of life which extend far beyond himself that he almost cannot reveal himself. But he who cannot reveal himself cannot love, and he who cannot love is the most unhappy man of all.”

—Soren Kierkegaard

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Fyodor Dostoevsky 

Some people I’ve been talking to really likes reading his works. So I’m going to give Dostoevsky a shot. I just bought Notes from Underground because my friend said it is a good place to start. Many existential positions are critical of Western philosophy. So I expect nothing less. I’m sure it will be refreshing.

I’ve had an extensive stint with existentialist philosophies in my mid 20s. I’ve read maybe 70-80% of Friedrich Nietzsche’s works (I’m a fan) along with a lot of Soren Kierkegaard. I think the last existential novel I read was Waiting For Godot by Samuel Beckett. The Unnamable was also really good. I haven’t read existential texts in a long time. It might be too angsty for me these days. 😂

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I might buy a house next year…

or in the upcoming years. It’s kind of exciting. But housing has gotten ridiculously expensive.😥

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“What do you think of the war in the Middle East?“

Tragic.🙏

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“Can I add you on Facebook or Instagram?”

People asks me this every once awhile when they contact me. The answer is usually no. But I don’t mind talking via email.

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“Do you have siblings?”

I have an older sister.

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“Would you marry for love or money?”

Marry for love, maturity, commitment, intelligence, character, humility, respect, and sincerity. These are the ultimate sources of wealth.

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“Who do you think are the most influential living philosophers?”

There are lots. Noam Chomsky, Slavoj Zizek, Alain Badiou, Judith Butler, Gayatri Spivak, and Juergen Habermas are the first who comes to mind. They are all incredible thinkers who will be some of the highlights of modern intellectual history. If we wind this back a few years, I would also add Saul Kripke.

Of all these people. Chomsky, Habermas and Badiou will be talked about in 100+ years for sure. These people are crazy smart. For example, the way Badiou synthesizes set theory with being is groundbreaking. He is pretty much the modern Plato. I recommend a book by him called Infinite Thought which is a great intro to his ideas. If you are feeling brave, Being and Event is Badiou’s magnum opus, but I suggest learning set theory first (it’s a branch of mathematics).

I don’t tell many people about this because there is no need to (just sharing; not flexing). But my mentor who I’ve known since early college days studied under Alain Badiou for her PhD thesis.😲 I didn’t even find out until a few years later after I graduated when I had coffee with her. She was very low key and humble about it. So I try to keep it this way.

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Going to Bars, Clubs, and Parties

I go to bars only on special occasions for friend gatherings. I’ve been to a club once and never had much interest in them again. I’m pretty much like Helmut Zemo on the dance floor 😂😂 (hyperlinked here). Not to mention that staying up late is no longer possible as you get more responsibilities and commitments in life.

In general, large crowds ain’t my thing. Anywhere there are lots of people, there will be lots of politics and drama that I don’t care about. I rarely gossip. I’d rather stay home and watch a good movie or read a book. You know the good old COVID-19 lockdowns were honestly the best. It was an introvert’s heaven. I remember some people telling me how it sucks to stay home all the time and I was like, “Nope, I’m living my best life” Lol. Though I do like hanging out at coffeeshops because its the one place where I get to chill by myself but also be around others. It gives me a sense of community. I also sometimes meet cool people there too!

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Casual Chats with Coffee Friend

There is this guy who I chat with occasionally when I go for my weekend chill sess. I enjoy talking to him because I think he is very smart and well read. I told him it’s very rare for me to run into someone who is intellectually competent and enjoys these conversations. A very cool, smart, and genuine dude.👌

Then he told me how he often avoids gossiping and cited the famous idiom on how small minds gossip, average minds talk about events, and great minds talks about ideas. I think it’s occasionally true. The reason I say this is because a lot of people likes to talk about what goes on in their lives. Sometimes they talk about people because they are outgoing and meets many new people. Other times, they talk about ideas because they read and learn a lot. It doesn’t always dictate their intelligence.

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Engagements

An old friend who I used to have a big crush on back in the days got engaged. I congratulated her and told her to not invite me to her wedding lmao.😂 I actually haven’t seen her in a while and invited her and her fiancé out. They agreed and also suggested to have me over to their new home for dinner. Ehhhh, I’ll think about it. I don’t want to get murdered by a crazy couple. LOL jk.🤭 I remember last time I saw her I was like, “Damn, it has only been 2 years, what happened?” and she called me an asshole.😂

Another old friend who I’ve known since Junior high came to visit from Nova Scotia with his fiancé. So we all went out to a sports bar for a big get together. It was nice seeing him again. But the food was pretty mid. They were doing a draw for two hockey game tickets. The waitress gave us little forms to fill out. Most of us put one of my friend’s name and contact info to increase the odds (it’s the same if you think about it).😂 Too bad we still didn’t win. Then I went outside to hang out with the vape boys and tried all their different flavors of vapes. Then some drunk guy tried to pick a fight with one of my friend. He totally picked the wrong guy because my friend has a black belt. But of course he didn’t want to fight and just walked away.

We went out for Korean BBQ on another evening where we did all you can eat. I got the middle seat in front of the grill, so I was the main chef for the evening who cooked for everyone. But we ended up ordering wayyyy too much food and couldn’t finish all of it. So we thought of plans to take some of it to throw away in the washroom because they will charge us for the food we can’t finish (a big waste). We ended up finishing most of it. But we still took the L for a small portion. We put all the extra food on the far side of the table and tried to camouflage similar looking food to make it look like we finished more than we actually did lmaooo. We even built a wall of cups to cover the plate of uncooked meat so the waiter can’t see when we were paying the bill while we all tried to not laugh. 😂😂 But they didn’t charge us any extra.

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“Dogs or Cats?”

I like both.
I like birds too and thought of buying a parrot.

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“Dark or light hair girls?”

Dark.
But it doesn’t matter that much.

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“What is the most embarrassing thing that you caught someone do?”

I was in Macau some years ago where I was trying to get a good photograph of the city late at night. As I travelled around to find a good spot walking through a few parks and dark paths, I ran into 3-4 couples who were in the bushes where some were making out LOL. One girl was topless and got really embarrassed and tried to quickly cover up as I walked by. I was like “Whooops”.😂😂

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My car’s hail damage estimate

I finally got my car hail damage estimate approved by insurance from the first shop that I went to back in August. Last time, I said it would cost a kidney to repair my car. But it’s actually cheaper than my parent’s 2019 Toyota RAV4 that also got hail damaged. It’s surprising they didn’t write the car off considering that I’ve seen 2022 models get a total loss.

They told me they can get my car fixed before the end of year. Heh, they also said they would have my estimate done in 2 weeks which ended up taking 3 months 🥴. I have to pay $400 deductible along with tax which will be quite a bit. I think the reason my estimate is cheaper is because they are going to PDR (Paintless Dent Repair) my entire car without replacing panels. They are trying to limit repainting my car and will manually pop every individual dent back out which sounds tedious. Though the window mouldings and my left rear mirror will get replaced which is fine.

I went to get a second estimate from another place where they told me I need 3 panels replaced.🤔

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“You should store your R in the winter and drive a beater”

People keeps telling me this. But the answer is no because cars are already way too expensive these days. I’d rather dump the beater car money elsewhere like my TFSA. The R is also a great all season car. I heard the AWD is really good in snow. Only bad thing is that road salt damages your car. But I always try to keep it as clean as possible. My OCD won’t let me drive a dirty car anyway.🤭 It’s just a Golf at the end of day.

Recently, I got a mechanic to swap out my summer tires and installed / balanced my new winter tires on my stock VW Estoril wheels. He also told me to buy a beater for winter and I was like nope Lol. He told me his sister stopped by and really liked my car. Then he said my stock wheels are very light and I should keep them for summer. But I told him I’m going to get a new set next year for spring/summer because I want black ones and a wider offset. He thought it’s a good idea and told me to not get heavy wheels which I already knew.

Speaking of wheels, I’m digging the O.Z. Racing Hyper GT HLT right now. But they are really expensive. I don’t think I can spend that kind of money (I can, but I can’t because I got responsibilities lmaoooo). Maybe unless it goes on sale or if I find a cheap 2nd hand set. I’d also cry if I curb or scratch them. Just the other day, my dad was like, “Instead of spending so much money on your car, you should spend it on dates with a nice girl instead”. Then I was like, “I would, but no one wants me, so my car is my girlfriend”.🥲

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“I actually think she likes you. Talk to her and get her number already!”

I doubt it. I mean maybe—or maybe I’m just in denial. But she might not give me her number.🥹 So no moves will be made until further notice. I know I miss every shot I don’t take. But I’m also not very good at these things. I think the main problem I have is how I overthink everything. So I’m not overthinking anything this time and just let things flow and focus on my own things.

But I admit I sneak glances at her all the time lollll. She is an angel. 🥺 She randomly waved and said hi to me the other day. I wanted to talk to her, but I couldn’t because I was talking to someone else. It can be difficult because that place gets insanely busy (she is always busy). I will never get a chance to talk to her unless she serves me at the counter. And even then, it won’t be any longer than a minute or two. I also only see her around once a week. Sometimes much less. So it’s pretty much talk to her never until she quits. 🥲

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“I’m surprised you are single”

I hear this every once awhile and it always makes me laugh. I never know how to respond. Like what are you trying to say? You have a crush on me? Trying to ask me out? You feel bad for me? I’m an ugly child? I’m a weirdo? 😂 I remember I once asked a girl why she said it to me. She paused, looked down, smiled to herself and was like “….Because I think you are cute”. I guess it turned out she might’ve had a crush on me. 😂😂😂

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“One thing that annoys you most?”

People who makes plans then changes them last minute without sound reason. Why spend all the time planning if you aren’t going to follow it?

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“Where are your glasses from?“

They are from Moscot NYC called “Keppe” in tortoise shell color (linked here). 😊

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On Work and Life

I think I am someone who will constantly struggle with finding meaningful work because lets admit it, every job has something shitty about it. And from personal experience, it’s more about how much you can tolerate the type of shit each job has. Over time, I just accept that work is work and the whole “follow your passion” thing is not always feasible. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great if you have a job you love. But I think 90% of jobs are uninteresting to me. But someone has to do them. On the bright side, my job is pretty stable these days.

I have passions in life—just not the things I do at work. 😂 And that’s okay, even if it gets me sometimes because it can be such a grind. I think most people can relate to this. Not to mention that the people I meet at work are kind of basic and boring LOL. It’s not intended to be an insult. Every once awhile, I will meet an interesting person. But you know what’s funny? Nobody knows I have a masters degree at work. I kind of live a double life Lol.

I agree that money is very important for survival, especially in our day and age. It’s also nice to buy nice things for yourself and have the ability to save and afford essentials, given real world circumstances. But making money isn’t all there is to life. I always try to not let work define my life or make me who I am. It’s very important to me.

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Batman’s Real Identity

I remember some years ago at school, a fellow student from a philosophy class I was auditing came up to me and asked if I was Bobby. I was like “Yes, how did you know?”. Then he was like “I read your blog posts on Derrida!”. I giggled and was like, “You don’t expose Batman’s real identity like this in public, okay? Even if it’s obvious”. I was just messing with him LOL. He was a genuine dude. I really appreciated his honesty.

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2024 Nobel Prize in Literature

I didn’t know Helene Cixous got nominated this year. She is super good. I remember reading some of her works back in the days. Cixous is well known in the philosophy world for her engagements with deconstruction and psychoanalysis. She is also a good friend of Jacques Derrida. Definitely worth checking out!

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“What do you think of Elon Musk?“

Meh.

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On Learning Philosophy

I think for me, the process for learning philosophy was about learning how to ask the right questions. A lot of people were taught in schools on how to answer questions and give correct answers. But learning how to ask the right questions is just as important as learning how to answer them. I remember reading somewhere that intelligent people are much more curious in things that most people takes for granted in life. I think it’s true. But you don’t really need to be “intelligent”, you just need to be curious. Having genuine curiosity can go a long way.

Why are societies the way they are?
Why are people the way they are?
Why are you the way you are?
What does it all mean?
What is the truth?
What is love?

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Psychoanalysis: Traversing the Fantasy and the Spark of the Metaphor

Desire is structured around fantasy. It is something that people often mistake as love. It is also the same reason why in order for us to desire, we must always be with the “wrong person”. Yet, the subject does not know what they truly desire due to being forced into the Other’s discourse (language). Hence, they imagine said desire. We do this everyday of our lives when we talk to others where we might identify the Other’s desires or what they are thinking or feeling, where we may always find ourselves missing the point.

In Lacanian terms, fantasy always exists at a conscious level through the way each individual understands language. This can be seen through the way we understand someone else’s words that are always situated within a chain of meanings in our minds which immediately “makes sense” and “falls into place” to us—even when it never does at an unconscious level. This is to say that the understanding of meaning is carried out by the structure of fantasy, such as when you interpret my words on this blog. Interpretation and understanding is swallowed up by desire which always misses the point, and mutual understanding always consists of a certain level of fantasy.

Lacan’s formula for fantasy is “$ <> a” which is often known as “the logic of fantasy”. It is also the title for one of his most important seminars. You also see it in Lacan’s graph of desire that I discussed in The Subversion of the Split Subject. The reason why fantasy is so important is because it constitutes the split subject and their relationship with the Other along with a host of other experiences, such as their self-perceived identity. The problem is that the subject is never transparent with themselves due to being filtered through the symbolic Other.

Here is an example.

Consider the analysand who is sitting before the analyst free associating and talking about their dreams or happenings in their daily life, love life, or whatever thought first comes to mind. In this scenario, the analysand is actually speaking to the analyst as a form of fantasy ($ <> a). This is to say that the analysand is speaking in the sense that they are trying to say things the analyst wants them to say. Our desire is the Other’s desire. The analysand fantasizes what the analyst wants from them and speaks according to such fantasy.

This is where the analyst will try to interrupt the analysand’s words and force them to emphasize on things that they missed. Sometimes, this might come out as a question that the analyst points to the analysand, but it can be a simple play on grammar and words. The analyst could even simply cough, let out a brief sigh, or give other cues as a form of interruption (I believe this is what Lacan refers as “scanding”). At times, the analyst may even cut their sessions short which might make the analysand realize they are not saying the things the analyst wants to hear (it is not what the Other desires). That there is something more to the analysand’s words beyond what they intended to mean for the analyst (a). As a result, this interrupts the analysand’s fantasy relationship with the analyst as the analysand projects the Other’s desires, transferences, and fantasies onto the analyst. It would also produce a desire in the analysand to want to know beyond their conscious words.

The analyst’s goal is to, in some sense, blend into the background of the analysand’s Other and become a form of fake object a. By doing so, they allow the analysand to project all their transferences onto the analyst under a clinical setting as the analyst tries to interrupt this fantasy relationship of <> that lies between $ and a (the fantasy that lies between the split subject and object a; the latter that functions as the Other via the analyst).

Traversing the fantasy involves the attempt to separate the analysand’s Other from their subjectivity. The latter (subject) who has been filtered and usurped by the Other through castration. This division between the subject and consciousness (Other) is known as “alienation”, a concept that Lacan developed under the influence of G.W.F. Hegel. I will return to this concept once we look at Karl Marx, who also took up Hegel’s ideas on alienation in his renown analysis of Capitalism. 💀

Recall in #19 when I said how the subject is never really there as they are dominated by the Other’s discourse in language where they spend their lives satisfying the Other’s desires. That there is another person living in our mind who might be unconsciously saying “no” even when we consciously say “yes”. In order to temporarily “free” the analysand from the Other who alienates this lost subject, the analyst must make room for this subject who has been filtered through the Other to arise. This separation of the subject from the Other, even if only temporary, is crucial in psychoanalysis because it is the Other’s discourse which alienates the subject and produces their fantasy and desires as such.

The same thing happens when “love” takes place within the imaginary level as pure desire, where Lacan describes it as, “You are not, therefore I am not” (the opposite of Rene Descartes’, “I think therefore I am”). Subsequently, the success in traversing the fantasy allows the subject to discover a new relationship with the symbolic Other which signifies the real effect of love (when “love changes people”). As mentioned in my post on the death drive, Lacan describes this new relationship as produced by a “spark” which substitutes and “fixes” the symptom by replacing it with a new and better symptom. This spark creates a completely new relationship between the subject and the Other—a surprise, that is radically different to the fantasy they have been projecting. Perhaps we can think of times where we pass judgments on others, even when we might be responding to our own insecurities and history; or our own problems and traumas. If one were to look at the Other (person), they only need to look at themselves.

Nevertheless, such new relationship produced via love is actually the production of new metaphors. In this sense, we can say that psychoanalysis seeks to help the analysand produce new connections between two words/occurrences/phenomena that at first, seemingly has nothing to do with each other. The intended meanings, such as to say things they think the analyst/Other wants to hear, actually means and relates to something else unconscious to the analysand. And it isn’t until the analysand can produce new metaphors in relation to the Other (analyst), where their symptoms gets fixed; which is by being substituted for another symptom, albeit a better one.

The reason why metaphors are crucial in psychoanalysis is because it offers us a glimpse of our subjectivity. Metaphor is subjectivity. The production of new metaphors brings forth the repressed subject who had been lost through the Other’s discourse. This entire experience is the same substitution that I mentioned near the end of Death Drive Reality and Beyond when I spoke of the possibility of a new symbolic metaphor which takes the place of an old one under a sociological context. Only that I was “diagnosing” society as a symptom to a much larger problem that pertains to the immutable dimensions of human nature.

Make no mistake, this idea of the “spark” stretches to the entirety of human civilization. In fact, people often refers to it as the “creative spark” where they make new connections between ideas and experiences that at first, appears to have nothing to do with each other. The production of a new metaphor is the result of this function of love that exceeds our conscious knowledge of what we already know; it is a genuine inspiration of sorts, a surprise, which ruptures from the unconscious! There is always something enlightening and transcending when someone discovers a new metaphor which surprises, shakes, disrupts, and changes their lives and perspectives; a metaphor that can only be described through other metaphors which produces new meanings. Such that, Newton’s discovery of gravity was indeed, a love story.

This is why Lacan refers to the end of psychoanalysis (clinically) as a form of “unbeing”; an undoing of the analysand’s fantasy relationship with the Other, where they have successfully produced new relationships with it through metaphorization. Such as the woman who likes to sleep with many men when she is drunk was a metaphor to her drunken father’s sexual abuse when she was young. The aim is to help this woman change this metaphor and produce a better one through the experience of love.

The subject who has traversed their fantasy, discovers the original cause of their existence. They discover the cause of their desires which had always been the Other’s desires all along, where they had no “freedom” or “control” over (i.e. what made them who they are today, their identity, etc.; or why they keep doing this or that). Without analytic interventions, desire takes us far away from truth where it detours object a which makes the subject run in circles on repeat (because desire is structured around fantasy). And since neurosis cannot be cured, the entire goal of psychoanalysis is to put a stop to their symptoms by helping the analysand produce a better symptom, a new metaphor. While desire takes us away from truth, the process of analysis is the search for truth. And it is often a truth that the analysand does not want to know on a conscious level due to the Other’s discourse, even if it is exactly what they need. For love is never where we think it is.

The undoing of being gives rise to a glimpse of a new being through the creation of new metaphors; a new being who at first, only existed as (im)possibility hidden and alienated behind the Other’s discourse (consciousness). The split subject brings out an “I” who gets put back into the cause of their desires through this spark of metaphorization which fixes the symptom. When Lacan famously described love as “a pebble laughing in the sun”, this laughing pebble is object a which sparks the movement of new metaphors.

And in a flash of lighting, everyone becomes a poet!