So you’re here and perhaps are curious to learn a little bit about me. I’m somewhat skeptical of how accurate my attempt at describing myself could ever be, and there’s a kind of quiet sadness in attempting to sum oneself up in a few hundred words and bits of data.
How strangely do we diminish a thing as soon as we try to express it in words. –Maurice Maeterlinck
And yet I am proud of the openness the Internet is creating and often find myself reading the autobiographical pages of strangers who I live thousands of miles away from and will likely never meet. And so here is an attempt to provide some info about myself, a single node in the circuitry of humanity, a single gem in Indra’s net.
This page consists of a list of my main interests, some goals I have in life, some things I have enjoyed, and finally some basic information about my personality and worldview. (In a hurry? Show the CliffsNotes version.)
Name: Liam Keane
Age: 22
Location: Santa Barbara, California
Interests: nondualism, zen, chaos theory, sociocracy, theory, surrealism, design
Goals: Learn skills for health and happiness
Favorite book: The Dharma Bums
Favorite band: Grizzly Bear
Favorite movie: The Darjeeling Limited
Favorite tv show: Current TV
Favorite product: TOM’S Shoes
MBTI: INFP – “The Healer”
Enneagram: Type Nine – “The Peacemaker”
Places visited: 30 states and DC; Canada, Britain, Mexico, and Ireland
My first interest, and the one I tend to see as most important, is getting in touch with the nature of reality. I want to understand my existence. This might sound vague or hokey but it truly is important to me.
I wouldn’t say I interpret the concept of ‘God’ as many people seem to do. For the most part, I see religious debates as being flawed due to an inability to define what is being debated (see Ignosticism). However, it wouldn’t be accurate to describe myself as an atheist either – as a WDU song goes “I don’t believe in God but I’m also not an atheist / Because the universe is chaos but chaos picks favorites”. I feel that something is going on here though I would admit that metaphysical beliefs, as noncognitivists/agnostics claim, are scientifically ‘unverifiable’ and scientifically unknowable.
However, with regard to some central questions of existence, my thoughts are as follows:
If you needed to describe my ideas about reality, the term nondualism is probably closest to what I believe. I want to be mindful and aware of the true nature of reality. A book I am using in this direction is Adyashanti’s True Meditation.
My first interest is understanding reality as best I can (see above). The goal there being honesty, not necessarily happiness. However, I also enjoy being happy and as such am trying to study how to best live as a human.
The ideas I have identified as possibly being helpful in this regard are zen, meditation, yoga, daoism, love, ahimsa, Bodhicitta, simplicity, calmness (and a few others).
Some concepts that might be related include apocatastasis, finitum capax infiniti, buddhadharma, quakerism, vedanta, kenosis, quietism, and other studies.
One vision I have of how I would like to live is WB Yeats’ The Lake Isle of Innisfree. The spirit of this poem is a nice vision of happiness & le bon vivant. A cool song is “A Beautiful World” by Emcee Lynx.
My first interest is metaphysical existence, my second how to live happily and healthy as a human, and my third interest is understanding our universe based on scientific observations. The field of science I am most interested in is chaos theory (and ‘complexity theory’). Related concepts include spontaneous order, systems theory, emergence, ætiology, cause and effect, and others. Other scientific fields I enjoy reading about are neuroscience, theoretical physics/unification theory, and astronomy.
Politics is a field I hope to avoid in the traditional conception of the word. For this I refer to WB Yeats Politics. I do not want to be a politician and in general do not like politicians. I’m also very skeptical of ‘activists’ and activism.
However, I am interested in better ways of conducting human interactions and improving quality of life and community relations. So by this I mean the ideas of sociocracy (face-to-face democracy), participatory society, and co-operation. (No, this does not mean I want to overthrow the government. I simply support initiatives by communities to improve their societal interactions and the political interactions of everyday life.)
In many ways ‘philosophy’ is included in basically all of my other interests. So why a separate category? I guess because here by ‘philosophy’ I mean theorising about random things potentially unrelated to the other subjects I’ve listed.
I’ve found the little I’ve read of Slavoj Zizek, Noam Chomsky, Albert Camus, and a handful of others to be very interesting and I wish to keep exploring ideas that challenge traditional notions.
I really enjoy art, but I suppose in some form, doesn’t everybody? My preferences are dada and surrealism. I respect art that has been democratised and shared freely. Street art I guess. Artists such as Blek le Rat, Banksy, MauMau, and Poster Boy. Cartrain> Damien Hirst!
I enjoy studying theories of design. As an occasional freelance web developer, I practice what I can of what I’ve learned. I am very interested in user experience design. So many websites are cluttered and confusing. One specific experience I had with this was during a fire in Santa Barbara. The official website of the county was where most people were turning for information, including evacuation updates. However, the page was so cluttered and poorly organised it was difficult to keep track of what was going on. Feeling frustrated, I set up my own website and soon thousands of people turned to it for information as it was so much easier to navigate and absorb.
I am also interested in branding and users perception based on design. A instance that stands out to me was when I had a bamboo-themed blog. This resulted in some visitors to my blog assuming I was Chinese. This served to illustrate to me how strongly visual style might influence people.
My main goals right now center on education and skills I would like to learn or improve. A partial list includes: cooking, yoga/flexability, fitness/exercise, nutrition/diet/health, judo/taekwondo, massage/Chinese medicine, skilled meditation, blackjack?, scuba diving?
THINGS ENJOYED
Books
Favorite books:
Kerouac – The Dharma Bums
Hemingway – The Old Man and the Sea
Douglas Adams – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Vonnegut – Cat’s Cradle
Flann O’Brien – At Swim-Two-Birds
Huxley – Brave New World
Chris Van Allsburg – The Wreck of the Zephyr
Zinn – A People’s History of the United States
Steinbeck – The Grapes of Wrath
Favorite movies: Darjeeling Limited, Baraka, Children of Men, Annie Hall, Harold and Maude, Catch Me If You Can, The Matrix, V for Vendetta, Fight Club, THX 1138, The Fountain, Science of Sleep, Eternal Sunshine
The only tv shows I watch are The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and South Park (all available online). For news segments I turn to Current.tv, LinkTV.org, fora.tv, and therealnews.com. For entertainment I may watch a stream of clips from reddit.tv or find something on Babelgum or VBS.tv.
TV is outdated and I am happy to see it go. I don’t mean to sound pretentious, but I wouldn’t be so angry if it wasn’t so terrible.
Goods
Patagonia – for clothing and equipaje
Tom’s – for shoes (FiveFingers are fun too)
OpenOffice – for typing papers
WordPress – for content management
Nutella – mmmm
Virgin America – for flight
White tea – drink of choice
Sam Smith Oatmeal Stout – favorite beer
Mochi ice cream – dessert of choice
Personality
MBTI
Now you know the concepts I value and the things I enjoy but what am I like in person? This is another thing that’s hard and likely impossible to describe. One thing I can offer is some info on personality typology. The psychologist Carl Jung wrote a book, Psychologische Typen, in Zurich, Switzerland in 1921. In the book he argued that different people have different preferences of cognition and that these preferences could facilitate the categorization of types of personalities. Drawing on this idea, some statisticians/test-makers put together a test called MBTI. MBTI is described on Wikipedia as “[a model that] regards personality type as similar to left or right handedness: individuals are either born with, or develop, certain preferred ways of thinking and acting”. The MBTI model names 16 types of personalities; however, the type should not be used to categorize or ascribe characteristics to others. As a counselor writes:
Personality typing is a tool with many uses. It’s especially notable for it’s helpfulness in the areas of growth and self-development. Learning and applying the theories of personality type can be a powerful and rewarding experience, if it is used as a tool for discovery, rather than as a method for putting people into boxes, or as an excuse for behavior.
So, with that said, there might be something to the idea of preferences in ways of thinking affecting the identity or disposition of a person. I took a test online and it told me I am an INFP. What does this mean? INFPs (1-3% of the population) are described on Wikipedia as follows: “INFPs tend to be quiet and reserved… they tend to be more abstract than concrete. They focus their attention on the big picture rather than the details, and on future possibilities rather than immediate realities…INFPs tend to value personal considerations above objective criteria… they tend to withhold judgment and delay important decisions, preferring to ‘keep their options open’.”
To read about the INFP personality, try Personality Page’s profile of INFP. Another psychologist, David Kiersy of CSU Fullerton, has done similar work and calls the INFP personality “the Healer role variant” which you can read about on Wikipedia. This site says Shakespeare, Fred Rogers, JFK Jr., and Tom Brokaw were all INFPs but I don’t know how they decided that.
Enneagram
A similar personality survey I took was the Enneagram test. It described me as Type Nine, which is called “The Peacemaker”. Wikipedia describes Type Nines thusly: Characteristic role: The Peacemaker Ego fixation: Indolence, self-forgetting Holy idea: Love Basic Fear: Loss and separation; of annihilation Basic Desire: To maintain inner stability and peace of mind Temptation: To go along to get along Vice/Passion: Indifference Virtue: Right action
To read more about Type Nines, see this description.
That’s about the best I can do to describe my personality. Another ‘field’ of personality studies is called socionics and they claim that you can tell how people will get along based on what type they are (for example, they say I as an INFP will not get along with ESTJs). Although the list of possible ESTJs features LBJ, George W. Bush, Rockefeller, Sam Walton, and Billy Graham – all people I don’t understand or see eye-to-eye with – I certainly would never rule out being friends with someone because of how they see the world and in general I get along well with lots of different types of people with many different ideologies and personalities. That and I don’t take any of this too seriously, despite how much I’ve written. Oh and as long as I’m talking about border-line astrological stuff, when I was born the Sun was at 26° Capricorn, the Moon in 13° Leo, and the rising constellation was 19° Pieces, it was the Chinese Year of the Tiger (Yang/Fire), and my Vedic lagna is Kumbha and nakshatra Ashlesha. I think.
Miscellaneous
A few facts:
I have traveled to 30 states and to DC. I have also visited Canada, London, Mexico, and Ireland.
I keep a vegetarian diet.
My first name, Liam, means “Strong-willed Warrior, Protector”. My last name mean “Warrior, Fighter”. So my name means “Warrior Warrior”. Despite this I am of a peaceful nature.
I have a former guide-dog named Olga (a white lab) and a Snowshoe cat named MoonShine.
Schooling: I attended UC Santa Barbara for four years. My favorite teachers there were Rita Raley (English), Enda Duffy (English), Robert Hinckley (Poli. Sci.) and Richard Appelbaum (Global). Other teachers that stood out were Chris Kollmeyer (Global), Robert Rauchhaus (Poli. Sci.), Judge Joe Lodge (Poli. Sci. – Criminal Justice), Gurinder Singh Mann (Global), Jose Cabezon (Religous Studies – Buddhism), Catherine Weinberger-Thomas (Soc.) and James Donelan (English). All of these educators are top-notch teachers and I always enjoyed attending their classes.
I am what I am: My favorite xkcd is “Dreams“. If I offend someone, I am sorry as that is not my intent. But if you think that something I’ve said is in bad taste 1. it’s probably a joke and 2. I don’t really have time to apologize or defend everything and in general people need to chill out. Similarly, I really like the quote by Frank Zappa “I don’t want to spend my life explaining myself. You either get it or you don’t”. A good outlook I think. Oh, while on this topic, one of my favorite blog taglines is that of Andrea Allen: “Feel free to make decisions about me based solely on what you read and see on the internet.”
Conclusion: Anyway, thanks for stopping by. I got something out of it (“To explain myself to you is also to explain myself to myself…” -Stravinsky). Perhaps you did too (a useful link or two?).
About
So you’re here and perhaps are curious to learn a little bit about me. I’m somewhat skeptical of how accurate my attempt at describing myself could ever be, and there’s a kind of quiet sadness in attempting to sum oneself up in a few hundred words and bits of data.
And yet I am proud of the openness the Internet is creating and often find myself reading the autobiographical pages of strangers who I live thousands of miles away from and will likely never meet. And so here is an attempt to provide some info about myself, a single node in the circuitry of humanity, a single gem in Indra’s net.
This page consists of a list of my main interests, some goals I have in life, some things I have enjoyed, and finally some basic information about my personality and worldview. (In a hurry? Show the CliffsNotes version.)
Name: Liam Keane
Age: 22
Location: Santa Barbara, California
Interests: nondualism, zen, chaos theory, sociocracy, theory, surrealism, design
Goals: Learn skills for health and happiness
Favorite book: The Dharma Bums
Favorite band: Grizzly Bear
Favorite movie: The Darjeeling Limited
Favorite tv show: Current TV
Favorite product: TOM’S Shoes
MBTI: INFP – “The Healer”
Enneagram: Type Nine – “The Peacemaker”
Places visited: 30 states and DC; Canada, Britain, Mexico, and Ireland
Hide these notes.
Contents
INTERESTS
The Nature of Reality
My first interest, and the one I tend to see as most important, is getting in touch with the nature of reality. I want to understand my existence. This might sound vague or hokey but it truly is important to me.
I wouldn’t say I interpret the concept of ‘God’ as many people seem to do. For the most part, I see religious debates as being flawed due to an inability to define what is being debated (see Ignosticism). However, it wouldn’t be accurate to describe myself as an atheist either – as a WDU song goes “I don’t believe in God but I’m also not an atheist / Because the universe is chaos but chaos picks favorites”. I feel that something is going on here though I would admit that metaphysical beliefs, as noncognitivists/agnostics claim, are scientifically ‘unverifiable’ and scientifically unknowable.
However, with regard to some central questions of existence, my thoughts are as follows:
If you needed to describe my ideas about reality, the term nondualism is probably closest to what I believe. I want to be mindful and aware of the true nature of reality. A book I am using in this direction is Adyashanti’s True Meditation.
Resources
True Meditation
Peacefulness, Compassion, Living a Good Life
My first interest is understanding reality as best I can (see above). The goal there being honesty, not necessarily happiness. However, I also enjoy being happy and as such am trying to study how to best live as a human.
The ideas I have identified as possibly being helpful in this regard are zen, meditation, yoga, daoism, love, ahimsa, Bodhicitta, simplicity, calmness (and a few others).
Some concepts that might be related include apocatastasis, finitum capax infiniti, buddhadharma, quakerism, vedanta, kenosis, quietism, and other studies.
One vision I have of how I would like to live is WB Yeats’ The Lake Isle of Innisfree. The spirit of this poem is a nice vision of happiness & le bon vivant. A cool song is “A Beautiful World” by Emcee Lynx.
Resources
The Tao Bums, Go Drink Tea, Sun Magazine
Scientific Knowledge
My first interest is metaphysical existence, my second how to live happily and healthy as a human, and my third interest is understanding our universe based on scientific observations. The field of science I am most interested in is chaos theory (and ‘complexity theory’). Related concepts include spontaneous order, systems theory, emergence, ætiology, cause and effect, and others. Other scientific fields I enjoy reading about are neuroscience, theoretical physics/unification theory, and astronomy.
Resources
What is Chaos? – Univ. of Texas, Chaos theory history
Politics
Politics is a field I hope to avoid in the traditional conception of the word. For this I refer to WB Yeats Politics. I do not want to be a politician and in general do not like politicians. I’m also very skeptical of ‘activists’ and activism.
However, I am interested in better ways of conducting human interactions and improving quality of life and community relations. So by this I mean the ideas of sociocracy (face-to-face democracy), participatory society, and co-operation. (No, this does not mean I want to overthrow the government. I simply support initiatives by communities to improve their societal interactions and the political interactions of everyday life.)
Resources
Not an Alternative, Adbusters, Worldchanging, Global Voices
Philosophy
In many ways ‘philosophy’ is included in basically all of my other interests. So why a separate category? I guess because here by ‘philosophy’ I mean theorising about random things potentially unrelated to the other subjects I’ve listed.
I’ve found the little I’ve read of Slavoj Zizek, Noam Chomsky, Albert Camus, and a handful of others to be very interesting and I wish to keep exploring ideas that challenge traditional notions.
Resources
chomsky.info, Zizek
Art
I really enjoy art, but I suppose in some form, doesn’t everybody? My preferences are dada and surrealism. I respect art that has been democratised and shared freely. Street art I guess. Artists such as Blek le Rat, Banksy, MauMau, and Poster Boy. Cartrain > Damien Hirst!
Resources
Wooster Collective, we make $ not art, booooooom
Design
I enjoy studying theories of design. As an occasional freelance web developer, I practice what I can of what I’ve learned. I am very interested in user experience design. So many websites are cluttered and confusing. One specific experience I had with this was during a fire in Santa Barbara. The official website of the county was where most people were turning for information, including evacuation updates. However, the page was so cluttered and poorly organised it was difficult to keep track of what was going on. Feeling frustrated, I set up my own website and soon thousands of people turned to it for information as it was so much easier to navigate and absorb.
I am also interested in branding and users perception based on design. A instance that stands out to me was when I had a bamboo-themed blog. This resulted in some visitors to my blog assuming I was Chinese. This served to illustrate to me how strongly visual style might influence people.
Resources
Media Arts at OCW, webdev handbook, Smashing Magazine, lookbook (fashion)
GOALS
My main goals right now center on education and skills I would like to learn or improve. A partial list includes: cooking, yoga/flexability, fitness/exercise, nutrition/diet/health, judo/taekwondo, massage/Chinese medicine, skilled meditation, blackjack?, scuba diving?
THINGS ENJOYED
Books
Favorite books:
Kerouac – The Dharma Bums
Hemingway – The Old Man and the Sea
Douglas Adams – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Vonnegut – Cat’s Cradle
Flann O’Brien – At Swim-Two-Birds
Huxley – Brave New World
Chris Van Allsburg – The Wreck of the Zephyr
Zinn – A People’s History of the United States
Steinbeck – The Grapes of Wrath
More info
» Profile on Readernaut
Music
Favorite artists: Grizzly Bear, Bon Iver, Beirut, Passion Pit, MGMT, Panda Bear, Brett Dennen, M. Ward, Connor Oberst
More info
» Profile on Grooveshark
Movies
Favorite movies: Darjeeling Limited, Baraka, Children of Men, Annie Hall, Harold and Maude, Catch Me If You Can, The Matrix, V for Vendetta, Fight Club, THX 1138, The Fountain, Science of Sleep, Eternal Sunshine
More info
» Profile on i✓Movies
Video
The only tv shows I watch are The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and South Park (all available online). For news segments I turn to Current.tv, LinkTV.org, fora.tv, and therealnews.com. For entertainment I may watch a stream of clips from reddit.tv or find something on Babelgum or VBS.tv.
TV is outdated and I am happy to see it go. I don’t mean to sound pretentious, but I wouldn’t be so angry if it wasn’t so terrible.
Goods
Patagonia – for clothing and equipaje
Tom’s – for shoes (FiveFingers are fun too)
OpenOffice – for typing papers
WordPress – for content management
Nutella – mmmm
Virgin America – for flight
White tea – drink of choice
Sam Smith Oatmeal Stout – favorite beer
Mochi ice cream – dessert of choice
Personality
MBTI
Now you know the concepts I value and the things I enjoy but what am I like in person? This is another thing that’s hard and likely impossible to describe. One thing I can offer is some info on personality typology. The psychologist Carl Jung wrote a book, Psychologische Typen, in Zurich, Switzerland in 1921. In the book he argued that different people have different preferences of cognition and that these preferences could facilitate the categorization of types of personalities. Drawing on this idea, some statisticians/test-makers put together a test called MBTI. MBTI is described on Wikipedia as “[a model that] regards personality type as similar to left or right handedness: individuals are either born with, or develop, certain preferred ways of thinking and acting”. The MBTI model names 16 types of personalities; however, the type should not be used to categorize or ascribe characteristics to others. As a counselor writes:
So, with that said, there might be something to the idea of preferences in ways of thinking affecting the identity or disposition of a person. I took a test online and it told me I am an INFP. What does this mean? INFPs (1-3% of the population) are described on Wikipedia as follows: “INFPs tend to be quiet and reserved… they tend to be more abstract than concrete. They focus their attention on the big picture rather than the details, and on future possibilities rather than immediate realities…INFPs tend to value personal considerations above objective criteria… they tend to withhold judgment and delay important decisions, preferring to ‘keep their options open’.”
To read about the INFP personality, try Personality Page’s profile of INFP. Another psychologist, David Kiersy of CSU Fullerton, has done similar work and calls the INFP personality “the Healer role variant” which you can read about on Wikipedia. This site says Shakespeare, Fred Rogers, JFK Jr., and Tom Brokaw were all INFPs but I don’t know how they decided that.
Enneagram
A similar personality survey I took was the Enneagram test. It described me as Type Nine, which is called “The Peacemaker”. Wikipedia describes Type Nines thusly:
Characteristic role: The Peacemaker
Ego fixation: Indolence, self-forgetting
Holy idea: Love
Basic Fear: Loss and separation; of annihilation
Basic Desire: To maintain inner stability and peace of mind
Temptation: To go along to get along
Vice/Passion: Indifference
Virtue: Right action
To read more about Type Nines, see this description.
That’s about the best I can do to describe my personality. Another ‘field’ of personality studies is called socionics and they claim that you can tell how people will get along based on what type they are (for example, they say I as an INFP will not get along with ESTJs). Although the list of possible ESTJs features LBJ, George W. Bush, Rockefeller, Sam Walton, and Billy Graham – all people I don’t understand or see eye-to-eye with – I certainly would never rule out being friends with someone because of how they see the world and in general I get along well with lots of different types of people with many different ideologies and personalities. That and I don’t take any of this too seriously, despite how much I’ve written. Oh and as long as I’m talking about border-line astrological stuff, when I was born the Sun was at 26° Capricorn, the Moon in 13° Leo, and the rising constellation was 19° Pieces, it was the Chinese Year of the Tiger (Yang/Fire), and my Vedic lagna is Kumbha and nakshatra Ashlesha. I think.
Miscellaneous
A few facts:
Schooling: I attended UC Santa Barbara for four years. My favorite teachers there were Rita Raley (English), Enda Duffy (English), Robert Hinckley (Poli. Sci.) and Richard Appelbaum (Global). Other teachers that stood out were Chris Kollmeyer (Global), Robert Rauchhaus (Poli. Sci.), Judge Joe Lodge (Poli. Sci. – Criminal Justice), Gurinder Singh Mann (Global), Jose Cabezon (Religous Studies – Buddhism), Catherine Weinberger-Thomas (Soc.) and James Donelan (English). All of these educators are top-notch teachers and I always enjoyed attending their classes.
I am what I am: My favorite xkcd is “Dreams“. If I offend someone, I am sorry as that is not my intent. But if you think that something I’ve said is in bad taste 1. it’s probably a joke and 2. I don’t really have time to apologize or defend everything and in general people need to chill out. Similarly, I really like the quote by Frank Zappa “I don’t want to spend my life explaining myself. You either get it or you don’t”. A good outlook I think. Oh, while on this topic, one of my favorite blog taglines is that of Andrea Allen: “Feel free to make decisions about me based solely on what you read and see on the internet.”
Conclusion: Anyway, thanks for stopping by. I got something out of it (“To explain myself to you is also to explain myself to myself…” -Stravinsky). Perhaps you did too (a useful link or two?).
Image credits:
Reality – by darkpatator
Peace – by h.koppdelaney
Science – by Dean Cundey
Politics – by cindy47452
Philosophy – by hellochris
Art – by Metrix X
Design – by Poster Boy & Aakash Nihalani