noun
- 1. a ceramic or metal container in which metals or other substances may be melted or subjected to very high temperatures: “the crucible tipped and the mold filled with liquid metal”
The Ethics Lab is a place where we report on our experiments with meditation, contemplation, exercises, training, thought experiments and various means of inciting and inviting altered states for the purposes of applied consciousness expansion and fun. An Ethics Lab is both individual practitioners and meeting to provide each other peer reviews of our progress. The Ethics Lab has been meeting under various names since the early 1980s
Why Should You Give A Flying Fuck At A Rolling Doughnut About My Writing?
Writing About My Writing by Vincent Downing About me on Medium.com 9/18/22 Read my stuff if you are interested in using your philosophy for applied consciousness expansion and fun. Trigger warning: Writing such nakedly autobiographical stuff makes me laugh, rage,...
Why You Almost Certainly Can’t Actually Think For Yourself
Thinking for myself by Vincent Downing Thinking for one’s self is something everyone claims to be able to do. Its like having a sense of humor that way. Unfortunately or not—depending on what you stand to gain or lose—thinking for yourself is much rarer than a sense...
Gods Boys And Monsters–Entire Book
Gods Boys and Monsters An Account of My Travels Through the Human Ecology by Vincent Downing Abandon all Hell, ye who enter here Hello all you religious and other types of humans. I wrote this for you. You should read it. When a man who is convinced you are...
Metathink Manual Entire Published Sections
A Metathink Manual Or: The Neurotechnicon by Vincent Downing This is an excerpt. The opening and as many of the exercises as I've prepared for publication. Metathink is thinking about your thinking. Metafeeling is your feelings about your feelings. Metaconsciousness...
Ethics Lab What is it? Why Should You Care?
by Vincent Downing The Ethics Lab is me. I am an artist with a story to share. Luckily my art is storytelling. What follows are two books. Many essays poems etc. And relief prints. I call what I'm doing ethics because my ethics are of immediate moment by moment...
I’ve prepared two books and a series of essays. The first book Gods Boys and Monsters is my attempt at recreating my own process of analysis and deconstruction. How I grew up under the Catholics and what I did to deconstruct and integrate through my mid 30s. Much of this nakedly biographical stuff is painful and angry. But its what I have that I can authentically convey to you. Think of it in the same spirit as a drill sargeant barking at you. He’s got some very specific objectives, and they don’t include you or he being comfortable. Accompanying Gods Boys and Monsters is a series of essays. These are for the purpose of aiding their audience detach from their tribal/dogmatic thinking. (In this case Progressive/liberal/leftie type folks.) The second book the Metathink Manual is an account of most of the mental/emotional tinkerings I’ve managed to date. I’ve prepared excerpts.
Letter To A Seeker At Recovering From Religion
Roxanne: wow. Thanks. I have been down a similar path because, as I suspect — given that you and I have submitted to ExCommunications — we are similar creatures. On that basis I’m going to presume to give you some unasked for advice. Its unlikely that you will ever...
How Do I Regard Christians Collectively?
How do I regard Christians, collectively. Am I better than them are they better than me? No and no. Is a person bad just because they believe bad things. (Such as queers are abominations before the Lord.) Well, I’m going to save us a lot of trouble and spill it right...
What Do I Believe Essay 2007
by Vincent Downing 2007 What do I believe God and Religion God probably exists, but is irrelevant because if it exists or not my task is to live an ethical life. We do not need to know God for meaning or morality, but we do need to know ourselves and the world....
Card I sent to my Friends and Family Mailing List
The Card I sent to my Friends and Family Mailing List in 2021. by Vincent Downing One side was a mylar sticker that would produce a blurry distorted image of whatever was reflected in it. The other side had the following: When I was a child, I spake as a child, I...
Discovery of The Fifth Cardinal Virtue After All These Centuries
Ethics Lab Report There Were Five Cardinal Virtues All Along! by Vincent Downing The four classical cardinal virtues: Prudence- (Wisdom, Pragmatism) There are some gems hidden here. If a pragmatist is willing to subjugate any ideology in the service of achieving their...
Ethics Lab: Death In My Garden
Ethics Lab: Death In My Garden Video by Vincent Downing Seneca was certainly right. For a happy old age, find a garden and tend it. If you're lucky you'll get to tend to a garden over time. Death In My Garden
Why Religion Does Not Work For Me Even Though It Works For Other People
Why religion does not work for me even though it works for other people. Because there is no freedom in religion. There is only what the creator(s) of the universe decree, and what is wrong. Even if they throw you a sop like "free will" the only thing you are free to...
Why I Preferred Humanism To Feminism
by Vincent Downing Why did feminism fail to appeal to so many men? The name. When I hear the word “feminism” I know that whatever these people have in mind, it doesn’t include me in some essential way. Just the fact that its named after a group of people of which I am...
The Hell I Could Go To Without Believing In Hell
by Vincent Downing The most frightening idea about Hell I ever read is the idea that going to Hell was voluntary. That we send ourselves to Hell, and blame God for our punishment just as we blame the Devil for our transgressions. The reason this frightened me more...
My Remarks on the American Humanist Manifesto III
by Vincent Downing Chris West and I are both proud members of the AHA and the Humanist Society https://americanhumanist.org/what-is-humanism/manifesto3/ These are my remarks on the Humanist Manifesto III. They are mine alone, not organizational for THB. Knowledge of...
Ethics Lab Precursor: The Orgone Committee 1991-96
by Vincent Downing The Orgone Committee was a small body of metaphysicians, skeptics, occultists, pagans, etc. All of the “eclectic” variety which meant we usually subscribed to a specific memeplex (philosophy/religion) but were free to add or subtract. We had great...
Final Report On The Smiling Friends Social Club
Final Report on Smiling Friends Social Club by Vincent Downing For about three years a massively multiplayer online game called EVE Online was my addiction and obsession. I fell in love with the metagame. The game within a game. This was spy stuff and security. Since...
Below here is the sliver of the Metathink Manual that’s ready for publication. I’m pleased and proud to begin presenting, after 42 years of preparation, my (almost) complete Bag of Tricks…….
Metathink Manual Exercises Part 25: Moral Compass Recalibration
by Vincent Downing MORAL COMPASS RECALIBRATION: As regards morality there are two kinds of people. Those who believe that morality works because it is moral. Those who believe that morality is moral because it works. As a child I was taught the former. Now my...
Metathink Manual Exercises Part 24: Mental/Emotional Inoculation #2
By Vincent Downing MENTAL/EMOTIONAL INOCULATION #2: Avoiding Defeating Yourself With Your Conscience Anyone who wishes to influence the herd has to step out of it. Love for the herd in of itself is something that is only useful to those who wish to be ruled by it....
Metathink Manual Exercises Part 23: Mental/Emotional Inoculation #1
by Vincent Downing MENTAL/EMOTIONAL INNOCULATION #1: Begin the long slow painful process of removing doublethink from your mental processes. Doublethink is a primate adaptation that allows us to believe that we and our tribe are the only people who have god and ethics...
Metathink Manual Exercises Part 22: Mental/Emotional Recalibration #2
by Vincent Downing MENTAL/EMOTIONAL RECALIBRATION #2: Are you responsible for your own actions? Are you responsible for your own thoughts? What if you were responsible for every single emotion you feel and others were responsible for every single emotion they feel?...
Metathink Manual Exercises Part 21: Mental/Emotional Recalibration #1
by Vincent Downing MENTAL/EMOTIONAL RECALIBRATION #1: Stop seeing your fellow human beings as being merely human beings. They are also something far more interesting. They are part of the human ecology. As such people are only secondarily individual men and women....
Metathink Manual Exercises Part 20: Emotional Inoculation #1
by Vincent Downing EMOTIONAL INOCULATION #1: Any time anybody including you says (or does) anything that causes you to be angry--stop. Assume it is a trap. Breathe deeply. Consider the options. (This is especially fitting in instances where someone tells you something...
Metathink Manual Exercises Part 19: 4th Metagaming Exercise: Roles
by Vincent Downing FOURTH METAGAMING EXERCISE: Be aware of the role you are playing at the moment: father, mother, employee, lover, son, daughter, professional, artist. What are the feelings. What are the thoughts. How much of it is pure reflexive. How it changes...
Metathink Manual Exercises Part 18: 3rd Metagaming Exercise: Concentration
By Vincent Downing THIRD METAGAMING EXERCISE: Concentration. Mental tinkering requires states of intellectual and emotional uncertainty that would normally be crippling. One of the only actual defenses against this is concentrating on what you are doing at the moment....
Metathink Manual Exercises Part 17: 2nd Metagaming Exercise: Clarity
by Vincent Downing SECOND METAGAMING EXERCISE: Clarity. Concentration often leads to clarity. Egoism, doublethink, your strongest loves and hates, your preconceptions, these things are all impediments to clarity. How are you going to see what the fuck is in front of...
Metathink Manual Exercises Part 16: First Metagaming Exercise: Separate Your Map From The Territory
by Vincent Downing FIRST METAGAMING EXERCISE: Separation of the map from the territory. The thing is not the words that describe the thing. The menu is not the meal. The map of a territory is not that territory. A photograph is not the objects "in" the photograph. You...
Metathink Manual Exercises Part 15: Eighth Emotional Exercise: Let Go Of Their Flaws
by Vincent Downing EIGHTH EMOTIONAL EXERCISE: Give up on the very idea that anyone has problems, faults, flaws, sins, ills, and evils. Try to simply accept that people are who and what they are and that this includes them being self and other destructive. You are the...
Metathink Manual Exercises Part 14: Seventh Emotional Exercise: Fault Finding
by Vincent Downing SEVENTH EMOTIONAL EXERCISE Fault finding. Whenever you are angry at someone for something stupid they are saying or doing or feeling immediately use it as a trigger to remember examples of your own failings in this regard. Assuming you have made...
