Interview: James De Llis
“Smile and Be” - Author James De Ellis on Influences, Suffering, Hyperstition, Recent Transformations, the Art of Writing, and the Enduring Quest for Meaning
James Ellis, the author and host of the popular podcast Hermitix, takes us on a journey through his transformation from his enigmatic online presence as MetaNomad to his current philosophical and literary endeavors under the name James De Llis. In this conversation, we explore his evolution as a thinker and writer, discussing his recent short fiction collection, There’s a Man Crying in the Street (2024), and drawing connections to his earlier essays from Exiting Modernity (2021) and Only Ever Freedom (2022).
De Llis reflects on the shift from his earlier persona, MetaNomad, and the pivotal critique by fellow writer Darren Allen that sparked a profound realization about the nature of suffering. He delves into the impact of this insight on both his writing process and his broader philosophical outlook, offering a candid look at how these ideas shaped his recent works.
The conversation also navigates themes of happiness and contentment, contrasting fleeting pleasures with a more enduring state of being that sustains through both joy and suffering. Ellis shares personal anecdotes and practical exercises for cultivating this mindset, shedding light on how his own philosophy informs his writing.
Ellis also provides updates on his forthcoming book releases, reflects on fictional characters that have influenced him, and offers a deep dive into the creative process behind There’s a Man Crying in the Street and other stories. Throughout, he shares his evolving perspective on what it means to find true happiness and peace in an unpredictable modern world.
Selected Time Stamps from Interview
00:00 Trailer: The Nature of Suffering
00:58 Evolution of Metanomad to Hermitix
03:29 The Influence of Mark Fisher, Nick Land
05:26 The Transition to Writing Under a Real Name
06:50 Exploring his Recent Fiction
09:15 Reflections on Happiness and Modernity
16:35 The Story of 'Who's Walking Who?'
21:56 The Irony of Modern Comfort
29:08 Hyperstition and the Power of Fiction
45:12 The Myth of Narcissus and Disenchantment
48:11 The Push for Secularity and Political Trends
51:53 Responsibility and Influence of Writing
55:37 The Nature of Suffering and Misery
01:00:48 Darren Allen, “Beauty of a Weed” Overcoming Misery
01:09:41 Reflections on Happiness and Suffering
01:14:28 Final Thoughts and Future Works
01:14:48“Smile and Be” as a Hyperstition
James has a B.A. in Fine Art and an M.A. in Continental Philosophy.
Find his works, essays and more @
James de Llis also hosts the Hermitix Podcast which he describes as:
“Hermitix is a podcast focusing on one-on-one interviews relating to fringe philosophy, obscure theory, weird lit, under appreciated thinkers and movements, and that which historically finds itself 'outside' the academic canon.”
Music Sample in Intro: Acediast / Malformed Canticle Of Despondent Languor
AI Machine Transcription - Enjoy the Glitches!
James: At no point is there ever going to be enough misery that you go, you know what, I'm done with that.
So the question is, have you suffered enough? And that question really is, at what point is this suffering going to be enough for you to just get on with your life?
Leafbox: James. Good afternoon.
James: Do you want my camera on or?
Leafbox: No, I actually prefer just sound if that's okay with you. Yeah, I think it leads to that liminal space you're looking for.
Anyway, James, before we start, I really wanted to thank you for all your work you're doing. I mean, from the books to the podcasts, to the essays, to your earlier essays yeah, as a solo producer, I appreciate it. Thank you.
James: Oh it's my pleasure. I enjoy doing it. I'm slowly doing more essays again, which is fun.
Leafbox: So maybe before we start, but why don't you tell me about where Metanomad evolved into Hermitix and then into James Ellis and how you seem kind of have moved from behind the shadows of being with your newest work.
You're really kind of James now. So I'm curious about that evolution.
James: There's, I mean, it springs to mind, there's that title of that book of discussion by Foster Wallace, David Foster Wallace. It's called In The End, You Always End Up Becoming Yourself, something like that. So MetaNomad was just because it was online.
There was this at the time, which was 2016, 2017, this distinct energy of like, A rebirth of 90s online energy on around Accelerationism and CCIU and Nick Land of course and the Twittersphere at that time and there was a, yeah, there was an energy around that so MetaNomad. At the time, which was my name that many people might not even really know that now that was the name that I went by was the nomad part was from Deleuze was the notion of being nomadic from moving to one point, taking what you learned from that point and then moving on and repeating that process and meta was really just to open that up and basically to stay Look, this is constantly going to change.
One of the reasons for that name choice thinking back was that I'd, when you search the internet, you come across all these, you don't so much now, actually, and it's sad that this era was so small But in the early days of the internet, just before the Facebook slump, you, when you Google search things or just search things, generally you, many of the top results or the common results were individual blogs or just weird sites.
And back then you would come across sites that had long since died or been just left dormant. And one of the reasons for this was often that they'd really sculpted their website around a singular idea and so it, the idea had had its day and then they moved on. So I wanted something that would be ever constantly shifting, but eventually I moved away from it because as I started the podcast to Hermitix.
Which, the reason for that is actually fairly simple it was just after the death of Mark Fisher, the philosopher, author of Capitalist Realism, that the podcast started and his death was one reason for it in the sense that he was a, he was someone who was being talked about, who had written some very insightful articles, philosophy for our moment and who also, if, if the, in a way, if the torch wasn't picked up by someone, and I'm not saying I specifically picked up the torch of Mark Fisher, but , I just had the feeling that, so many people, like many philosophers throughout history, could just become a footnote or perhaps altogether be forgotten, which is very much the case of many philosophers at current.
It's that the more you delve into the history, you realize that there is no specific reason that thinkers and ideas and philosophers have been forgotten. It's often that. fashion for the bigger philosophers takes over and it's just a matter of pragmatism. And so ideas get lost, thinkers get lost, biographies get lost.
And for me, there's something sad in that. So I started Hermetics at the time to try, focus on overlooked ideas and thinkers. And with the podcast came the reality of this is You know, this is my real voice. I can't change that. And the fact that ultimately I couldn't, I couldn't really detach the two anymore, and I didn't particularly want to I'm not against the anon, you know, the anonymous type thing.
I am again, I don't think doxxing is a very good thing. If someone wants to stay anonymous online, that's a, that's an integral part of early internet culture in a way is that notion of Anonymity, something to be said for it in our ever increasingly pragmatically open world. But I had no reason to be.
So, it really just fell into place that I eventually started writing yeah, under my real name, so to speak.
Leafbox: And then just a small minor question. I'm just curious when you, on your newest title, on your short story collection, you have De Llis ...when did you start using is that your legal name or when did the spelling is different?
James: No, so what happened was I wanted to move to an author's name. This is ironically, this is a pragmatic decision. So I, that's the, it's the recent short story collection is the only one under that name, and that's probably the name I'll stick to from now on. It was just a decision of one, James Ellis is a very standard name, and there is something to be said for just having a distinct or at least somewhat distinct name that can be searched.
That is really its own thing. There was other reasons why I wanted to move away from Alice, but yeah, that and why that one in specifically was, it allowed me to keep certain emails and sites, because it's just a moving of letters around basically. So there is a pragmatic element there, but it's just to have a, basically a unique author's name, which is, has been done time immemorial.
Yeah there's nothing really special around it and De Llis, it sounds pretentious and whatever.
Leafbox: Well, I just it seems to parallel your journey from this nomadic to hermit like to grounding. And I wanted to jump into your book because you're selling, it's an excellent collection of just selling this humorous misery of alienation and suffering.
And I enjoyed it. Some of the stories are great, like Wet Sock and Cruise and The Shed. But then reading it in combination with Exiting Modernity, I almost, I hate to psychoanalyze your writing, but it almost feels like the two texts start working together. I don't know if you've relooked at your, some of your previous essays, but
James: I think I haven't looked at them in a long time, recently more, I still get, Emails and people mentioning Exiting Moderity because I think at a certain point it was put in a, it was, it gets linked and it was linked a couple of times in like these more popular forums where it's become just in a list of links kind of thing.
So it's there. As for their incompatibility. I think I, I haven't thought about Exiting Modernity in a while and I haven't reread it in a while. I then wrote Only Ever Freedom, which I think was 2022, if I'm remembering right, because Exiting Modernity got quite popular and really it wasn't that fleshed out.
So I fleshed out. Only Ever Freedom as a sort of here's a an anti guidebook, right? Like really just saying, trying to articulate the point of what to do with the modern world in a very specific way, it doesn't really go as far as it could. And I think there's still a lot of avenues, places to go there, basically.
Whether or not they contradict one another, I don't know, because
Leafbox: Oh, I don't think they're contradicting each other at all. I think they're case studies actually for your philosophy. So if you misheard me, I actually think you're in your solutions, you're selling this concept of being present.
You're on the Barry Long kind of, I don't know. It's funny because your latest substacks, you're, get over suffering, get over this misery and your case your short stories are just, I don't know. Total misery. So I'm curious to see, and then I think you're coming up with a new collection of work on Catholicism, or not Catholicism, on Christianity.
And I'm just curious where you are mentally now, like to frame this in your arc as a writer.
James: Where am I mentally now? I mean, it's strange because, well, I'll answer that question. I'm mentally, it sounds, it, it's it's a comment itself on, let's just call it modernity, that, especially for Brits, I don't know how true this is for the U. S., but it's a comment on modernity that in saying, like, I'm very happy or I'm, I'm feeling really good. I'm mentally, I'm in a really good place. I don't want to psychologize it too much, but just to say that you're happy, many people would say that that's cope or that how long will it last or whatever it might be.
So the attitude is one of. Disbelief, possibly bitterness. I know I was at times bitter towards the idea of, like someone being genuinely should we say absolutely happy where they were a genuinely happy person. I didn't, I told myself that it wasn't, That it was very determinist. I told myself for so long that, you're either born happy or, you're just one of the the, one of the gray quagmire people who sludging through life with more content. than the people who are happy because they don't need content. As for the short story collection then, in a way, it's it only could have been written when it did, which was probably at my most miserable. And I was deeply reading Bernhard, Thomas Bernhard and adjacent figures, Fleur Yegge Hammenberger a very Austrian and yeah, very Austrian bitterness and misery and defense of misery.
And as I put in the two latest essays on Substack, a conflation with, of misery with wisdom, as if someone is more miserable or bitter or depressed or despairing or melancholic, they're in, they are somehow more intelligent or wiser. And this is, That's completely false. It's completely false.
And so it happened when it did. I think in a way they are case studies, though I would say that I think there is a lot of humor in the book and someone, one of my friends who read the book afterwards, he said, this is, these are all very repetitive. And I said, well, what do you mean? He said, well, this is a bunch of stories where every single story is just a case where if someone paid attention and just helped the person, then everything would have been fine.
But the point for me was that they don't. And so that book is. I don't think it was intended as a defense of that world. Anyone who's written fiction will know that if you write a character, or write a person, or a fictional person, or scenario, you can't really break the rules that arise naturally. You can't, there are things that, for instance, in Tolkien, there are things that Gandalf would never do, that if Tolkien wrote it, hang on, that doesn't make sense, that you have this limited character.
And so I think, in a way, I was writing. Let's say everyday modern characters. And unfortunately by the sensibilities of the average modern person, they didn't have much rope with which to do anything. And so they're constantly, they're constantly caught and to try and get them out of the situations wouldn't be a case of the right scenario.
It would be a complete overhaul of character. And to maybe draw on the ideas and. expand upon the ideas of existing modernity. I think one thing ultimately we have to admit to as moderns is is a sort of three or four fold contradiction of what we all know and admit to that culminates in cynical and in a cynical logic, which is one, I do now would now say that ultimately, if you ask someone, what do they want from life and they answer anything other than happiness, then I think that's complete cope.
Now many people go, hang on, life isn't all about happiness, and what they would probably mean, I think what people mean when they say that, when they say life isn't all about happiness is, they actually mean life isn't all about hedonism or pleasure because it's a very western, modern problem with terms in that our understanding of happiness is not happiness.
Happiness is a much broader thing, and it's a bit more difficult to define to the extent that I would say, and this is drawing off the work of. Darren Allen, drawing off the work of Barry Long, even drawing off the work of someone like Gurdjieff, which is that within what we might call like an ontological, if you want to be very pretentious, an ontological, a true unhappiness, there is melancholy, there is sadness, there is upset, but that doesn't remove you from the core of what it is to be, which itself is a form of happiness of a sort of joy of being.
And so in the West, we have a focus on happiness, but we never get to it because we've we've mislabeled happiness as something that it isn't. And so we look around everywhere and pretty much 99 percent of people in the West and in modernity all do the same things all the time. Whether or not they're different in aesthetics, they're pretty much the same things, which is a culture of aggrandizement and addition, that's the only direction we know, which is all problems can be solved via purchase or addition.
And even those who would say, well what about minimalists? Well minimalism, as an idea, as a thing, or as the notion of my lounge should be minimal and grey or white or whatever, is still an addition in kind. And so everyone is doing the same thing, and yet no one is really happy, And so the conclusion from that is, well, you have to do something completely different or not drastically, because if you do something different in the same kind of, I need to be different as an addition, then you fall into the same trap.
But the the tyrannical. edge that the West has given itself because of our sort of fetish of reason is the cynical reason, which is everyone does the same thing every day. Get up, go to work, do the nine to five, buy things that we believe will make us happy. Those two on their own are actually fine if there's no self knowledge, that's like an purely ignorant state of being completely fine.
But we've all got to the point where we'll say things like, Can't wait for the weekend or the grind or or like you might even hear people transparently say this will fill the void in my life. So we've got to the point of cynical reason where not only do we do we actively do things that don't make us happy, even though we're after happiness, we know that we are doing that and we know that the conclusion is going to be that.
However, the reason we continue is because we believe that cynical reason where, Oh, I know about it. We believe that puts us above the whole thing, but it doesn't. It's just a way of justifying your own misery and not having the courage to be true about the situation, which is that you're unhappy and you need to do something about that.
Leafbox: James, I have a lot of thoughts. The first thought that immediately came is to use the word rope, that people don't have a lot of rope. And in your Exiting Modernity collection, you have this story about who's walking who. And you have the same symbolism there that maybe you can tell that story about Norfolk and your uncle, if you remember it, about the dog.
James: Oh, I remember the story. I see it. I see it all the time when I'm around here. And people, this is the one that a lot of people said was defeatist. So the story is that I was driving my, my great uncle was driving around Norfolk back roads, which is deep rural, a very rural County that it's Lovecraftian in the fact that it's left alone.
And he was driving around. We were going to go shoot some pigeons, I believe, but they weren't there that day they're out. But as we got to a junction a a woman was walking her dog, but if you visualize it, she was walking in front of the car. So we were looking at her through the windscreen stopped at this junction and we couldn't pull out until she'd walked past anyway, but the dog was completely.
Was completely like pushing forward as dogs do like it smells something that really wants to see and so the leash, the lead was completely taught. on its neck, and she was being pulled forward. And my great uncle, who was a very good sort of, of the moment moral teacher, there's many other times that he would, was able to do this, he half yelled, I think she might have even heard, he basically was like, who's walking who?
And I rolled with that because one, it's actually platonic in the sense of Plato's Phaedrean Chariot, in the sense of who actually is in charge here. And when I originally wrote that essay, it was about power, but there's a point here about pain and suffering and misery and unhappiness.
And everyone in that scenario of the dog and the woman is unhappy. The dog in itself is happy that it wants to go to this thing, but if it would just. ease up and eventually and to be honest, this is where the so called defeatism comes in for many people. If it would accept its limited situation as that, which is a dogger with this owner, the owner will eventually let it off the lead.
And it has this free roam around now within that scenario, it seems like I'm trying to defend a master slave thing, which is absolutely not what I'm trying to defend. The point that I would have is it's about additional suffering on top of the situation that you have politics and political action aside after the fact, one situation is the situation that they have.
There is absolutely no argument otherwise around this. Your situation is the situation that you have. It cannot be otherwise. Any amount of looking backwards and saying, If I'd done X or If I'd done Y, well, if you'd done X or if you'd done Y, then you'd be in a different situation, but you're not in a different situation.
Therefore, why look back and suffer and look upon those things? Same as looking forward, you deal with the problem at hand. And if you want to do like political solutions where you think everything will be better, you Do them, but you still have the situation at hand. And so the dog has a situation that it's constantly pushing against that isn't changing its situation.
It's not going to get to the flower any quicker. It's not going to you know be able to smell the lamppost any quicker. It's just going to cause more suffering on its neck. At the same time, one can extend the metaphor to the human being in that situation regarding the dog is appetites and a further suffering of being pulled by something.
There was a lot in it. At the time it was really about power and actually seeing power. That was what I saw at the time. Who's walking who, I mean, Being able to step back and say, well, it may very well be that the human has all this lovely clothing and armor and awards and titles, but this dog that just wants to go smell a lamp post or whatever is yanking it along.
And that's where the power resides. Internalize it. And, you might find what You know, what the dog is in you, you may be very controlled most of the time, but then all of a sudden an iced bun appears in front of you at a checkout and you, without thinking, buy it or something along these lines, now.
Leafbox:It's funny maybe going back to your collection of stories. Do you see in the Cruise, for instance, who's walking who? I mean, those people are just, I don't want to ruin the story for people, but whatever, if you have any comments on that or it's interesting because you keep saying about power, it's almost like in your Exiting Modernity, you have a Marxist lens at analyzing these problems.
And then as you evolve, you start having this spiritual psychoanalytic framework for analyzing a larger envelope.
James: I've, I will say that I've never been a Marxist.
Leafbox: No, for sure. But there's still a power relational, you even say in your book, I'm not a Marxist, but there's still this there's this textual splitting people and power dynamics.
I think more of the Buddhist perspective is that I guess you have to accept the guardrails of where you are in life and be present right and try to
James: Well, that's pretty much where that's where I'm at the moment. I don't know how much of that was an Exiting Modernity. I mean, Exiting Modernity was about a very specific form of existence.
I mean, it's in a way it's dealing with the great irony of our day. That is, I've already mentioned it, but it's the great irony and the great, I think from so many people, the great confusion is that every single second for modernized Westerners, we are confronted with what is basically the material peak of human comfort. The, I can't remember who originally said this, but I do agree that it might've been Greer, it might've been Yarvin that your average it was definitely an American cause it was garbageman. Your average garbage man has luxuries on par with the princes of old.
The point being that, the lives that we are living historically speaking are of untold luxury and also of an unfathomable amount of free time. And people will go, Whoa, what do you mean about free time? I'm always busy. Well, to for the, from the majority of people two days off a week, that's 34 percent of the year.
Then you add in your, the average amount of holidays, which is about 20 days and in some bank holidays. And then maybe a couple of other days here or there you're talking about 40 percent of the year is already free. And then if, if you get your diet and your health, right. And you can sleep.
Eight hours a day and keep your energy up and your commute isn't too long. You have let's say, let's be on the conservative side six hours free for yourself every night, which is let's say, what a quarter of the day. So every four days you've got a full day there. So let's say, if you wanna, I'll be fairly conservative, let's just say you're 40 percent of, Your time is free to do exactly, completely what you want.
I mean, how much more do you want? And yet that plus the abundance of material comfort everyone is. Lost, unhappy disconnected. I don't mean to one another disconnected from like being grounded. No one is really here. And it's, this is actually, I think it's coming to a head because I've started one, one, one way to notice peaks is when there are popular articles or let's say forum posts or things like this that are just beginning to state the obvious because it has got to such a point that they have to. And I'm beginning to see in certain places, people saying things like, has anyone noticed how rude and impatient and selfish everyone is becoming.
How has anyone noticing how no one has an understanding of personal space anymore or people's driving is getting erratic? So I think we're moving somewhere to this point of a collective breakdown and COVID was a great catalyst for this. It, we're beginning to really see the effects of that.
A lot of latent frustration in masses and masses of people bubbled up to the surface of that period in time, but wasn't put anywhere, the curtain was pulled back and they saw that they're very unhappy and disappointed with the lot they've got in life. But at that time, what most people wanted was a return to comfort because things run so uncertain and we love stability more than anything.
And but the problem there being is that the curtain was pulled back. Here's your stability again, you're back to your nine to five. But everyone had the glimpse of Hell are we doing? So it's yeah it's a tough situation.
Leafbox: It's funny, what you're saying gets me to re, you're Sleeping Thomas.
Maybe you can summarize that story for listeners, but I see him, the first time I read it was so dark and so depressing, but now I'm well, maybe he's the Buddha in this, in your book, because he's the one just, I guess he's escapist, but I don't know. Maybe he's, or the guy's waiting in the car.
I forget the name of the title or maybe the boy in Wet Sock, they're looking for that other side. Well, maybe we can talk about all those three or where you think, where people are trying to look for.
James: yeah, I could sum those three stories up. So the first story you mentioned there, Sleeping Thomas is about a man who he is completely checked out of life.
But he feels it would be wrong to commit suicide. Not really for any moral reasons, but he feels that death is death and that will come when it's, when it should come. That's not his place, but he doesn't want to exist. So he is sculpted his life to be such that he can sleep as much as possible, which for him is to be not existing as much as possible.
So that's Sleeping Thomas. And then Wet Sock is about a young man who. It's clearly not that popular at school and might even be a bit weird or whatever. But he on in the field one day at school, he. happens to find in the bottom of his foot because he gets a wet sock. So he takes the sock off and finds that there's a void in the bottom of his foot, like just a, an abyss. a hole that is just going into an abyss. And instead of having a sort of Lovecraftian fear, he has a great enjoyment of it. He loves the freedom that comes with that. And I won't spoil the end of that story. And then the other story is a tiny bit different in a way called, yeah, it's okay, I'll wait in the car, which is a sentence I remember stating hundreds and hundreds of times from when I was young, which is very distinct era in a way of human history.
In that, one, the world was safe enough that you could wait in the car. So, and two, but equally it was the era where, it was just past the era where I don't know, younger and younger children would be left at home. So you are one, one experience of the last, let's say 60 years that in a way is now over.
It's this experience of just waiting in the car or following your, being in the car with your parents all day and to be honest, being extremely bored because they're doing something that just is of no interest to you or waiting like outside a changing room in a clothing store, whether the only seat in the clothing store is, and the reason I say this is over is because as I generally understand it, there's always something to do now and speaking of phones or tablets or games or whatever it might be, but I, I have so many memories of Being young and just saying, yeah, I'll wait in the car and being at a young age where time works differently, Bergsonian, where actually an hour when you're about seven and you're, or 30 minutes, even when you're, I don't know, whatever age, I'm terrible with ages, but 30 minutes when you're very young and you're just in the back of the car with nothing to do. I mean, that's probably three hours now. And it was about, the story is about that experience and thinking back, I mean, that may very well be a formative experience for me waiting around the back of a car, just because there was a distinct boredom of it, of having truly nothing to do.
Leafbox: Yeah, but I just see the boy who goes and, he's looking, he's so curious about the void. The void being the time gap. I mean, it's what you're selling now in your book, be present and then you'll find not happiness, but I guess contentment.
James: Yeah.
Leafbox: Talking about the esoteric maybe we can, you've done a lot of research on Nick Land and all the cyberneticists.
Maybe for people who don't know what we're talking about. I wanted to talk about hyperstition and what you think about that in terms of writing and creating a world. And are you, there's an occult aspect to writing and spell making and I'm curious.
James: Hyperstition is this. is a great curse of knowledge once you begin to see it.
Hyperstition it's riffing off the word superstition which in a way, I mean, I don't actually know the full definition of superstition, but I, if someone is superstitious, there is something that is not present, presently real. That if you don't undertake a sort of real act, then this thing can manifest as a reality.
If you accidentally drop the mirror, which is very real, then this bad luck will infect your life, which is unreal. And there's a connection between the two because hyperstition is about fictions. So I know something like Star Trek, something like, I don't know, whatever it might be, but a fictitious story, fictitious idea.
becoming fact. And the clearest case would be something like a smart, a video smartphone from Star Trek or something, the process under which fictions become fact. But in the occult sense, there's a I think this is more intriguing both in the way that the fictions do become fact. 'cause they don't become facts, exactly this sort of form of manifestation. But they also abide by scapegoat dynamics and mimetics. And so you begin to see this in politics that just one little article here and then it moves to somewhere else and then it becomes popular and then eventually what it manifests into the world some way.
And the reason I think this is a curse is because when you begin to see it, you, people will write stories and write ideas and come up with theories that you think you, no one is taking responsibility that these fictions that are being put into the world that ultimately may very well become. In fact, I mean, let's think of the, another very clear one is you can find the initial tweet for this, which is Donald Trump, but what is it back in, I can't remember the year, but him, someone replying like to him half jokingly, well, you should run for president.
And he said, I can't remember what he originally said, but you know, that's all that was needed in a way was this little seed of something somewhere and it rolls and becomes
Leafbox: So going back to your fiction, do you see that process cognitively? Or are you, I think in another interview, you just said you'd have this exorcism of where the writing comes from, right?
James: Yeah, I don't, yeah I don't really think that my ideas are my words at all. I don't know where the words or the ideas or the characters come from, they just do.
I don't think you can really sit down and consciously create one. If I mean, my characters are usually very sparse on description. That's just. my own thing. It doesn't interest me. But where, where do words come from? It sounds like a very pretentious thing to say, but where do they come from?
A lot of people and a lot of great writers will say that the job of the writer is to not get in the way. And so the ideas are somewhere and they arise and then they they form and you're there to relay them. And in terms of what writer's block is I think you're just in the way of yourself.
You're holding onto some notion that you should be consciously in charge. Writers, blockers, and images like some, someone huddled over a blank piece of paper trying to force something out. It's like, well, yeah, because you can't force something out. I mean, what is a human going to consciously create?
These ideas are somewhere and they filter through us and they appear and that's, yeah, part of what creativity is.
Leafbox: Yeah, which again, does sound repetitive, it just keeps coming back to your, your offering of a solution to just be present, right? And let…
Leafbox: Just surf the wave, right?
James: There is so much to be said for the simplicity of a lot of teaching that will get walked out. I mean, I, turned my nose up at it for a long time because complexity and misery seem like more sincere, as if the answer could never be anything so simple. And ultimately nothing else exists other than the present.
And, someone like, someone I'm really into at the moment is a Vedanta, an Advaita Vedanta teacher called Ramesh Balsakar. And even he would go so far as to say, like, well, as soon as you say the present is gone. So what you're on about is presence, which is the only thing that remains and anything else.
I mean, the past. I mean, it is, presence is the one real truth. We can all say whatever it means to gesture or say, or state this. The one truth is that each individual can say, I am, I exist. And that in itself is presence. And outside of that, we haven't got too much. The past certainly doesn't exist.
The future certainly doesn't exist. And to be present is. really not to suffer because suffering is in one direction. Suffering is, Oh my God, I regret doing that. I really shouldn't have done that. Shame, guilt, whatever it might be from the past, which is an emotional reaction to something that doesn't exist anymore.
And another one is worry and anxiety and fear of something in the future, which isn't here yet. And. Of course, people who've been writing tombs and tombs of philosophy will turn their noses up at this, but eventually, I mean, this is why that whole idea of you haven't suffered enough is an extremely important idea, because you will turn your nose up at it until you just get to this point of Submission, and I don't mean submission in a groveling way.
I mean, acceptance openness, allowing but until that point, I don't I truly do believe if you haven't suffered enough, you just can't get there, but you just, yeah. And modern people do not want to suffer at all.
Leafbox: Lot to unpack. Are you engaging in any type of Vipassana? You mentioned, I never can pronounce that practice, but they do a lot of mindfulness. Vedanta. Yeah, Vedanta philosophy, which is basically Vipassana also. Have you done any retreats or any deep meditative trainings?
James: I haven't done any retreats. I am meditating.
Yeah. I said, but I've always had some practice of stillness or something that grounds. So I don't, it's not, but yeah, I am. There you go. That's the answer. It's yeah, I am a current.
Leafbox: Well, because I want to go back to your book and connect it to your concept of nothingness. A lot of your stories have to do with this void or the nothing, and you critique modernity of being, there's nothing, you keep saying that word, right.
As you keep doing meditation. You start finding out that the nothing is actually everything. So I'm curious if you have that paradox in your stories also, how you see that as your philosophy starts developing
James: Well, these stories are interesting in that sense that, and I didn't, I don't think I, No, I didn't intend this, but different people have read it in different ways, and it's actually quite binary how they've read it.
Some people have read certain stories cathartically in that the seeing of the nothingness was a release, and others have seen it that the seeing of the nothingness is, see, it is all just nothing, and life sucks, right? And so, yeah, I mean, what comment could I possibly make on nothingness?
Leafbox: Well, I guess going back to your, maybe we can go back to the real world back to your writing how do you channel, how do you get into that esoteric state where you can just let. unblock what's through coming through you. Do you have tools or do you meditate?
James: No, I don't. I don't do. I don't know. I don't do anything.
I don't do anything special. Sometimes just segment the stories into bits that is still, it's still tough to write. And I'll segment the stories into, scenes and stuff, but I don't meditate or don't do anything. Special like that, or have any rituals. I sit down and get the words out that I can get out at that point.
On one day might be a hundred words, on another day might be two thousand, and then I leave it. And I don't put too much pressure on myself to to write at a certain pace anymore. Because I just don't think you, that's yeah I just, I don't think that's how it works. I mean, it might be that someone like Stephen King could do it. I can't.
Leafbox: James, maybe we can jump to your new book. You're writing, I think a new book, right? About it's going to be released. Maybe tell me about your upcoming novel and then your upcoming yeah, I'm curious about where you're at spiritually. I don't know. I don't know, like going back to the spiritual thing, but I really feel like your first, there's an evolution.
It's like you were a materialist and now you're becoming, you're like into the Woo. So I, yeah, I don't know if that makes sense. It's something just, The ethereal liminal.
Leafbox: And even these short stories, you're like, you're like, listen, look at your life. You're, you're making these characters suffer and be tormented.
James: I'm not making 'em suffer.
I can't, you can't write them any other way. It's like, to go back to another example, I can't think of a perfect example, but if suddenly Gandalf did something very cruel to a young Hobbit. You just can't do it. That's not him. And so these characters, I've read these modern characters and it's like, man, are are you really going to. There was stories that I wanted to see resolved and they weren't resolved because it's just not a possibility within those worlds.
Spiritual stuff, like where I'm at spiritually, I mean, some people probably wouldn't want to point blank ask, like, am I still Catholic? The answer to that is a, a resounding no, but not in the sense of resounding in the way of like against, it's just resounding in, in the sense of like, I can't say I am in any sense that is specifically Catholic.
That, there are very specific things in relation to dogma that would just make it impossible for me to be one. That's a whole other discussion. So where I've moved, where am I spiritually now? I mean, spiritually I'm, I am just It's a, yeah, it's a strange, it's a strange mixture of a lot of things and I'm trying not to tie myself too forcefully to anything but presence and if you want to call it God or the absolute or whatever it might be, but the will that which is could only ever be that which is and could never be any other way for the very fact that it is, is an extremely freeing idea. Extremely freeing. So, and even if you're completely secular and a materialist, as far as I'm concerned, with up to date material science on free will and decision, they should hold the exact same position. Yeah,
Leafbox: Maybe expand that for on that for listeners.
Just why do you think people who are not atheists
James: Well, as far as, as far as I'm aware with regards to the latest science regarding Let's say what is ultimately this discussion is one of free will, decision. So when you get down to the beyond molecular level, that when someone raises their arm, something has happened before the decision and action to raise the arm.
So on a biological level, you have that, but also on a biological level. social, genetic whatever, ever other level you want to say the cogs are already turning. And so where you are or place in life, your, the event, the scene, the position right now is, as per the fact that it is, Could never have been anything else.
And if you want to call that the will of God, you want to call that the culmination of various free choices or a culmination of cogs that were already set in place, it changes nothing about the fact what is right now cannot be otherwise because of the fact that it is. And religiously and spiritually for anyone who's abides by God or maybe a cosmic law.
Even someone like, like Buddhists or Christians with quite literally God, that is omnipotent Buddhists with karma and the paying of debts in relation to a cosmic law, this has to be paid. If you push a ball up the hill, either the energy has to remain there to hold it there, or eventually the energy goes away and the ball has to come back down.
What karma is ultimately what goes up must come down. come down all needs to be paid for. And so all of that is in motion. And so for each of these, it all ends up in the same place, which is exactly completely where you are right now. And no amount of waxing lyrical around that, in a ton of unfalsifiable theories, will change the fact that what is.
And I personally find that extremely freeing and joyous because you only have presence. You only have the present moment and anything else is akin to masturbation, is akin to entertainment because you just can't, you can't deal with the simplicity of presence.
Leafbox: Moving up a layer to back to hyperstition and Egregor and all those things.
I feel like a lot of, I wouldn't. I don't know if you, you're not on the right or left, you're beyond that dynamic, but there's a lot of people moving into a kind of a spiritual woo aspect, and then there's the other side, which is the transhumanist, really pushing down on the other end of things.
So I'm just curious if you have any thoughts on this kind of, in one end, you're people who are really rejecting the order. And then you're accepting the order, right? There's these two, there's this mirror image, right? I'm curious if you ever think about, I don't know if you want to use the psychological operations, but how people are being geared or where are these energies coming from?
Where is this division coming from? I mean, a lot of the world is moving more into a spiritual aspect than the other half is. Or maybe they're going to go touch at the horseshoe theory. I mean, the transhumanists, I guess, are trying to create their own God, right? So where do you see these energies coming or where they're coming from or where they're going? You yourself have become more aware of the concept of God or concept of consciousness or concept of the Is or all this. On the other hand, the general society and modernity is erasing all that.
There's a feeling, there's this void, there's this emptiness, there's, you're filling it with, I mean,
James: do you mean, did you mean disenchantment? I think disenchantment is a load of rubbish. I mean, I think it's, in a way, it's been disproven.
It's, I'm trying to think of the term for this at the moment. But okay, let me give you an example of, so at the moment, there probably is a name for this. So, and it very likely isn't something that I've come up, but let's call it, The false true myth for now, or just the myth 2, or the T myth, there you go, do that, false true myth, the T myth.
And so, with the myth of, let's take the myth of Narcissus, and this is an example a friend of mine told me about, so I'm indebted to him. Take the myth of Narcissus. The common understanding of the myth of Narcissus is that they have looked into their reflection and fallen in love with themselves, yes?
But, when you read that text, and this is pointed out by Marshall McLuhan, one key point of the myth, which is just never, ever articulated in scholarship, is that narcissists doesn't know they've fallen in love with themselves. They don't know who that is, but they have fallen in love with themselves.
And so, neither of those positions, they're two separate myths now. Because on one hand you have the T myth, which is, we have this myth, which is actually a false reading of this myth, but it's become its own myth, of narcissis falls in love with themselves, and they know it's themselves, and the other one is the true one, the same applies to, a pet love of mine, which is the Titanic, and the idea of, there should have been more lifeboats, but actually the truth of the matter is, you read about it, and they could have had a thousand lifeboats, it wouldn't have mattered, because no one wanted to be on them, so, There's always this thing of, well, so to bring this back to disenchantment, my point would be disenchantment as a thing in society isn't true.
You can read Jason, Joseph and Storm as of the myth of disenchantment as a key thing of this. People are just as enchanted and have these strange ideas and what might be called superstitions and beliefs. People believe in gods, people believe whatever it might be. You can look at any of the statistics for belief in ghosts and the paranormal.
Oh, we're disenchanted, but some of the most popular media is ghosts and paranormal, et cetera, et cetera. So on the one hand, the supposed myth of disenchantment is false. I would argue, however, everyone, and so many scholars and it's publicly accepted, and this would be like the team myth that we constantly say, well, in a secular secular society, in our atheistic secular society.
So the T myth is the one that's accepted even though it's false. And both of those, I think, have to be taken by at face value. Because one is completely implanted in the culture. Like, we all apparently accept that we live in a secular society, even though actually we don't. And the same applies for disenchantment.
So there's like two discussions there of what are we actually disenchanted, which I would say no, but also what does our acceptance of the false T myth that we're all disenchanted. mean, and I would say that means a sort of panic in itself and not so much the cynical. Oh, we've moved on. It's a rushed sort of lunge for security that, that once again, the word modern, we're the best, but we're not.
And we haven't moved on at all, really. Yeah. Does that make sense?
Leafbox: It does. It does. A hundred percent. Yeah. So I'm curious, where do you think that push for the secularity is coming from? Because you're arguing that we're not secular.
James: I don't think there's explicit agencies. When people ask this, it'd be lovely to be able to give a neat answer and say, well, I met I met an egregore and he said that it's coming from here.
I think it's the same as the question of why do, unfortunately it's a very boring answer and very banal. Why do certain philosophers get popular. Well, in one sense it's because their work's important, but another huge element is fashion and being in the right place for the right time. And as we've seen with hyperstition, it's like a snowball.
You start to roll it, well, within the confines of Money and interest and popularity and a whole host of other very human pastimes being, being in is a big one. Being part of a tribe fashion is a huge element of where forces are coming from because no one likes to be alienated. No one likes to feel left out.
And also, there's the other sort of monetary reasons and financial reasons and social reasons, it's fashion. The forces culminate and it's like any law, I mean, it's like any sort of cosmic law you could say is that if you roll a snowboard down a hill, it's, it has to get bigger, but also it has to at some point crash and melt.
And we just happened to be in the time when that particular snowball was rolling and is now big and anyone with a working pair of eyeballs can see that the pendulum of the, of right wing politics is about to once again, start swinging. We're just. The pendulum is just about teetering on the peak of the end of I guess, you can disagree on the terms, but leftist neoliberalism.
And unless some very keen eyed and acutely aware politicians are happy to embrace collateral damage during their term, which they won't be because everybody wants power, then the the swing right would will be brutal. And I would say that this point, that's pretty, that's a foregone conclusion, not for any political agency aims.
Once again, because of basic laws of things, if you throw a ball at a vase and the weight and distribution of the weight is right, then the vase has to fall over and break. Yeah, if you drop an egg from a certain height to the floor, it has to break. If you swing a pendulum a certain amount to the left, it has to break.
Swing rightward. And there's nothing to, to, to change that.
Leafbox: Yeah, it's interesting. I'm bored by politics, so I don't want to go there.
James: Oh, great.
Leafbox: Yeah. So I think I've been reading James Horsley. I think yeah, he's pretty interesting in trying to understand that left and right it's all, like you said, it's a swing back and forth and it's an interesting theatrical.
James: It's entertainment. It's entertainment. Well, Jack O'Loughlin would say that, Greer says our biggest myth is the myth of progress, but Jack O'Loughlin in The Political Illusion would say that our biggest myth is the myth of politics, because since like maybe post, let's say post about 1910 very emphatically every single decision in society doesn't have any other apparatus as to inform its decision other than politics.
Everything is a political decision. Nothing is a moral decision, or a social decision, or a communal decision, or an artistic decision etc. Everything comes back to, it's a political thing. And that's the myth, that there is somehow some control there.
Leafbox: I want to reground ourselves back to your world see you as the God maker of your first person video game of creating this, character players. I mean, do you have, do you feel a responsibility at all? Like in what you're doing? Spellmaking for them or you just still it is coming through you.
James: Do I feel a responsibility for my characters?
Leafbox: Yeah, or how that's gonna be interpreted or how your text is gonna how do you feel if your text becomes a hyperstition and a giant? Evolves into some philosophy or whatnot. How do you know if it I don't know where it could go But if you Do you have a thought of where these stories could go or what?
James: You mean if some people read it and they began a cult of misery around it?
Leafbox: Or maybe the other way around. Sleeping Thomas finally quits his job, right? And moves to Thailand. I don't know.
James: Well, I've been, I've been in the position actually from the early days from the Meta Nomad blog that had a few people then email me to say that some of the essays that I'd written meant that they'd quit their jobs.
And made, big, I would say big decisions. And some of these were young men, 18, 19, making big decisions of like, yeah, I've dropped out of uni and I'm training to be a carpenter. And actually I'll be honest, I didn't feel that much responsibility. People can make decisions. And they are, if they're capable enough to critically think on what I've written and then go, actually, yeah, I am going to make this big hefty decision.
Well, good. I mean, it seems to me that I know, I don't think this is what you're saying at all, by the way, but anyone who might be going, Oh, that sounds a bit risky or whatever. Well, that seems to be abiding by a certain logic of. Why don't you just want to be comfy, comfortable and cozy? I mean, you quit your job, but you may make a big life decision.
Do what, you do what it means to be true when you say, am I being, a good question to repeatedly ask yourself maybe once a month, am I being true to myself? Am I really being true? And it takes courage and pain to be true. And so I would say, do I feel responsibility? No. Am I glad they did it? Yeah.
Good. People should be more spontaneous and drastic. Yeah, I mean, people get to the end of their days and they, I mean, this is the thing, right? I mean, you commonly hear that most people on their deathbed say, I really wish I'd spent just a couple more years in the office.
That would have really done it for me. So no, not, I don't care.
Leafbox: No, I think that's what you're selling. So you want these case studies.
James: I don't want them, no, I don't want them to do anything. I don't I write them and I make a , Exiting Modernity, Okay, you can maybe say that I, What did I want there?
I wanted to show people. I wanted to just say, look, is this you? If it is, here's a few things that helped me because I know what it's like to be in that situation of what what I love from the process church of the final judgment, they call the gray forces. And I just love that term, not keen on much of their stuff, but they say the gray forces of the world, just this this gray quagmire swamp. of existence. Is that what you want? The, the risk of jumping out of that is quite a lot of things, but what's really what's worse? Do you really want to stay in that for your whole life?
Leafbox: No, I think it's a positive message. So James, how do you, maybe my last two questions are how do you maintain true to yourself?
And what are you battling? Or, that's always in my own writing, it's very hard to be true. You're always like either a self censorship or a self denial or, so I'm just curious how you work through that.
James: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Well, once again, that's a case of not getting in the way of yourself.
So some people haven't liked the stories, they don't like the way I write and, but I've been true to myself. I've been, I've got out of my own way. I've got out of my own way as much as I possibly could, to allow this to flow through. How to stay true. I mean, it's in the name, you have to be honest and that is a long process.
That's not a case of some, I think this happens to some people, but this can actually mean they end up doing some damage because they end up being radically honest, which actually becomes dishonest. I could probably try to explain what I mean by that, but honesty is a slow process of the more you are honest about things, the more you understand what it is to truly be honest and to be honest in the moment, and also to accept the emotional reactions that will come from being honest.
What I mean about the radical honest thing, cause I'm not actually not keen on that because radical honesty, the classic almost seems silly question, but I think it's actually the key question of where honesty matters is, your one's girlfriend or I don't know, their lovely aunt that they love says, does this dress make me look fat, right?
That's like, that's a place of what honesty really is at that point. And what you do at that moment, the radically, radical honest would be like, yeah, it does make you look fat. And by the way, that's just me being honest and that you can become very prideful about your honesty, which in itself is dishonesty.
So there's a difficult tightrope to be true to yourself. I think when people, if people sit down and really ask themselves that question of, am I being true to themselves, the places where they're not being true will, will arise quite quickly. Okay. And there'll be places of discomfort, things they don't want to deal with.
Because either, because there might be some repercussions and there might be some responsibilities. It might just be generally uncomfortable. But that's what it is to be true. I mean, like I said, at the beginning of the discussion, everyone, I think wants to be happy. Majority of people are doing the same thing and they're not happy.
And what the majority of people are doing is avoiding discomfort and marching towards comfort. So I would say there's something in that of, if you want to learn to be true and you want to learn to delve into yourself, the starting places are the places that when you think about them, you go, Oh, actually, I need to go do the washing up now, or, but it takes a lot to notice yourself doing that, because there's very crafty ways of that happening.
And I think this is, it actually applies for misery in that misery. One of the things I said in the suffering essay is think about. Think about the most entertaining TV series you've ever watched or the most entertaining video game you've ever played. Maybe it entertained you for a week, for a month, maybe before you went, I want to go do something else.
Now think about the worry or the despair that lasted the longest or doesn't even come close. You can worry about something for days and days on end for a few years. There's people who worry about things that happened years ago, and at that point you realize it's entertainment. And the key to starting to realize, to get out of that cult of suffering.
is to notice when those thoughts of despair and melancholy and anxiety and worry arise, where were you? What like, and not physically, like, what mind space were you taking up? What were you trying to engage in or disengage in? Were you just sat on your own and you had to just be for a while? Because instead of pulling your phone out, you metaphorically all the misery phone out in your mind because guess what it's very engaging to sit there and look out of the window and the sky is beautiful and the birds just flow past and you went yeah well actually Schopenhauer says in one of his books yeah you just pulled that out why did you do that because you can't deal with being and i did and i was like because that all sounds very Wrapped up and semi arrogant when I say it like that.
I made that mistake for 15, even more, maybe actually, I would say seven, I'm 30 now and for 17, roughly 17 years of my life I engaged in rampant and ceaseless masturbatory misery, because I conflated it with wisdom and to the first step was recognizing at no point is there ever going to be enough misery that you go, you know what, I'm done with that.
So the question is, have you suffered enough? And that question really is, at what point is this suffering going to be enough for you to just get on with your life? And it isn't, it's never going to be enough. So give it up. Because it's a waste of time, and you're just entertaining yourself, and it's on par with masturbation.
Leafbox: So, just to come to the exact moment, when did you have that realization, when did you get that enlightenment? I'm just so people can try to learn from it.
James: I'm enlightened, I'm enlightened.
Leafbox: No, I know, but when did you start to notice that the, it's just an art, it's a choice? Even though there's no free will.
Well, I know, yeah,
James: I can tell the story. Are you okay for time? You don't want to yeah.
Leafbox: No, I'm fine. Yeah okay. I think this is important to figure out when.
James: No, I can pinpoint. I can't pinpoint the date because I didn't, I could probably find it. But no, so I many people will know that I interviewed Darren Allen, who's he's a great guy.
Comments online will call Darren Allen grouchy and a grumble and many other things, which are quite funny. Because I'd see them now really as reflections of, there's nothing that triggers people more than just saying, yeah, I'm actually, I'm happy and a smile, if people want a little, just before I give the story about the suffering, if people want a little exercise to do, cause I love exercises, I think they're more important than theory, next time you go out even if it's just a shop for five minutes, smile, and I don't mean beaming, I don't mean beaming, just a small smile and notice people's reactions.
There you go. That's your exercise. But the suffering thing. So I was chatting to Darren Allen and Darren Allen has a thing about natural real conversations, which are impossible in a podcast format like this, because you're aware that you're recording it and et cetera, et cetera.
So we got about four minutes, 40 minutes in, and he said, look, this isn't really working. So we stopped but I didn't stop recording and that's a key thing because I thought actually if I keep recording now we're having a conversation just me and Darren Allen naturally. So maybe that will be the, that'll be like the natural conversation that he wants.
But he didn't like my book by the way he thinks that basically it's I, well I don't want to put words in his mouth but one the styles, It's not his style which is, there's no accounting for taste. And I don't mean that bitterly like there is, some people like mint ice cream, some people like vanilla, whatever.
But he didn't like the misery part of it. And and the misery, the miserable nature of the whole book, which I think. He saw as a defense of that world of trying to
Leafbox: James, sorry to interrupt, but for people who don't know who Darren Allen is he a writer or philosopher?
James: He's a writer. And I think he's a self titled as a radical philosopher. You can go to expressiveegg. com. Org. com expressive egg. And that's his site. And he's actually just released a book called the Fire Sermon, which I reviewed. I would recommend getting that. It's a really good starting place for his work in a way.
But he didn't really like the book because the fence of that miserable world, which he just doesn't want because for whatever reasons, he And so, and there's a deeper conversation there with regard to his own work. So, my defense was, well, people suffer.
That's a very real thing. And I don't, at the time, this is what I said. I said, I don't experience the world as he kind of desire, wants people to write about it. And he then half yelled at me, he said, yeah, because you've got nothing to say. And then we started talking about. Like suffering and what it is to suffer and he then properly yelled he said because you haven't suffered enough Right.
And he properly yelled that at me. And what did I do? I immediately was like, you don't know me, you don't know, you don't know, so immediately my first reaction when someone yelled at me in a loving way, I will say, I think it's one of the most important things that's ever happened in my life.
And I sincerely mean that my first reaction was to then immediately, I mean, I'll yell it at your, I'll say to all your listeners, none of you have suffered enough. And if like me, maybe you're, maybe not, maybe you're more, you probably are more enlightened than me. But my first reaction was immediately to cling to my suffering was to go, you don't know me.
You don't know what I've been through. If I could tell you things that would make your ears cut, et cetera, et cetera, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all this guff. And so. That happened, it didn't really dawn on me at the moment, but something then lingered in like my gut and I thought, I just felt a bit uncomfortable.
But we actually ended the conversation amicably and and then it just ended the conversation. But then a couple of days went by and I still felt a bit unsettled about the whole thing. So I went back to the conversation and this is why I say I mentioned about the fact that I kept recording and it's really lucky for me that I did in a way.
And I didn't, I skipped like past the first bit and I listened. to me and Darren Allen having this final conversation about suffering. And what was interesting was, after a couple of days passed, I listened to this, and when he shouted, you haven't suffered enough, that was completely like it was. But when I started talking in defense, I was like, who's that wretched little pathetic man?
Who's that little suffering little worm who's clawing to misery? And basically after that, I went and I listened to the last three minutes when we chatted over and over again, about 10 times. And I basically then. was just waves of suffering falling away and waves of these justifications of all this masturbatory misery falling away.
And for the next two days, I was walking around cause I live in quite a rural area and I was walking around, I was stopping in front of flowers, like, Oh my God, this is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. And I mean, it's not as intense anymore, but. It was at the time, I suddenly was just like blown away by someone basically calling me out.
But it was only really, I think, because I could hear back my, my, that self, whoever that was, who'd constructed himself and watching them squirm as they were prodded by. They weren't prodded by, let's say a pointy stick. They're prodded by a beautiful flower. And if someone's reaction to a beautiful flower is to go, you don't know, you don't know what I've been through beautiful flower.
I mean, that's ridiculous, isn't it? So I got to hear that back and it was great. And I will say this was like well over a month ago now. And It isn't a case of someone would say how long will it last because that would be to say that I gained something that would be to say that Darren Allen gave me something whereas the reality is something was ripped away and you are you know, you have a deeper glimpse at just what is which is being beneath and So, Oh, how long will it last?
Well, if I make the choice to cover it up again with a bunch of old miserable dung, then I guess it will, but at this point, that's just not a thing that I see. So that's the story.
Leafbox: James. No, I think it's great. I mean, I'd just go back to your, that one, my first question is, have you told Darren this? And then two.
Yeah,
James: no, I told it. Oh, sorry. Yeah. No, I haven't. I haven't. I haven't.
Leafbox:Oh no, it's great that you told him and well, I want to know what his response was and then two, I just, I mean, it's like your, the title of your book there's a man crying in the street, you're that man crying in the street and then they just whipped you away and you're the boy in the the sock, right?
I don't want to psychoanalyze it, but you just needed someone to take you out of this world.
James: Well, yeah, I mean, then maybe. The man crying. So the man crying in the street is there on that. And I think, and there's a little girl, Jenny, who's clearly just enjoying life and she's just intrigued.
And I think there's a position. I mean, she's really there as the symbol of sort of childhood joy and stuff that maybe if she'd just gone up to him and given him some sweets, this man might have stop crying and sin there since. But as you say, maybe he did just need someone to go, or any of the adults in the story, just go up to him and say either like, are you all right?
Or like, dude. Come on, man. It's been
Leafbox: How long have you been crying for? Yeah. Yeah. What did Darren say when you told him like, well, you're just on mushrooms or something or what was his
James: no, not at all. He, I thanked him cause I, it's because that was my first overwhelming feeling was like, this is the most, one of the most important things to ever happen to me.
And I have to sincerely thank him. And so I thanked him. I sent him a picture of a flower, which I had down the road. I took a photo of a flower and I was like, I've got to send that to Darren and he actually pointed out that the flower I'd taken a picture of was actually technically a weed.
So the first like beautiful flower I saw was technically a weed. It's called like, I can't remember what the name of it is now, but it's a beautiful white, it looks like an orchid, but it's not an orchid. So I sent him a picture of that. And then we spoke again, like two more times and yeah.
Leafbox: But the fact that it's a weed is even better.
The fact that,
James: yeah, that's, you don't, yeah, no,
that's why I loved it so much. Cause he was like, you've sent me a photo of a weed. But I was like, it's the most beautiful weed. So yeah no. I thanked him. And I think it was very important for me to thank him. Yeah, but you know, he was like, he yeah, he was happy for me.
And then after that, like he was then, I then read a lot more Barry Long.
Leafbox: No, I think it's great. I'm happy I caught you in this transition moment, I guess. You're in the next stage of your Yeah. Yeah, there's like a happy I don't know if happiness or just acceptance of the dukkha, of the suffering.
It's all desire. So,
James: well, it's really, it's tough to talk about these things because on the one hand you begin to talk about, I talk, I've spoken about a lot of things with a lot of certainty that either, either is a bit more nuanced in reality or is experienced. And so it's like, how do I convey this with regard to like, acceptance of suffering.
I, I haven't accepted all suffering, but with acceptance of suffering, it's not suffering anymore, and it just. It just Is. So you have pain, you have suffering. Like I say in the essay again, what's worse, the actual dental checkup or the dentist's waiting room, right? Like one, the dentist's waiting room is suffering.
And the dental checkup is reality. That's pain. There is pain, but the suffering makes pain far, far worse. So once again, it's a case of what is, Oh, if I hadn't done this, if I hadn't done that, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The fact you're saying that means that you have. So why, why suffer? Why make yourself suffer like that?
What is, is?
Leafbox: No, I think it's a great. Yeah, I've been practicing Vipassana meditation for 20 years and it just feels like, it's resonating a lot with that type of philosophy, just accepting of the presence. Are you,
James: are you happy?
Leafbox: Oh, for sure but no, everyone's suffering all the time. Yeah, I mean, I would say
James: You're not happy?
Leafbox:Oh, no, I'm very happy and I think the biggest Okay. Yeah, the happiness I've ever got was having a daughter, but I was gonna Yeah. Yeah, once you, I don't know where you are in terms of your Relationship status, or if you ever want to have kids, but I think that might be, that's when you really start seeing everything in anew, which is really wild.
And it sounds so corny, but once you start, really, you're like, Oh man. Yeah. This is amazing. Like it's, again, it's like a second chance of childhood.
James: Yeah.
Leafbox:So hopefully, you'd have kids one day and then you'll see that again. There's a lot to look forward to, but it's also absolute suffering at the same time, because you're exhausted and you don't want to do things and there's guilt.
James: And, is that suffering though? Is that so? I do. I do. Do you really feel that's suffering?
Leafbox: No, not really. No. I actually feel that , so, yeah. Yeah. I think it makes everything more maybe it's a, I think you used the word well. No, I mean,
James: I, so I made the point, I just wanna actually emphasize this 'cause I made this point in the, one of the essays and it doesn't come across as well, and text. But my point that I made is like, if I, if you, if I said to you, if I was teleported to the unhappy, some unhappy moments in your life and you're there, you're really unhappy and I tapped you on the shoulder and I said, Hey are you unhappy right now? You'd be like, you would absolutely know. You'd be like, yeah, I am, I'm miserable right now.
But if I like was somehow there on the happiest moment of your life, which I assume is the birth of your daughter, and you're like holding your newborn daughter, and I came up behind you and tapped you on the shoulder and went, are you happy right now? It wouldn't make any sense, would it? Like it literally wouldn't make any sense for me to say that.. You would look at me and think. Well, yeah, but what does that even mean? So that for me is the point of the spectrum isn't the same thing. So that's what, like when you said about the suffering with your daughter, like that's packaged into a happiness that is not on the spectrum of unhappy and happy, which is a modern invention, that's the happiness, which is like, well, yeah, I'm happy but it's not pleasure, it's not hedonism.
It's not any of the other ones. It just is. Right? So in that suffering, that's what I mean by you say about with, you're being exhausted, you're not getting any sleep, you have to like take your daughter to school or whatever, all this supposed suffering, but that's packaged in like a being, a happiness that just is.
Does that make sense?
Leafbox: Correct. And then the bigger observation would be that regardless of what you have, you should, the happiness isn't the is, like the contentment, it's always perfect. That's the real next goal, but that's a hard one to get to.
James: If you can, if you are, if you can just be, well, there's a, no one can, there's nothing that no one can, any, there's nothing that anyone can give you and there's nothing that can ever be taken away from you because you are.
And that's the only truth.
Leafbox:Well, James, I think we can end it on that . I think we'll try out, that's a goal for everyone. Or two exercises. The first one just smile. Smile and just be,
James: there you go.
Leafbox:S mile and Thats your new philosophy book your your coffee table.
James: Smile and Be,
Leafbox: That's the title.
James: I might write that now I'll give it a while, but there you go. Hyperstition you planted the seed.
Leafbox: Yeah, I hope so. James, I want to end on the last question. You always ask you in your podcast, you always ask the Hermitix question I don't want to ask who, which three characters of your books. Do you want to sit with and sell your Smile and Be book?
Who do you want to save?
James: I wanna, no I do, I want to, I do want to meet Sleeping Thomas. He was the one I really wanted to meet. Cause I don't, I couldn't really figure out, I don't know, is he miserable or is he like, is he gonna be like a monk? Like you said. So Sleeping Thomas, definitely. I wanna meet the guy at the end, the funeral, there's a funeral, this guy having a haphazard internal monologue about trying to control what will be said at his funeral and just getting completely lost.
So he is one as well. And then
yeah, I don't there's none that I'd like oh, no, I'd like to meet the old eternal man from what's the seafoam? I can't remember the title of my own story. Oh, the color of seafoam. Yes. The color of seafoam, the old man in that, but I won't spoil the story for the eternal, eternally undying old man.
Leafbox: Wonderful. And then James just to end for logistics how can people find you? What's the best way to get ahold of your books and your other work?
They go to, so the podcast. If you type in Hermitix on Google, Hermit. H-E-R-M-I-T-I-X. That's the full name.
Hermit ix. They'll find the podcast. And then my blog where there's a link for everything is JDE meta.net. So it's J-D-E-M-E-T a.net.
And then where can people expect your new books coming soon?
James: Oh Yeah. So there's the one on a from Aeon books. Aeon, as in an Aeon of time, A E O N Spiritual Introduction to Christianity will be released, I believe in October.
Either October or November. But I will put links for that and do like a post about that on the blogs as well. So, yeah.
Leafbox: Great, and of course I'll link to all these, James, and give an intro. Great Smile and Be.
James: Smile and be. Yeah, man.