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Self-Investigation.org

The Library

Read Me First

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This library is intended to help support “The Guide” – which defines what Self-Investigation is and how to start. If you have not read that yet, see here.

Topics

The following topics are meant to be explored in order. Earlier topics help understand later ones, but anyone can explore as they wish. Each is an introduction with links to articles, books, videos, and discussion threads.

1. Our Misleading Mind (Which We Don’t Totally Control)

GOAL: Understand how flawed, limited, and misleading our mind is, even in the best case.

To start, we must confront the limits and distortions of human perception – and view our minds (and everyone else’s) with a fair amount of skepticism. A simple term for these inescapable mental limits is “Brain Constraint”.

2. Ideas aren’t “Real”. Knowledge, Beliefs, and The Risk of Philosophical Suicide

GOAL: Understand how ideas aren’t exactly “real”.

The human mind runs on concepts or ideas. Many of the most powerful forces in human life — money, nations, laws, religion, corporations, rights — are imaginary but intersubjective social contracts with each other. They don’t exist “out there”, but because enough people believe in them, they guide behavior as strongly as physical forces.

3. The Muscle of Metacognition

GOAL: Develop the muscle to observe your mind.

Metacognition is the skill and strength to observe our mind without being completely captured by it. Our mind spontaneously generates thousands of thoughts and feelings each day. With the “muscle” of metacognition, we can insert pause and contemplation between mental activity and our reactions. The importance and depth of this practice cannot be overstated – it is quietly radical.

4. Brief Human History

GOAL: Understand how today’s world and culture are shaped by a few major events.

We cannot understand modern human life and psychology without knowing a few major leaps that led us here. What is the human species going? How do our individual and collective goals and appetites shape the world?

5. Primatology & Evolutionary Psychology

GOAL: Learn the essential primate behavior, comparing to our own instincts. See how fundamental human nature and intelligence are no different today vs. 300,000 years ago.

Primates are our closest living relatives, sharing much of our genetics, social structure, and brain architecture. By observing primates behavior with mating, food, and social disputes, and harass each other, we see an eerie resemblance to modern day behavior. This leads one to ask, how different are we, really?

6. Culture’s Deep Influence

GOAL: See how culture influences us, often covertly, sometimes maliciously.

7. Journaling and Deconstructing

GOAL: Explore journaling as a view into your own mind.

Building on metacognition and meditation, we create space between or thoughts and reactions. With journaling, we examine thoughts to expose what we believe and where we might be misled or confused. This is sometimes called “mental autolysis” or deconstruction of our own mind.

8. Psychedelics and Psychedelic Research

GOAL: Understand WHY psychedelics expand minds and relieve suffering.

Psychedelics help clinically depressed patients, and relieve death anxiety in terminally sick folks. For the average person, they can greatly expand perspective. The question is WHY? Even if we don’t use psychedelics, simply learning how they function teaches something important about our minds. Tunnel vision is inevitable – and breaking free of it can.

9. Meaning and Purpose

What’s the point of life? We all confront this eventually. Maybe we were given a clear answer as kids, which we’ve held onto into adulthood. Or maybe we’re just trying to be happy and not think about this stuff too deeply. Regardless, a great risk is adopting meaning that someone else created, and never getting the chance to live authentically.

10. Work

“Work” is so engrained in life we hardly question it – yet it consumes roughly 40% of our waking hours (or 70% of our free days). WHY do we work? Survival, obviously. But also a mix of abstract goals – meaning, status, accomplishment, consumerism, community, and service to others. Is “work” the best way of fulfilling these goals? Are these abstract goals equally worthwhile? Must work take so much of our lives?

11. Attention, Distraction, and Flow

“You are what you pay attention to”, said Epictetus. Our attention is under constant assault from technology and media designed to seize it. This environment fosters shallow engagement, making it difficult to sustain focus on complex tasks, reflect deeply, or maintain presence in conversations.

12. Happiness

“Pursuit of happiness” is the de facto goal of modern society. If we break happiness down, we see two broad categories: Hedonic – immediate pleasure and avoidance of pain, and Eudaimonic – long-term flourishing based on realizing ones potential. Which type of happiness is worth pursuing?

13. Impermanence and Death

Everything we know and care about will cease to exist. Yet in the words of BJ Miller, “We have sanitized death, tucked it away, and as a result, we’re deeply unprepared when it comes.” There is a hidden upside in really seeing impermanence of all things. To quote Rilke: “The knowledge of death came to me and it made me live, and what was there before was not living.”

14. Global Human Problems

Today we are faced with numerous apparent crises: climate, pollution, energy scarcity, resource depletion, tribalism, and conflict. Should we worry about these things? If so, how? Are we waiting for someone else to solve everything? What can we personally do?

Extra Chapters

(These topics will be developed further)

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Morality

Love

  • Placeholder: Socrates Warning

Solitude

Placeholder: Walden Pond

Placeholder: Stephen Bachelor

Placeholder: Derek Walcott – Feast on Life

Consciousness

Book Summary: Conscious

Comparative Mythology

Article: The Hero’s Journey

Comparative Religion & Spirituality

Book Summary: Religions of the World

Mystical Experiences

Varieties

Conditioning, Trauma, and Victimhood

Video: Trauma Narrows Perception

Sleep, Nutrition, Exercise

Increasing Cultural Complexity

Placeholder (McKenna, Bowie)

Final Suggestion: Socialize

Exploring this alone might feel daunting.

Please consider joining our discussion forum and reading club, where we are continuously covering this material. This is both rewarding and motivating. More information here.

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