I’m comfortable with serotonin uppers and tranquillisers/inhibitors but not with dopamine uppers. Maybe I’m not allowing myself t own that triangle/dopaminergic side of my personality and I feel anxious, trying to repress it. When I relax on Ritalin I always feel better, like the speeding up of the body slows down and moves to a speeding up of the mind.

Propaganda technique

Purveyors of ideology succeed well by proliferating their ideas in contexts where people must rapidly assimilate and memorise the ideas in order to accomplish something else. Eg cramming for HSC doesn’t give you time to evaluate = unconsciously take on board assumptions.

Depression generation’s effect on baby boomers

The depressionites were all hyper-critical and exacting. Their post-war model of a child had to be as squeaky-clean brand spanking new + shiny as the Jones’ model. Praise would be as obscenely uneconomical and indulgent as too much dripping with your piece of bread in the depression. Hence babyboomers’ over-ambition, focus on GDP growth, struggle with feeling self-conscious when giving praise, and with moderating criticism.

Revised poetry obsolescence theory

Rather than poetry having died some time in the last few hundred years and the spirit moving to rap, instead maybe it was always rap and “poetry” (written for personal reading or read out loud without a chanting rhythm) was just a period of rap that had the point ripped out of it, a ghost period where the spirit left.

The chanting aspect of rap makes inarticulate people tap into a part of their brain that breaks down the idea/word barrier. Poets have been writing in a structure without realising the meaning/purpose of the structure. Maybe Shakespeare’s works were chanted/rapped. Especially considering how long they are when spoken - how could the masses concentrate that long?