Things I want to think about in 2026
These are things that I haven’t yet formalized in my head enough to say that I intuitively understand, I just have an inkling that there might be something there. That being said, these are open ended and might not really lead to any real substantive conclusions. A lot of my thoughts below are very confused and why they’re framed as “things to ponder” not “ideas I believe in”.
After writing them all out, I realized that all of them include the idea of the “embodied sense”. You have found me in a very somatic era of my life.
All connections being conversations
The idea that beauty is a passageway towards identifying and transmitting some higher truths of life. I’m interested in fine tuning my sense of beauty - and trying to wonder if there is an intrinsic sense of beauty to cultivate rather than societally trained sense of taste. In general I’ve been very passive about my sense of beauty and taste and would like this to change.
I tend to think of the purest form of philosophizing about beauty as being part of the ancient world. In general, in this post modern world, when pondering beauty, it’s inevitable to include the idea of friction from historical context. As though now people are thinking that reality is gritty and scarcity based, ideal beauty is naive and now commercialized to the point where it’s kitsch. I disagree with this strongly, but haven’t formalized my thoughts, though there are small reflections already like: Why do I like quirky things and to what extent is cultivating my aesthetic a political move?
It feels like by refining an intuitive feel for beauty I might shape my sense of reality against an equilibrium with my environment.
Beauty as transcendent
The idea that beauty is a passageway towards identifying and transmitting some higher truths of life. I’m interested in fine tuning my sense of beauty - and trying to wonder if there is an intrinsic sense of beauty to cultivate rather than societally trained sense of taste. In general I’ve been very passive about my sense of beauty and taste and would like this to change.
I tend to think of the purest form of philosophizing about beauty as being part of the ancient world. In general, in this post modern world, when pondering beauty, it’s inevitable to include the idea of friction from historical context. As though now people are thinking that reality is gritty and scarcity based, ideal beauty is naive and now commercialized to the point where it’s kitsch. I disagree with this strongly, but haven’t formalized my thoughts, though there are small reflections already like: Why do I like quirky things and to what extent is cultivating my aesthetic a political move?
It feels like by refining an intuitive feel for beauty I might shape my sense of reality against an equilibrium with my environment.
Higher values embodied in the body
Rationalist, post Enlightenment has us saying that the body/mind are discrete things. Descartes probably single handily hindered the progress of some set of study on embodied cognition for a period of time.
When I was younger, I also agreed with Descartes. Now I’m a firm non believer. I think a good chuck of wisdom comes from the somatic sense. That being said, I’m thinking more about how higher level values somehow can be embodied in a way that’s not purely intellectual.
A lot of my higher level ideas actually come from feeling them out. I might let my mind relax and become liquid over the concepts. The somatic felt sense for me applies not only to emotions, but to intellectual ideas as well. I have found that sometimes thinking through things logically doesn’t necessarily bring me closer to the truth, there is a reason that there are so many strains of philosophy.
I do think there are people reach their values intellectually and it’s not really clear where they stand, on first impression. But in general, I think it’s possible to embody higher values and that there have been distinct times when I can get a good sense of what values someone might have based on their physicality. You can tell when someone believes in beauty, when their honor gets threatened, if they have self respect, etc. What I’m pondering here is how higher values are encoded into the body. Do people who value dignity have energy flow more into the spine so they stand up straight? Are there more lubricant in the joints of people who cultivates beauty so that they’re more graceful?
Time as having flavors, or rather aesthetic value
I’ve been taking a more active part in experiencing time - deliberately trying to slow my sense of time down, being more mindful and focused on small things that are happening, stop dissociating when I’m stressed, etc. And what I’ve kind of realized is that when I’m more present I feel more “flavors” of feelings. Not discrete sensation that can be explained in words, just a different impression of the ether I’m in.
I feel an aesthetic feeling from space. Not just the things that are in it, but also the negative space that the objects form. I want to spend more effort in feeling the aesthetic of time itself. Not just of the past (nostalgia), not just of the future (optimism/doomism), but of the now, where I can almost poke my tongue out and taste the feeling.
Eloquence being a connection between objective and subjective perspective
I took a linguistics class in university, one of the things we learned was mapping - the words to the concepts in your head.
I suspect my objective and subjective modes of mind are rather separated due to some past emotional trauma in my past and that is the reason I’m not very eloquent when I discuss thoughtful ideas. The mapping is off.
I’m musing over eloquence in an embodied sense. Feeling the flow, not just in feeling, but in words. Recently, probably due to stream of consciousness journaling, I’ve started to have a stronger internal linguistically based stream of consciousness (vs conceptually/feeling/visual based). I’m thoroughly enjoying talking to myself.
What visceral means
More cravings
for the sake of the self
I actually don’t know the exact definition and I know that the dictionary says “gut feeling” and “instinctive” but people around me keep using it as “deeply provoking on a sensorial level” and I don’t know what’s going on.
But I would also like to incorporate it into my life in both definitions. Why yes, in an embodied sense.
There are very unstable foundations for this thought. Especially when I think about how Buddhism says that wanting is the source of suffering.
I think what I’m describing here, is ‘dreaming’ but so deep that it feels somatic. There is also a level of survival mindset that’s supposed to act as a motivating factor, I think.
I haven’t thought the idea of how this affects the soul. I think something along the lines of how to fight contentment and find drive.