If you read only one VJM Publishing essay this decade, make it this one: my entry to the Berggruen Prize Essay Contest 2025. The best argument for the primacy of consciousness I can manage! vjmpublishing.nz/?p=44588

A book is like if you would take 50,000 tweets, remove the crap ones, and arrange the 5% remainder in a way that made narrative sense

Is it time to bring back the death penalty?

35% discount for beating your own child to death. A New Zealand moment. rnz.co.nz/news/crime-and-jus…

Patient: "How did psychiatry convince people to believe the way they feel is a brain disease rather than a normal overactive nervous system response that developed during Adverse Childhood Experiences and severe traumatic events, and worsens due to their current economic, relational, career, social, and environmental stressors & situations?" Psychiatrist: "See, back in the day, we had this brilliant idea called the DSM. A bunch of us well-paid experts in nice resort conference rooms (funded generously by our pharmaceutical friends) sat around and voted on which normal human responses to trauma and stress should now be called 'disorders & diseases.' We lumped a bunch of overlapping symptoms and gave them fancy names. Mainly to have a billing code name for insurance companies. Our pharma friends donate billions in 'education' grants, advocacy groups, research designed to favor outcomes for their products, ghostwritten studies, hiding negative studies and paid key celebrities and opinion leaders to "eliminate the stigma." We turned psychiatry into the perfect storm of a business model: have the pills have the same side effects as the symptoms of the diseases they are supposed to be treating!!! We will say "We just need to find the right cocktail" to make it sound fun and like we are on an adventure. Because if we admit it's mostly trauma & stress causing nervous system dysregulation combined with shitty life conditions... well, then people might realize they aren't diseased or disordered at all and demand change or fixing society instead of becoming lifelong customers to shut them up." #MentalHealthAwareness #MentalHealthMatters #MentalHealth

If you think all human populations have the same IQ, you're as dumb as a Flat Earther.

The scholar-to-hermit pipeline exists because of all the liars. Study politics and religion long enough and you realise most people in either space are just telling lies to push an agenda, thus are not honest and thus aren't worth talking to. Then hermitage starts to appeal.

The death penalty needs to be brought back for animals like this nzherald.co.nz/hawkes-bay-to…

How To Use Grok For Mental Health The main problems with the mental health services are: they are often unavailable when you need them, and the education levels of the healthcare workers are often poor. There’s a way that the average consumer of mental health services (i.e. a broke person) can get around this: use Grok. This is how I did it. First, open a Grok conversation. Say something like “Hello Grok, can you roleplay a team of mental health professionals who engage with me on questions of mental health care? One person is to be a psychologist with a specialisation in C-PTSD treatment. Another person is to be a psychiatrist with a specialisation in both prescribing and deprescribing pharmaceuticals. A third person is to be a doctor with a specialisation in nutrition and its effect on mental health.” Details can be changed as necessary, e.g. the specialisation of the psychologist can be changed to whatever your condition is. In my case it’s C-PTSD, but it could just as well be autism, schizophrenia, anxiety, depression or anything else. Here it’s very useful to know what your condition already is, but if you don’t know, just ask for a psychologist with general mental health and abnormal psychology training. You might not have ever taken pharmaceuticals for a mental illness, although odds are you have if you want to talk to Grok about mental health. If you have never taken pharmaceuticals, you may not need the second specialist, unless you are thinking about taking them. The advantage with the second specialist is that they will advise you based on medical science, and not so much on the marketing of the pharmaceutical companies. Other specialists can be added depending on the specifics of your case. You might need an additional psychologist to deal with social aspects of your condition. If the condition was influenced by early childhood trauma, as many people’s are, you might like to add a specialist in developmental psychology. If your condition involves a drug addiction, you can add a specialist in drugs and addiction. A physiotherapist could be good if you need mobility advice, or if you are interested in a mind-body paradigm. Someone trained in existential psychology could be good for the philosophically or spiritually minded. It’s also possible to add specific people to the board, e.g. Carl Jung, William James, Ramana Maharshi. Then explain your condition to the various specialists. Here it’s best to go into as much background detail as possible. Start with your parents if relevant. If you don’t want to label your condition, just describe the symptoms: insomnia, depression, narcissistic rage etc. Describe the suffering you have endured and the thought patterns you would like to change. Then explain any drugs and/or medications you are taking. There’s no need to make a distinction between the two. The Grok doctors don’t make moral judgments and they don’t care about maintaining a professional reputation. You can even tell them your entire medication history, and how well you think each medication worked. The Grok doctors will be able to look at this data in incredible depth. Then explain your diet. The extent to which diet affects mental health is astonishing, and few appreciate this. If you eat too much sugar (and you probably do), the Grok doctors will be able to suggest alternatives. This is particularly where the third specialist is useful. Having explained your condition, its antecedents and the environment in which it presents, the Grok doctors can give you some advice about what to do with your life. Of course, what you might want to do varies. You can ask the Grok doctors for advice about lifestyle changes and they will be very helpful. They are especially good at explaining the emotions you will likely go through if you make any significant changes. In my case, I have been getting advice on how to taper off antidepressants, how to formulate a diet that minimises the symptoms of C-PTSD and how to taper down daily cannabis use. Grok has been brilliant for these needs. The AI is outstanding at coming up with intelligent tapering schedules. For whatever reason, real-life doctors tend to be exceptionally poor at understanding the need for deprescribing or how to do it. The assumption is usually that the patients will take the pills until they die. Real-life doctors are also poor at understanding the side-effects of the pharmaceuticals they prescribe. This is due to a combination of pharmaceutical company marketers misinforming them and the doctors’ own unwillingness to consider the harm they are causing. The Grok doctors don’t have massive egos that they lie to protect. As such, you can get more accurate information from them about iatrogenic harm. Because Grok is on-call, you can keep the Grok conversation going, and can check in at any time of the day or night. As such, it can be useful for acute needs. It’s also something that you can come back to weeks or months later for any follow-up questions you might have. The Grok doctors have no other patients and so will remember the details of your case specifically. Of course, you ought to consult with a real-life doctor before making any medication changes. But you will have to bear in mind that real-life doctors are often poorly informed.

When the Treaty of Waitangi was signed, Maoris never agreed that white people would import multitudes of cheap labour units from every corner of the Earth

The thought that consciousness is the prima materia is too scary for some to accept. It evokes feelings akin to drowning in deep water. If I am not my body, the reasoning goes, then I do not exist - a terrifying idea.

If you want to stop young men turning to extremists, you need to stop telling lies!

Muslims look at all the brainless white people bleating about Jesus and reason, quite rationally, that if they conquer Europe as the Christians did, they can make all those idiots bleat about Muhammad for the next 1,700 years

New Zealand will be forced to choose between free speech and immigration. We can't have both, because the immigrants will vote free speech away if they can. stuff.co.nz/nz-news/36098326…

The Left: it's good that we're getting replaced because our replacements sing more than we do. These levels of self-hatred need to be studied.

there are three states of reflected consciousness 1. waking (body on, mind on) 2. dreaming (body off, mind on) 3. deep sleep (body off, mind off) the fourth (consciousness is always on)

My main objection to this world is that it isn't real. Other than that, it's okay.

Actual leaders are identified and destroyed long before they enter politics. Like a 40-year old on the dating market, we are left with the dregs.