Philosophy

Good for the Spirit, Good for the Mind

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As I write this there’s a huge, understandable panic that AI is being used by students so much they don’t know how to read and analyze it. If you are reading this in a future years removed from this essay, I hope you live in a world where AI isn’t such a concern, and you’reNOTin some post-apocalyptic disaster.

Anyway, whatever your chronological state, here in 2025 it’s been quite a concern. If you let AI write for you, analyze for you, etc. you are essentially outsourcing your thinking and your humanity. You will not develop skills you need to read books and understand things, and the skills you do have will decay.

This in turn made me think about spiritual and philosophical writing and how it trains you to read, analyze and understand. For the sake of brevity to encompass such things for self-development I shall call them spiritual works here.

When we sit down with a spiritual work we are attempting to contemplate, grow, and understand some very serious issues. We bring to it a desire to understand and grow, to engage with the work. The attitude of becoming involved in the work is there at the start.

In turn, the engagement is needed.

Spiritual works are about deep issues, and you will find yourself pausing to contemplate and analyze. We’ve all experienced moments where a paragraph or a page can hold our attention for a half hour. In spiritual works, you may find yourself going over something word by word just thinking what it means.

Spiritual works often use symbolism and metaphor as that may be easy to communicate complex truths, represent the otherwise indescribable, or lead you around a bit to help you learn. Symbolism also helps you think, how the symbols work together, what they really mean, and so on. Again, you are engaged with the work, connected to it.

Finally, many spiritual works are often grounded in a place, a person, an experience, a lineage, etc. To engage with spiritual work is to engage with much more than a book or a menial or a series of poems – it’s to learn about who produced it and the situation that led to it. One small book can lead you to a world of context – and a greater point of view.

Reading a good spiritual work teaches you to read, analyze, understand. A person with an interest about such issues can, in time, give themselves ersatz literary training. I once read a book called DIY MFA about how a person can read and write and analyze to gain similar experiences to getting an MFA – and that feels very familiar in spiritual writing.

So in a world of AI writing and AI reading, remember our spiritual pursuits. Sitting down with a book on philosophy or meditation or metaphysics isn’t just enriching morally or spiritually – it’s enriching literately. Your wrestling with ethics or breath meditation or divinities also helps you learn to read, analyze, and understand.

Just another reason to do it, I suppose.

-Xenofact

Trees, Taoism, and Bigots

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Recently I saw a certain member of a religious group refer to non-religious people as a social burden. I won’t name names, but the man says he’s Catholic. He belongs to a league of similar followers. Figure it out yourself.

Anyway, this culty creep’s opinion is actually very revealing. He states people who are not religious – and his form of religion – are a burden. He’s pretty damn close to the Nazi idea of “useless eater,” which tells me he’s not just awful, he’s probably afraid of demographic changes towards the non-religious in America. He wants to classify people not like him as a burden, as “not useful.”

Well, not useful to him, because a lot of religious organizations are just about turning people into tools so the bigwigs end up in power. Calling someone “useless” or a “burden” says outright that people should be “useful” to others, like a tool. It also is close enough to saying “non-useful” people should be eliminated.

This reminds me of Taoist tales of trees, and why “usefulness” is highly overrated. In Taoist lore I’ve encountered multiple tales of trees that are relevant to how people view each other. Let’s go into the two I’m familiar with, both of which I encountered in some form in the Chuang Tzu but have heard other variants.

First up is the tale of a carpenter and his apprentice. Seeing a tree, the carpenter comments how absolutely useless the tree is to he, the carpenter, so twisted and knotted and so on he couldn’t do anything with it. After they returned home, the spirit of the tree came to the carpenter and notes that it grew to be so old just because it was useless. The carpenter told his apprentice the experience.

I love this story because it notes that being useful means people may not just use you but use you up – but being useless may mean you live long.

The second tale involves a weird tree which is also useless due to it’s wood (sometimes it has giant useless leaves or huge but foul and inedible nuts). However one of the characters notes that the tree is actually quite useful – you plant it and you get lots of shade. Other stories may include parts of the tree – the weird leaves make great umbrellas, or the nut shells are big enough to use as a small boat.

I like this story because it notes that sometimes just leaving something alone may let you enjoy it as well. The tree is “useful” because you don’t try to use it.

These are great stories because they make you ask what is the use of usefulness? If it kills you off, what good is it? If just being is good, you’re valued but not used. We’d all be better off appreciating whats there (and less likely to destroy it).

I’m all for social cohesion and social responsibility. But turning people into tools, trying to constantly rank who’s “useful” means no cohesion, no responsibility, and eventually no society. We need to appreciate uselessness.

It also disarms people like the aforementioned bigots. It reminds us when someone starts talking how “useless” people are, how they’re “a burden” they’re not caring about people. They want us to be their tools.

Also, they’re assholes.

–Xenofact

Building The Ecosystem

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When I returned to my spiritual practices after a too-long break, I found it was hard to put things in their proper “place.” I’d be interrupted in my practice, distracted, and interrupted by things that were irrelevant. Nothing like deciding to get back to really deep spiritual activity then getting incredibly pissed about things like getting your chore schedule in order.

Reflecting on past experiences and interests, I came to the realization that a lot of spiritual practices (theistic, non-theistic, humorous, etc.) involve a mental ecosystem. Meditations, magic, correspondences, and so on align with your job, ethics, and perhaps even furniture placement (hello feng shui?). Your spiritual work of whatever kind really makes progress when your life ties together.

In my own work, which is informed by a mix of Taoism and syncretic practices, I took the following activities:

  • I read a few passages from one of my copies of the Tao Te Ching each night. The TTC is a philosophical document, and it led me to think about my life and my activities.
  • I read about one of the Hexagrams of the I Ching each night from some of the books in my library. The I Ching is deeply tied to many Chinese philosophies, and many commentaries and interpretations add even more thought. It’s mix of the cosmic and the human help me think bigger.
  • I continue my usual devotional/religious work around chosen gods, but think about how I embody them and why they matter to me. Where do I fit into the big picture and all these organic processes?
  • I ask questions about my media consumption and relaxation. Ironically it seems the answer is “I probably need more.”

In about a month I’ve found my viewpoints changing. My spiritual activities aren’t alien to my life or vice versa, but the two are more connected. I’m getting a “bigger picture” sense of what I’m doing. It’s also nothing self-aggrandizing, it’s more everyday things like how I lead at work or what I eat (chocolate,pizza, burritos – the signs I’m stressed).

And it’s all some reading, contemplation, and regular activities that help tie my life together into the bigger picture. It’s honestly nothing special, it’s probably something most anyone does to one extent or another. It’s just conscious on my part, with my fascination of using myself as a kind of laboratory.

I’ll doubtlessly write more on this. But if you’re finding your spiritual work and life don’t line up, consider how you can align yourself a little more. Some reading, regular thought about issues, some schedules, might help you connect the dots.

Nothing major here. Just a few observations from someone else on the path.

– Xenofact