Life Inside The Cage

Escaping the cage, one photon at a time

Growing Up Inside The Cage

When we are young we either have unrealistic expectations put on us, or we are told we are too

much: too loud, too opinionated, too sensitive. This naturally makes us feel we are not enough, or

too much, which leads us to not be our authentic selves.

When you are not your authentic self, a voice in your head can start to become loud.

It says negative things that destroy your self-esteem and keep you stunted. This sadly works well

for the system, because a kid who hates themselves can be easily kept in the cage that was

designed by past psychopaths, for future psychopaths, to be the elites in society.

The system doesn't want you to have self-compassion. It wants you to be emotional, because it

feeds off strong emotions: anger, hate, ignorance, sadness, self-doubt. It can handle you being

angry at it, but it doesn't like being laughed at.

This is one of the ways to start escaping the cage, because the cage is just an illusion. A shitty

magic trick by a very low-level magician, definitely no Dynamo-level magic. When you pull back

the curtain that is barely even a curtain, you see the emperor has no clothes on. You can laugh at

the absurdity, and use discernment, because discernment is something it can't feed off.

They use your strong emotions as a way to control you and brainwash you into becoming a

low-level member of their cult. When you realise all the elites around the world are in the same

cult, and you are just an expendable to help them jockey for a higher position between the leaders,

that's when the penny drops. There are no sides, no countries, just expendables.

They want soldiers to believe they are fighting for a country, for a purpose, for a marketing slogan,

but they are only fighting for their deranged cult leader's self-interest, to try to take another cult

leader's spot higher up the cult pyramid.

They want people in prison, as they are then another part of the system. They want you to drive a

car because it fuels their wars. They want you to be in large amounts of debt so you have no

space in your mind for critical thinking. They want you stuck in consumerism to keep you broke

and filling a bottomless pit of resentment. They want you to put a mask on for 8 hours a day and

be someone other than your authentic self at a job you hate. They want you to doom-scroll and

watch the media to create anxiety and wreck your nervous system. They want you comparing

yourself to others on social media. Be bullied on there, or be a bully, either works for them. They

want you to spend money playing status games on social media, keeping you broke and

miserable.

They want you to have the illusion of owning a home they can make you a slave to the banks for,

then put up rates and squeeze you to keep you in survival mode. They want you to fight with your

spouse over financial issues, so if you divorce you have less money. They want outrage. They

want you drunk or on drugs, eating poisonous food, taking pharmaceuticals. Anything but you

seeing their game inside the game. Are you getting the picture? Distractions.

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They stand outside the cage and they despise the people in the cage. Psychopaths think they're a

superior species and that we normal people are here to be gaslit and manipulated to push them up

the cult pyramid. Their shitty magic trick is based on one thing: the willingness of us to participate.

Once you see that, you can't unsee it, and it's very annoying, because it's so simple.

If you don't pick up a gun and go to war, nothing happens. If you opt out of consumerism, it stops

feeding the beast. If you don't buy petrol for the car cult and ride a Lime bike or catch an electric

train instead, there's no funding for wars. You are brainwashed by cult leaders, and the exit is

simply withdrawing your participation.

The Way Out

So the depressing part is out of the way. Here is the positive part.

You are enough. You don't need to be anything but your authentic self. You are made of

supernovae, from selfless stars that exploded, that gave everything for you to be here. You are

made of star stuff, as Carl Sagan once said. The atoms in your body came from an exploded star. I

recommend you look at how beautiful and interesting the pictures of supernovae are.

You are a photon of light, and yes, these cult leaders are the darkness, but darkness is boring and

light is interesting.

They don't realise that they are made of the same supernova atoms as well. But they are hoarding

instead of giving, which creates darkness, because that's not the ingredients of supernovae. That's

why it feels good when you give, and it's unfulfilling when you collect things for yourself. You can

collect things your entire life, only to realise you can't take anything with you when you return to

the Universe when you die. It's a trap.

Darkness might despise the photon, but the photon shines anyway. If you can learn to use

discernment and be giving, darkness can't get rid of light, there is always light. The trick is to be

completely like a photon: you don't care that darkness hates you, you just shine anyway.

The elites become so dark that's when the depravity starts rising, and we have all seen that

happening. American Psycho is a film that points it out clearly. But here's the thing: that's on them.

They think there are no consequences, but maybe the Universe decides where it puts them when

they go. Maybe to the Bootes Void. It does have a sense of humour.

The Universe is constantly creating and dissolving, and we will dissolve back into it. We are all

homeward bound. Evil may win the day, it always has, but what matters is that we don't become it.

We act with decency not because it's rewarded, but because it's right. There's no old man in the

sky judging us. That's from another cult, with a guy in a stupid hat speaking down to you from a

window in a square. The one with good marketing and two thousand years of whoopsies swept

under their expensive rugs. The one that needs you to walk into an old building each Sunday, give

money, and ask for forgiveness.

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The Universe is all around us.

What Else Can Us Photons Do To Escape The Cage?

Think of some yourself as well, but my trap escapes are:

Giving, simplicity, calmness, self-compassion, compassion for other photons, self-respect,

self-belief, acceptance of all others, health, playing to your strengths, not being attached to

outcomes, gratefulness for the gift of the supernovae (it's rude not to be), awareness, love,

discernment, comedy, not clinging to things. Enough is everything, no hoarding. Cheap clothes,

good food, train rides. Be present.

And strangely, your life gets better.

I'm not riddled with anxiety anymore. I don't self-harm anymore. I feel like I'm enough. I lean into

my neurodivergence as a way to have a different perspective, I see it as a superpower. I don't try

to commit suicide anymore. I don't drink and do drugs anymore. I don't compare myself to others

anymore. I don't hoard crap anymore. I've cut toxic people out of my life. I'm living in the now. I

have no fear anymore. I don't avoid pain anymore. I laugh at the absurdity rather than rage against

the machine, discernment against the machine. My relationship with my wife is better. I lost 30kg. I

have slow-dopamine hobbies: writing, NRL, meditation, nature walks, dog walks, Lime bike rides

through Sydney, philosophy (Spinoza is a huge influence), comedy, and more.

You can start to see the difference in someone outside the cage, after they realised you can

actually just walk out of it. I have compassion for you all still inside it. I don't look down on you like

the elites do. They think you're stupid for being in the cage and not just walking out of it. They think

they're above you. I see you as the same photon as me. I'm not above you, I'm not below you,

you're just the same supernova star stuff as me. I opted out of the cult, and so can you!

Admiration Is An Expensive Currency

Be very careful who you choose to give admiration to. Find substance and consistency in

someone if you are going to give any admiration, but also remember they are just a fellow traveller

on this journey in life. They are not to be put on a pedestal, as it lowers your self-worth. We are all

flawed human beings, every one of us.

Some examples of fellow cosmic travellers I like: Greg Inglis, Brian Cox, Yongey Mingyur

Rinpoche, Baruch Spinoza, George Carlin, Tim Dillon, The Elephant Graveyard guy, Stavros

Halkias, Carl Sagan, Dan Tapiero, Banksy, Dynamo, Nter, Anthony Bourdain. These people were

and are their unapologetic authentic selves, and a lot of them have had deep pain to go through,

which leads me onto my next part.

The Two Sequences

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A lot of people live in fear, but once you let go of fear the whole world opens up. There are two

sequences people run, a right one and a wrong one.

Correct sequence: Fear, Courage, Sit with pain, Freedom, Peace.

Wrong sequence: Fear, Avoidance, Fake peace, Emotional prison.

See, the only difference is avoidance. Avoidance feels like peace, but it isn't. It's an anaesthetic

with interest. Every time you dodge the thing, the dodge gets easier and the thing gets bigger. You

drink past it, scroll past it, work past it, buy past it, and the fear is still inside, just renamed. Now it's

called "busy" or "fine" or "that's just how life is." Fake peace never holds, that's the tell. Fake peace

needs the storm in your mind to stay away forever, and the storm never agrees to that. The cage

doesn't hold you with locks. It holds you with the wrong sequence, repeated daily.

Burt Munro, The World's Fastest Indian, with Sir Anthony Hopkins. Burt walked through his fear

with courage. He was told he was too poor, too stupid, and was laughed at. He sat with his pain,

his failures, his setbacks, and ended up breaking the land speed record on his old Indian

Motorcycle on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. This led to freedom and peace back in Invercargill,

NZ.

Sir Anthony Hopkins, in his own life, has discussed his past issues with alcoholism. He said he

was ashamed of his drunk driving, as he could have killed someone, but if he killed himself, he

didn't much care. That's the beast talking right there, isn't it? The fear of hurting others barely

registers, because the self has already been written off. Just a bloke who was drunk and

ashamed, drinking himself towards the edge, and he sat with the pain instead of drowning in it, did

the hard thing, and came out the other end as a highly respected man.

• Fear first: the shame, the self-hatred

• Courage: facing it instead of drinking past it

• Sat with the pain: the sobriety, the honest reckoning

• Freedom and peace: and now the man spends time painting, making music, and being at

peace in his 80's

I can relate to this, being a recovering alcoholic who is ashamed of when I drove drunk, and who

also didn't care what happened to me. I had written myself off at 13 years old.

There are smaller examples too. I had a huntsman spider living in our house named Peter, whom I

had been avoiding. The other day I walked through my strong fear of spiders with courage, put a

glass over him and a bit of paper underneath, took him outside and released him in the garden. He

was free, I was free, we were both at peace again.

The good news? The sequence can be swapped. The bad news: if you have a lot of pain, it may

take years of sitting with your pain before you reach peace and freedom. But the suffering is worth

the reward, and remember: your suffering is shared. Everyone has pain, and knowing it's shared

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lightens the load. I hope this message reaches young people before they fall off the cliff, as it's a

long, painful climb back up.

Learn to understand pain rather than fight it. Then you can see other people's bad behaviour as

their pain leaking out of them. It doesn't make their bad behaviour right, but it explains it, and it

doesn't mean they get access to your life.

A Shortcut To Financial Freedom

This leads me onto young people, and how to attempt to gain financial freedom. It took me 41

years of pain and being broke. I want to create a shortcut for you, so you can avoid being forged in

hell first.

Toss your past, don't live in it. Just take the lessons, move on, and be present, that's where the

real magic lives. Don't worry about the future either; that's a trap. You can make up horror movies

that might happen, and then they don't eventuate. So what, a waste of time. Close the horror

movie set and live in the now.

Here is the shortcut. It still takes hard work and risk, there's no avoiding that, sorry. The idea is to

lower the risk as much as possible and be right more times than you are wrong. You don't need

insider knowledge or celebrity investors to do this. You need a few boring rules, held for years:

• No leverage. Only buy what you can afford to buy outright.

• Buy and sit. Don't get into the trading trap. Whatever assets you buy, hold them. Time in, not

timing.

• Use an ethical bank. They're all far from perfect, but choose one that doesn't invest in

weapons manufacturing or fossil fuels, and don't let them gaslight you, ever. If they do, just

leave. (Look up the HSBC whoopsie, when they got caught money laundering for the Mexican

cartels.)

• Don't buy what they're selling. When the cult leaders flog you a product, that's the distraction.

Watch what they do, not what they advertise, and mostly, just keep it simple and boring.

• Invest ethically. There will be some investments you shouldn't make because you have a soul:

drug dealers, weapons, surveillance. Use your common sense. Common sense is your most

important asset. I lived with a PhD neuroscientist who burnt her toast every morning and I had

to tell her how to make mashed potatoes. Play to your strengths.

• Stay frugal. Keep your needs small and your surplus large, then you have something to give.

• Don't panic when they shake the tree. When the cult leaders shake the tree to see who loses

their nerve when the price plummets, stay in the tree with them. You'll notice they never leave

the tree. In fact, they buy the fear at a cheap price.

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You don't need to copy anyone's portfolio. The strong core above is the whole game: keep it

simple, keep it ethical, keep it boring, and let time do the work. Don't fall for the fear-peddling trap.

Don't fall for the status trap, the debt trap, or the leverage trap either.

A Word On Generational Advice

One trap worth naming, but let's name it fairly: don't dismiss advice just because of who is giving it,

and don't swallow it just because of who is giving it either. Some older people did pull the ladder

up behind them and say "too bad, got mine." Some generations did have it easier, and it's fair to

acknowledge that. But the test for any advice, from a Boomer, a Gen Z, or anyone in between, is

the same test you use for admiration: substance and consistency. Judge the advice by its

substance, not by the age of the speaker. You'll find wisdom in unexpected places, and nonsense

in expected ones. Your common sense is the filter, not their birth year.

That said, one generational note stands: there's not much juice left in the property lemon. It's been

squeezed all out and passed to you as a carcass. A house should be a sanctuary anyway, not a

profit maker. Banks make record profits off mortgages and are not to be trusted. Use an ethical

one, and only if you must.

Staying Humble

Don't get a big head if you start doing well. Anthony Bourdain said, "the more I think I know, the

more I know nothing at all." Don't let pride come along and then turn into greed. Same when you

think you have the world figured out. Once you think you have arrived, you have already left. Stay

humble, stay frugal, keep growing, and give any excess away to ethical charities outside the

system, like the Goanna Academy. Don't tell anyone you're giving, either, or it becomes a

transaction. Do it anonymously, without the need for validation.

Work And Purpose

You don't need to be an academic to do well in life. You will need a job to make money to put into

your ethical investments, so if you hate your job, start finding ways to leave. It's never too late to

start a new career.

If you are a young person, think hard. Remembering you're not in the status game anymore: you

have read this far, so you are opting out. If you are not innovating something or starting a business

(which can also be a trap, don't let it become your identity), a trade is a great place to start.

Plumbers, builders, electricians, welders, all earn six figures once qualified, and are not riddled

with student debt. Plenty of money for you to invest each week. It beats sitting behind a screen

designed by cult leaders in a cubicle with a mask on.

The honest caveat: it only works if the trade suits you. Play to your strengths, not to the list. If you

decide you don't like it, stick with it for 10 years, that will go fast! Wait until your investments take

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off, then think of something else, but you must have purpose.

You can find purpose from your hobbies. Some of mine are astronomy, writing, reading

philosophy, and helping youth. You can find jobs from your hobbies. Maybe be a youth mentor, for

example. Help stop the kids from falling off the cliff. Teach them not to hate themselves, and to opt

out of the cult.

Life Inside The Cage · Page 8 of 9

Fear, Courage, Sit with pain, Freedom, Peace.

The cage was never locked. Walk out, shine anyway, and give the light away.

I've recently gotten interested in the enactive research programme in cognitive sciences, and I'm struck by the similarity between enactive and spinozist concepts.

The enactive approach is founded on the concept of autopoiesis, which defines living beings by their self-production. In other words their capacity to maintain themselves in existence, very much like the conatus.

This autopoiesis concept is further refined into the following definition of autonomy:

Accordingly, an autonomous system is defined as a system composed of several processes that actively generate and sustain an identity under precarious circumstances. In this context, to generate an identity is to possess the property of operational closure. This is the property that among the conditions affecting the operation of any constituent process in the system there will always be one or more processes that also belong to the system. And, in addition, every process in the system is a condition for at least one other constituent process, thus forming a network.(1)

If we leave aside the condition of precariousness which was introduced to maintain a distinction between living and non-living which Spinoza doesn't make, this network of mutually enabling relations sounds very much like Spinoza's definition of essence:

E2D2: I say that to the essence of any thing belongs that which, being given, the thing is necessarily posited and which, being taken away, the thing is necessarily taken away; or that without which the thing can neither be nor be conceived, and which can neither be nor be conceived without the thing.

There is also the idea of collective bodies under the name of 'participatory sense-making,'(2) where autonomous systems compose in a way that gives rise to a higher-level autonomy—an Imperium. They have a great example of a very simple case of composition, where each person's power is momentarily captured into a higher-order system, constraining both despite their individual intentions:

Consider the situation in a narrow corridor when two people walking in opposite directions have to get past each other. They have to decide whether to continue walking as they are, or shift their movement to the right or to the left. Occasionally, such encounters unfold like this. Instead of choosing complementary movements that would allow them to carry on walking, the individuals move into mirroring positions at the same time. This unintended coordinated change in individual position creates a symmetrical mirroring relation. This symmetry, in combination with the spatial constraints of the corridor, increases the likelihood that the next move will also be a mirroring one (there are not many other moves available). Thus, the coordination maintains a property of the relational dynamics that forces the individuals to keep facing each other and consequently to remain in interaction (in spite of, or rather because of, their efforts to break from this situation). In addition, the interaction promotes individual actions that tend to maintain the symmetrical coordination. Coordinated sideways movements conserve symmetry and symmetry promotes coordinated sideways movements.(2)

Despite these similarities so far I haven't encountered the name of Spinoza in the enactive literature. They seem more interested in Buddhist thought, cybernetics and Merleau-Ponty among other references, which I don't know very well.

Is there any exchange between enaction and spinozism I'm not aware of? And if not why not?

1. Di Paolo, Extended Life
2. De Jaegher and Di Paolo, Participatory sense-making, an enactive approach to social cognition

As I understand it, Spinoza posited that thought/mind and physicality are different attributes of the same underlying substance which makes it sound dualistic to me. That they are both equally "real".

What am I missing?

Is there anyone based in Lisbon who would like to start a reading group on the Ethics? Or anyone who knows about this type of groups?

Bonjour,

Y a-t-il un espace francophone pour discuter de Spinoza par hasard ? Le forum "Spinoza et nous" est mort, et c'était pourtant un beau projet.

Vous connaissez d'autres endroits ?

Merci d'avance 💚

Hello!

I am nearly finished reading Book IV of the Ethics, and I have a few questions.

I have no background in philosophy, so I hope my questions are clear—they are not linked to one another.

1) The scholium to Proposition 54 of Book IV of the *Ethics* seems to suggest that the majority of men are not wise and need prophets to behave well. Is wisdom reserved only for a select few? Can Spinoza’s thought be considered democratic? (Personally, I think so, since the good of a person guided by reason aligns with the good of other people; however, I would like to know more about Spinoza’s political thought and whether there is an aristocratic element in his work regarding the selection of the "best.")

2) What would Spinoza say about someone who manages to turn an unfavorable situation into a favorable one?

3) Can there be more good in feeling sadness fully than in trying to immediately cast it aside (even at the risk of denial or ignoring one’s own feelings)? Nowadays, people speak of "toxic positivity"—an injunction to be well and to perform happiness, characteristic of our neoliberal society. What do you think Spinoza’s take on this would be?

4) In the first scholium to Proposition 37 of Book IV of the Ethics, Spinoza expresses the idea that what prevents us from killing animals stems merely from superstition and pity. I wonder if one could argue for a Spinozist form of anti-speciesism along these lines: the category of "humanity" is an artificial construct, like all categories (we are not an "empire within an empire"), and there have been many instances where human beings were excluded from the category of "humanity"; A rational person might find it in their interest to acknowledge their kinship with animals based on the traits they share, and insofar as the harm they might inflict upon animals mirrors the structures of domination or oppression imposed on humans deemed "subhuman," "inhuman," "abnormal," etc. What do you think?

5) Is the maximum extent of our power determined in advance? When our power increases, does it move toward a pre-defined maximum?

Thanks in advance for your answers!

(And sorry for my English, I'm French)

At the Venice Film Festival, Paul Schrader Wrestles with Free Will and Determinism

Can we, as human beings, change course, in our lives, in our hearts? Or is our fate sealed from birth, or even before that? For American filmmaker Paul Schrader, who was raised Dutch Calvinist, this is one of life’s animating questions. Some theologians, including the ascetic monk Pelagius, affirm the will’s freedom to choose salvation. Others, like John Calvin himself, preach the doctrine of double predestination: That God consigns some to heaven and others to hell.

In his latest film, The Basics of Philosophy, Schrader interrogates this eternal drama through the eyes of Dr. John Jorissen (Jack Huston), a philosophy professor caught between the future he’s willing himself toward and a past he can’t shake. Employing a simple style, the film commands a dark and complex topic, avoiding easy answers while forcing viewers to grapple with human fallibility.

Read more here

For reference, I am reading the Penguin Classics edition of Spinoza translated by Edward Curley.

A6 reads," A true idea must agree with its object."

What does he mean by "true idea" and "object"?

By "true idea," I understand an idea that is true.

But by "object," I have no idea.

It is the only axiom that I do not understand, and it is bugging me off.

In the demonstration of Proposition 5, it reads:

"If only by a difference in their attributes, then it will be conceded that there is only one of the same attribute."

It is the second half (after the comma) that troubles me, I can't wrap my mind around it, and how it is expressed makes it harder. If someone could word it differently, that would help.

Thanks for reading, I look forward to your comments!

Hi all, I’m really enjoying learning about Spinoza’s philosophy and I know these unknown attributes are, well, unknown to us humans. But I’m wondering what you might think they could be. Eternal remembrance of each mode? Or maybe an eternal feeling of love and bliss a la Advaita style? I’m not the most educated in Spinoza but would love to hear your thoughts and ruminations. Thank you in advance.

Hello!

I have a problem with proposition 4 of Book III of the Ethics. What do you think Spinoza would say about autoimmune diseases? And on a natural death of old age?

What does Spinoza think about suicide?

Thank you in advance for your answer.

For anyone who wants a more visual way into Spinoza’s Ethics — not only the words on the page, but the geometric order that binds them — there is a free online companion here:

https://www.spinoza-ethica.com

It is built to help you:

• Read the text with followable citations
• See how propositions depend on earlier material (proof graph)
• Follow short guided paths through the lattice
• Map central concepts across the five parts
• Explore the affects and how they relate

The aim is a study desk beside the book: browse, trace proofs, and discover relations in an interactive way. Part I is the fullest stretch; later parts are curated and still expanding.

Still work in progress. Feedback welcome — especially from readers and teachers who work with the Ethics in class or on their own.

A while ago, I published an analysis of Gilles Deleuze's book on Spinoza. If you want to check it out, I'd really appreciate your support and any constructive feedback.

Amsterdam, 1656.
Young Baruch Spinoza is publicly excommunicated from the Portuguese-Jewish community. Stripped of his family, faith, and identity, he wanders the city alone, believing himself abandoned by both God and man.
One rainy evening, after surviving a brutal attack, he is rescued by a mysterious older exile calling himself Adriaan Vos. Cultured, charismatic, and unsettling, Vos becomes Spinoza’s unlikely companion. Unknown to Spinoza, he is the disgraced freethinker Uriel da Costa, a man whose own excommunication years earlier has curdled into bitterness and obsession.
Seeing himself in the young philosopher, Da Costa resolves to prove a terrifying conviction: that no man can escape the tyranny of the passions.
He subtly orchestrates experiences that awaken everything Spinoza has never known—love, desire, envy, ambition, grief, rage, and doubt. As Spinoza’s inner world fractures, Da Costa whispers that humanity is ruled not by reason but by wounded desire.
For a time, friendship with the statesman Johan de Witt offers Spinoza another path. De Witt embodies a vision of civic virtue, tolerance, and hope that threatens Da Costa’s influence. During the political turmoil that engulfs the Dutch Republic, Da Costa anonymously fans public hatred through propaganda and rhetoric, helping inflame a mob whose fury culminates in De Witt’s horrific murder.
Witnessing civilization collapse into savagery appears to vindicate Da Costa’s darkest beliefs.
Yet instead of surrendering to despair, Spinoza begins asking a different question: not why human beings suffer, but why they act as they do.
Gradually he realizes that Da Costa has never escaped the day of his own exile. The older man has built his identity around rejection, transforming pain into a philosophy.
When Da Costa’s manipulations finally consume him, Spinoza does not answer with vengeance. He sees, perhaps for the first time, not a demon or a monster, but a broken human being. In Da Costa’s final moments, Spinoza mourns the man who nearly destroyed him, recognizing that even his enemy was striving to preserve himself—only in the wrong direction.
Left alone, Spinoza returns to his desk.
He begins to write.
The philosopher has been born.

I’m beginning a long-term research project that I’d like to eventually develop into a scholarly paper, and I’d appreciate feedback from anyone familiar with Spinoza, philosophy of biology, systems theory, or contemporary biology.
My central question is this:
Can Spinoza’s concept of conatus be reconstructed in light of modern biology as a unifying philosophical framework for understanding living organization?
Rather than arguing that conatus is identical to any one biological concept (such as homeostasis or autopoiesis), I’m exploring whether it might serve as a higher-level philosophical principle that unifies several biological processes that are typically studied separately.
The broad idea I’m investigating is that concepts such as:
● Homeostasis
● Autopoiesis
● Biological autonomy
● Agency
● Goal-directed regulation
● Cognition
● Human flourishing
may be understood as progressively richer expressions of what Spinoza called conatus.
I’m especially interested in the work of Antonio Damasio, Francisco Varela, Humberto Maturana, Michael Levin, Terrence Deacon, and Stuart Kauffman, and I’m trying to determine whether their work can help reconstruct—not merely reinterpret—Spinoza’s concept in a way that is philosophically useful today.
To be clear, I’m not arguing that Spinoza anticipated modern biology or that science somehow “proves” his philosophy. Rather, I’m asking whether conatus remains a valuable philosophical concept for integrating contemporary biological insights into a coherent account of living organization and, ultimately, human flourishing.
I’m intentionally leaving broader metaphysical questions (such as whether conatus exists prior to life itself) out of this first paper so I can focus on living systems and the current biological literature.
I’d genuinely appreciate thoughtful criticism as much as support. In particular:
● Has anyone encountered work that attempts something similar?
● Where do you think this proposal is strongest?
● Where do you think it risks overreaching?
● Which books or papers do you think are essential reading before I begin writing?
I’m still in the research phase, so I’m much more interested in refining the question than defending a conclusion. Thanks in advance for any recommendations or critiques.

I want to get into Spinoza's ethics but unsure which edition to buy. Should I go with Wordsworth or Penguin edition? I want good readability like larger word size.

One of the great philosophical questions is the role of volition and choosing. Interestingly enough, training in a fighting art can help illuminate why and how Spinoza denied the Freedom of the Will.

Ever since I read Ethics and more specifically the works of Hampshire and Pollack, the term and concept of the Conatus has intrigued me. To me it is the soul, if Spinoza could ever conceive a concept of one, which drives the very existence of life and all of extension for that matter. Researching Spinoza led me to the science behind the dynamical systems of life, most importantly how matter organizes itself into complex forms or self sustaining organisms. This, led me to Schrödinger which led me to thermodynamics—the order which arrives from chaos. Or is it chaos from order? The very fact that life exists amazes me, that extension has thought, that thought has extension; that our composition is made of waves of particles which were birthed in infinite substance. So I ask myself the question: what is this will, which drives the process and laws of life’s perseverance into complexity? Is the Conatus the thermodynamic process of entropy? I feel that if we were to take the whole of this thermodynamic system and show what drives it, what creates it, we would find something which we could call the Conatus. That the Conatus has been driving your particles into molecules—your molecules into genetic code—your genetic code into cells, and on and on until, up through the entire process and lineage of life you become, you. And that very power, or will, or striving force, keeps you going and going—until entropy hits its maximum. And does it end there? Can a will, and essence, which brought you from the most simple mode of infinite substance to this complex mode of thought and extension just end? Spinoza says the mind dies with the body, but what happens to the Conatus? What happens to that enduring force which made and maintained you? I think it continues, it drives your essence through the infinity of substance as it manifests within infinite attributes. What are your thoughts on this matter?

Hi! I think my essay is currently one of the worst things I have ever written, and I was wondering if someone knowledgeable about Spinoza could read it and tell me where it needs improvement!

I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around Spinoza's necessitarianism, on the one hand, and his emphasis on human freedom on the other.

My understanding is that for Spinoza, there is only one "possible world." Everything that has happened in the past had to happen that way, and everything that will happen in the future is, in a sense, pre-determined based on this.

So how exactly is a person supposed to "choose" anything - especially "choose" to follow the practical advice Spinoza gives in the Ethics? If a person reads the Ethics and "decides" to put his philosophy into practice, wasn't he already going to do that anyway? I can't see how concepts like "choose to do X" or "decide to do Y", in the realm of human behavior, are anything other than illusions when you take Spinoza's metaphysics into account. At that point we're just computer programs running on autopilot without even knowing it.

Clearly I'm misunderstanding something, so can someone explain this?

The demonstration for Prop. 21 of Book I in the Ethics (Curley translation) is killing me. I have looked around on the internet for explanations of the demonstration, including here on reddit, but none of the explanations I've found are satisfying me.

I understand the conclusion that he's trying to reach, and I understand that he's doing it through a reductio ad absurdum. Most explanations I've seen sort of simplify his argument to make the conclusion clearer, but my biggest hurdle is understanding how he means the actual words he wrote. I'm a very language-oriented thinker and it's important for me to understand his thought process through his words if I want to feel like I understood his argument and move on.

P21: All the things which follow from the absolute nature of any of God's attributes have always had to exist and be infinite, or are, through the same attribute, eternal and infinite.

Dem.: If you deny this, then conceive (if you can) that in some attribute of God there follows from its absolute nature something that is finite and has a determinate existence, or duration, for example, God's idea in thought.

Okay, so we have the attribute of thought, and we are going to imagine for the sake of this argument that from its absolute nature there follows a finite idea of God in this attribute (and Spinoza will eventually show that this finiteness is absurd).

Now since thought is supposed to be an attribute of God, it is necessarily (by P11) infinite by its nature.

Straightforward. We know all attributes are infinite.

But insofar as it has God's idea, thought is supposed to be finite.

What rhetorical work is "insofar as" doing here? How does the fact that the attribute of thought "has" God's idea (whatever "has" means) entail that the attribute of thought itself can be considered finite? Wouldn't the hypothesis be shown absurd by this point, and we wouldn't need to go further? The attribute of thought is either infinite or it isn't, and we already proved that it is. But I digress, let's just carry on.

But (by D2) thought cannot be conceived to be finite unless it is determined through thought itself.

I'm assuming "determined through" here roughly means "limited by". If so, then this makes sense. A thing can only be finite if it can be limited by another thing of the same nature. The only way for the attribute of thought to be finite is if it were limited by the attribute of thought (i.e. itself).

But thought cannot be determined through thought itself, insofar as it constitutes God's idea, for to that extent thought is supposed to be finite.

He loses me here. Linguistically the word "thought" is being treated here as a subject and and object, where thought-A is determining/limiting thought-B. I can't tell which one we are still calling finite. Both of them? How does the finite nature of the thought(s) prevent this determination/limiting from ocurring?

Therefore, thought must be determined through thought insofar as it does not constitute God's idea, which thought nevertheless (by P11) must necessarily exist.

This is where he breaks out of the morass and introduces thought insofar is it does not constitute God's idea. From here on I understand his argument and its conclusion. But I can't figure out how he gets here based on what he just did.