Neil Durrant

@AndrewBolis YT

Everyone should have a Faceless YouTube Channel that makes $390 per day. Usually, I'd charge $93 for this guide, but today I'm giving it away 100% free. Like and comment 'YT' and I'll send you my step-by-step guide for FREE. Must follow me to get DM. FREE for 24 hrs.

@elonmusk Tantrism, Nietzsche, Trinity, & quantum holograms point to ecstatic relationality as reality’s core. Can this shape AI ethics for mutual flourishing? Let’s talk care-based AI design. #RelationalOntology

@DonJRobertson Self-pleasure?

Q: What do you call "self-help" without the help?

@moral_psych Congrats!

Just learned that I'm being promoted to Professor at Macquarie. So lucky to have great colleagues in a great city. Onwards.

My latest post on the history of Tantric philosophy… #tantra #tantric #Philosophy #india #nondualism open.substack.com/pub/neildurran…

@DonJRobertson Fair enough. I think perhaps the feeling of agency is more important than actual agency. Certainly more important than theoretically justifiable agency. And yet the question continues to fascinate me…

@drneildurrant Well, I have philosophical questions about freewill, for sure, but I'm happy with the kind of agency that allows a therapist to ask the client to use a technique and for them to be able to do it, if their depression or other symptoms measurably improve as a consequence.

If you think "I am angering myself about this" rather than "I am angry about this" or "This makes me angry", it encourages agency, ownership of your feelings, and a greater sense of choice about how to respond.

@DonJRobertson I have no expertise in CBT or understanding of its efficacy, so I defer to your experience. But philosophically speaking - I’m not so sure about agency. Seems like one of those useful delusions…

@drneildurrant In cognitive therapy we distinguish between the initial automatic phase of the emotional response and the voluntary responses that follow and shape the second phase. If we literally had no control, we wouldn't be able to do the therapy.

@14JUN1995 When they stopped caring about their relevance…

When did philosophers stop writing fiction? Most of the major figures of the enlightenment and romanticism wrote plays and novels. Perhaps it died as an ethos with existentialism and/or with the birth of positivism.

@DonJRobertson I suppose I was interpreting “anger” to be the feeling of anger. Our aversive emotions are,’in my view, just as valuable as our more pleasant ones. Bodily responses… information…

@drneildurrant Why do you think it's just a feeling?

Q: In what ways can our own anger do us more harm than the things about which we're angry?

@DonJRobertson Ummmmm. Very. Stoics just got this one wrong. But, you know, they weren’t gods…

The Stoics said that anger is unnatural whereas modern therapists often frame it as a natural emotional, by appealing to its origins in evolutionary terms. How "natural" is a response to a distorted perception of reality, though?

Ancient wisdom to help with our increasing difficulty with paying attention #Philosophy #tantra #spirituality #tantric open.substack.com/pub/neildurran…

Learning from ancient Indian philosophy - spirituality that isn't about escaping the realities of life - just about appreciating them... #spirituality #philosophy #ethics No Escape, by @drneildurrant neildurrant.substack.com/p/no-escape?r=…

@justin_garson Nietzsche: “ (when) new and deviate ideas, evaluations, drives again and again broke out, they did so accompanied by a dreadful attendant: almost everywhere it was madness which prepared the way for the new idea, which broke the spell of a venerated usage and superstition.”

Teaching philosophy of madness this semester has forced me to see how deep the exclusion of madness from philosophy is, how constitutive of the enterprise of philosophy, as currently understood, this exclusion is, & how much intellectual/institutional work is needed to change it.

@justin_garson The priesthood of the lab coats… totally agree.

@philosophy_nts Who decides what is injustice?

@justin_garson @Psych_Writer I’ve been thinking, as a philosopher, about how philosophy might be more helpful than psychology or psychiatry, or at least supplement them. Existential questions, crises of meaning and purpose, these are all legit philosophical questions, not diseases…

This was hard to write. I wrote for Aeon on seeing mental illness as purposeful, not pathological, and about the experiences with my dad that led to this shift. I’m grateful to Christian Jarrett @psych_writer for careful editing. Comments open aeon.co/essays/evidenc…