Ray peats paper about William Blake
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I noticed ray mentioned william blake a bunch of times, ray wrote a paper about him https://wiki.chadnet.org/files/ray-peat-masters-thesis.pdf I'm reading through it atm ,
to me its not the smoothest read (first parts commenting on what others wrote about him) but it starts picking up from chapter III page 69
^(ironically me rn with the measuring stick on this text, & less jacked)
his artwork is very observant alive and curious in style. a lot of the paintings are like a graphic novel style before this form even existed as that, in the 1700s , , they are dripping with imagination and often have some bizarre feature^ a false actualized human / god missing a dimension to his being, measuring void , blind to the light behind him (eyes rolled inwards aka overly focused on words / fragmentations)
. they stand out a lot as their own thing from that industrial time period. the color use too is cool a mix of light and dark
so far him and yung stand out to me in the similar way they are of the world but also saturated with imagination / myth / aliveness of the mystical , its integrated with living interconnected instead of only the internal . especially william blake further titled towards the visual / imagination/mystical
he talks like he felt life in all objects. they both talk highly of "visions" / creative imagination. he held creative imagination as the closest way to get to the magic of life.When he said that the world is alive, he meant that it is a defect of perception that makes Newton’s world seem passive, empty, and dead. A few years ago, a movement that called itself “deep ecology” tried to absolutize the ideas of ecology; Blake’s view of the interactive unity of life was as well thought out as any that preceded Vernadsky’s cosmology.
Rather than elevating any of the ideas of Christianity to an absolute doctrine, Blake used them as parts of an organic whole. The principle of forgiveness was presented as the appropriate response to a world which is always new. The desire for vengeance comes from a delusive commitment to the world of memory. Virginity is constantly renewed in the world of imaginative life. While Blake said that you can’t forgive someone until they stop hurting you, the desire to be forgiven indicates that there is an opportunity to resolve the problem.
Holistic medicine and holistic psychology came into existence as attempts to overcome the dogmatic compartmentalization of reality that is endemic.
Whenever rigidity is a problem, looking for ways to create new patterns that by-pass the petrified pattern can lead to a solution.
Parkinson’s disease and other physical problems have been approached using techniques of intensified or varied stimulation. Increased stimulation--even electromagnetic stimulation-- appears to open alternative patterns. Music, dance, and swimming have been used successfully to improve fluidity in various neurological diseases. Kurt Goldstein (The Organism) worked with brain injuries, and found that the brain has a variety of ways to restore a new balance. Raising the amount of energy that’s available can allow natural processes to create a better synthesis. Political and social problems that are culturally determined may follow rules similar to those of organic brain disease.
Optimal assumptions, when assumptions are necessary, are those that don’t commit you to undesirable conclusions.
Self-fulfilling prophecies and self-limiting assumptions are often built into supposedly practical activities.
Blake found that contrasts made meanings clear, and made language vivid. Heaven and Hell, Clod and Pebble, Lamb and Tyger, Angel and Devil, Greek and Jew, Innocence and Experience, presented contrasts that encouraged the reader to think about the range of possibilities Blake had in mind. He was always consciously trying to energize the reader’s mind to get out of dogmatic ruts, to look at things freshly, so he often used the polarities in ways that would surprise the reader
the assumption that regeneration is impossible in the heart or brain, are self-limiting assumptions that have been immensely destructive in biology and medicine. There was no reason to make those assumptions, except for the rationalist culture. Physics, biology, and cosmology are manacled by many unnecessary assumptions. The limits of adaptation, the extent of life’s potential, can’t be discovered unless you look for them, but the sciences have built many artificial limitations into their systems.
Avoiding unnecessarily limiting assumptions, looking for patterns rather than randomness, looking for larger patterns rather than minimal forms, avoiding reliance on verbal and symbolic formulations, expecting the future to be different—these are abstract ways of formulating the idea that the world should be seen with sympathetic involvement, rather than with analytical coldness.
Everywhere in Blake’s work, it is clear that he never underestimated the possibilities of the future, and never imposed false limits onto anything, but he didn’t tolerate vagueness or empty abstraction. Sharp definition was essential, and unique particulars were the basis for beauty and knowledge.Blake was clearly aware that the reason for making limiting assumptions was to maintain control, and to profit from another’s suffering. Seeing that the sadistic assumptions that were put in place to regulate human life rested on a dichotomizing of soul from body, Blake’s correction was to replace them with a unity of consciousness and substance, a living world rather than a dead world.
An imaginative study of his work has the potential to rouse one’s abilities and to open an unlimited world of possibilities. “I give you the end of a golden string, Only wind it into a ball, It will lead you in at Heaven’s gate, Built in Jerusalem’s wall.”
We can sometimes finish another person’s sentence, the way we anticipate the notes in a melody; we predict the intended meaning. If the symbols carried the meaning in a passive rationalistic way, the person receiving the symbols would receive nothing new. Intellect is a process of imaginative synthesis, or it is nothing.
. I feel that a man may be happy in this world. And I know that this world is a world of imagination and vision. I see every thing I paint in this world, but everybody does not see alike. To the eyes of a miser a guinea is far more beautiful than the Sun, and a bag worn with the use of money has more beautiful proportions than a vine filled with grapes. The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity, and by these I shall not regulate my proportions; and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself. As a man is, so he sees.
[…]
You certainly mistake, when you say that the visions of fancy are not to be found in this world. To me this world is all one continued vision of fancy or imagination, and I feel flattered when I am told so.”
