You two both got the idea pretty much, yeah.

I personally go in for the soft version of Sapir-Whorf, where some concepts are simply easier or more difficult. You *can* translate everything if you *really want to,* but its possible to turn a sentence into a book that way, as you delve into the historical context surrounding the particular interpretation of the use of a particular verb (or what the fuck ever).

The historical context is every bit a part of the language as the word. If you don't understand it, you use the word inappropriately and are immediately tagged as an outsider.

Like how we've all been fluently speaking in multi-syllable. But if I started strutting around, stroking my chin, and muttering "mmm, yes, indubitably..." you would know I had been humping a thesaurus every night. And that it's *also* my favorite dinosaur.

That's why forcing the lower classes to use simpler language inhibits their cognition. If you have a duality of concepts, rather than a trinity, you have to compress more information into less space. Literally. Computationally.

You'd have to be a *motherfucking* wizard of a genius to compress full scientific disciplines into something instantly interpretable. And do that multiple times. You know. Just hypothetically, if someone from outside the ruling classes managed to build enlightenment, from scratch, in a cave with a box of scraps.

And PBS Spacetime on YouTube. That is a hidden gem of quality content.

Imma publish it.

Thanks Dina. It's been a dense few weeks. I can never sell an autobiography. No one would believe it. It's too absurd.

To summarize:

Enlightenment is possible.
Enlightenment is *dangerous.*
Do it wrong one way, and you go crazy.
Do it wrong the other way, you become blissed out and compliant, like a zombie addicted to a cross between communal love and heroin.

The way I did it, and many artistic types do it, is the way that risks insanity. I didn't go insane, obviously. Now, Jim Butcher on the other hand...

(Kidding, kidding. He's overly stablized, if anything.)

I can help someone do it in the way that risks blissful, stable, choiceless happiness. I figured out how by paying attention to my own process, and using myself as my own test subject. Because, you know, I had to. Still have to, tbh, I'm not finished.

There *is* some utility there in doing it a little bit and stopping before it finishes, for treating anxiety. I'm running that experiment now with a volunteer now to collect data. No preliminary results yet. We had to reset from incorrect methodology, and are waiting on them now.

(It's low risk, informed, consensual human experimentation, and I'm not part of an institution with an (inaptly named) ethics board.)

Going 100% with it? Where it moves from turning their reactions down enough for them to get a handle on them, and turns into total non-reactiveness? It's the equivalent of them erasing themselves and their personality. Everything that wasn't okay with the way the world works gets "deleted" from their consciousness.

Which I think is bad, and an evil thing to do to someone.

The weird part that I *don't* understand is how I'm living out a story that I've never read. The Sun Wukong stuff. How is it that I came to follow a plot structure that I never learned?

Like, we all act out mini-pieces of the stories we read. Fiction and mythology is like voluntary human self-programming. We "see" other people do things, we see how, and we copy them if we want to do that thing.

We do it with real humans too. That's pretty much how modern education works, in an overly simplistic nutshell.

So living out a plot structure isn't weird. You guys probably live out at least a little bit of Dresden every day. Or, if you're wise, you live out Michael Carpenter.

Becoming aware of it is pretty weird. That sends people insane if they can't cope with "seeing their own code." It's one thing to say you know that psychological conditioning works on you, or that you have bias. It's another thing to see happen in real time, including the parts happening in your head.

I have no idea how you live out a plot you haven't read. That leaves the broad overlap of "magical seeming things that are perfectly explainable (and extremely cool)" that I can personally explain.

The Jungian collective unconcious is my current best bet for a cause. Maybe yes, maybe no, inconclusive data.

I hope that clears things up a little. It's been a weird couple of months. At least I'm in good company.

Hey weird. Boy, have I got something weird.

I did an Enlightment.

But wait, it gets better: You guys went through a similar process. Probably multiple times. "Awakening," the process of kicking off a potential enlightment, is actually super, super common. It's also called Positive Disintegration in modern society. Most major Empires figured out a way to weaponize or utilize it. Name a seer, tbh.

Oh my. I feel you.
I've been there.
...
I kind of woke up...

Yeah you have. Recently, too. That's how you're at one with the friggin universe right now. Don't suppose you happened to make a couple new friends along the way? Or maybe hooked up with a couple of old ones?

Making those people mad obviously wasn't the most skillful way a hypothetical person could have handled a hypothetical situation. But it was the beat way you could have and did. Jesus man, we're exchanging text and I can see the glitter farts trailing behind you

Anyways, I hated those periods but we (hubby had to supported me) endured it because we know they were temporal.

You went through one a long time ago, and remember what it's like to remember it. But the lessons you've learned have started to decay, the world changed, or your place in it changed. You're fighting through it like a champ.

It's not working. You're overdue for another one, a big one. This staycation you're taking is like holding a chainsmoking convention in a fireworks factory. You're one creative endeavor of a spark from an extended staycation.

And that brings us to the the weirdest part of it: Jim Butcher had an awakening as well. He cribbed the Dresden Files from mythology during a time when his self image was breaking down in a time of extreme stress.

That's enough to do it, it turns out. That's what happened to me. I was cribbing from Dresden. That's not enough on its own, but I was also a built up forest fire waiting to happen. A huge one actually, super weird personal circumstances.

Reading a bunch of fiction is what's required to prime you. Actually trying to create something good based off it, while under extreme stress, is what's required to initiate the process. Or at least it's one way to do so. Remember: If youre going through hell, keep going. Just take it slow and steady, the only way you can get hurt is by pushing too hard.

If you get lost, Remember: Faith, hope, and love. Love is the greatest of the three. That's 1 Corinthians 13 (1 cor 13:13). I'm deeply grateful to Jim for including that in the series. "Mantling" is also your friend. The three Rational Enlightment values are better for navigating your way back to conversational ability, and the Buddhist Three Jewels kind of maximize your long term gains. That's all I've worked out.

There's all sorts of wacky shenanigans I could get into. But that's the brass tacks, and there actually is a "people talk themselves out of believing" effect. So I'll keep it brief so that the part of you that listens and makes memories has an easier time.

Man, what couple of weeks it's been. Oh, and 12 months is finished too. Nice!

Marcone has none of those advantages, however I think it will take a while before he realizes he isn't calling the shots.

I think he actually has a pretty decent analogue for both.

1] Right off Butters points out to Harry that Sheila was a delusion, thus he needs to be questioning everything.

Marcone has Gard exactly for situations like this. As a consultant her role tends to be very fluid as needs arise, but she's most valuable as an information source and force multiplier. There, she's relaying information to Marcone about how to use all of his other resources most effectively.

Like if picking up this coin that the Devil's Carnival has been yelling "do it, do it, do it" about all night might have some potential negative side effects. Or sending her to her home office to make some inquiries (and perhaps do a bit more), if that would be beneficial.

2] His experience with the soul gaze of a Denarian, he understands from the get go about who is really calling the shots if he accepts a coin.

To be honest, between Dresden and Marcone, I think Marcone got the better lesson here (even if he was a slower learner).

He got full-on Clockwork Orange'd on demonreach. I don't think even Jim knows exactly what happened to Ivy, but getting her the hell out of there was basically the only thing Marcone could focus on while he bled all over Sanya's cloak. That's partially character building, partially how compressed and hectic that scene is, but I think it's also a hint that whatever happened was authentically Hellish.

We'll probably find out. Flipping through Small Favor, and there's even a bit of foreshadowing about the risks of breaking The Archive with friendship at the end. We're definitely starting to see that happen. This is definitely gonna come up again, the only question is if Marcone's choice and Ivy's end up linked in that way.

I don't think taking up the coin was long term planning on Marcone's part. More like a "short term" (a decade, two at most) loan he's hoping he can skate on, before the angel in his brain puts him in a mindlock. I imagine he's very aware it's only a matter of time. It would be a weird gap in the savvy that we saw in Even Hand for him to think otherwise.

The hubris of trying to lead The Fallen is Nicodemus' thing, and Marcone got front row seats to Suffering Engine Inc's maximum intensity of fucked up clownshow being executed on Ivy. That's probably not the kind of attempted initiation that builds delusions of security. I imagine it does impress the reality of the game Marcone was playing into him, and made him confront the power dynamics at hand.

Marcone is very cunning, willful, resourceful, and at this point, the accumulation of power was basically happening automatically for him (not that he was lax in cultivating it, ofc). He was seriously not someone to be screwed with. Harry may have eliminated a bloodline in a moment of pique later on in the story, but Marcone murdered his way to the top of an industry where there are a standard number of generations for particular transgressions (interestingly enough, Marcone's bloodline related wrath probably only went upwards in the family tree as well).

He could always be more powerful, but John was just about topped out on what could be meaningfully expressed as a vanilla mortal in supernatural contexts. I don't think he skimped out on a single Monoc package, and probably earned a discount or two by inventing a few. At least it was as much as he could bring to bear without getting bogged down in more obligations than it was worth in mortal politics (although Lara Raith seemed to have found a loophole or two).

He then got ripped out of a saferoom in the heart of his power, every advantage at hand. By someone with the same personality type, assorted magic powers, an omniscient spy demon, and as salt in the wound, ~2000 years of compounding interest completely obviating any structural power of Marcone's. Since criminals take bribes if they're big enough. All as a test run/bait for a real player.

Oh, and Nic's gang literally worships him instead of being a traitorous backstabbing pack of criminals that require constant managing. Just on a professional level, being out-disciplined by the eunuch guy. Ouch.

Marcone isn't a hero getting by on moral-gumption-made-physical-power and regular abuses of free will at a breathtaking scale. He's a ruthless strategist who tries to win in every possible outcome (and who regularly games free will). He was helpless before powers greater than himself, so he got better leverage. He's not just aware that things are coming to a head, he's playing an unclear role in helping them get there. Therefore gaining more specific leverage over who knows what apocalypse-y shenanigans.

The blast crater formerly known as Chicago, to start with. Now that there has been one blast crater, there will be polite inquiries into if there will be a second blast crater by the mortal powers that be. The taboo on large (read: torch and pitchfork risking) scale politics is probably on it's last legs. Now that there's power to be made in brokering, it's gonna get made. How convenient for Marcone, ever a man of lucky placement and timing.

In his ideal scenario he probably saves Amanda Beckitt, saves His People and the world from whatever's coming, comes out alive himself, becomes King of Greater America (whatever the hell that means), dunks Thorned Namshiel in a Vatican vending machine for a pop, and skips off into the sunset with his ill gotten magical powers as Harry Dresden, new loyal employee, admits how wrong he was the entire time. Which John will magnanimously wave away to begin a fruitful and long partnership.

More likely, he will begin sacrificing those items in reverse order and with rapidly increasing frequency as the nemfected Fallen cheats somehow, and the brainlock goes faster than expected. And we get to watch! He just lost the closest thing to his conscience, which I'm sure was also totally unrelated to the similarly habitually fortunate Fallen Angel whispering sweet nothings to his subconscious.

Or at least that's my read. I'm not sure if the story is actually Freudian, or if I'm just slipping.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to walk to Edmonton to give $85 to a snail charity.

Yay!

I'm probably reading too much (or not enough) into things, but I hope that the pause right before the last 10% of the book means the climax had extra time to cook.