Joseph Van Landschoot’s Tales Within is a book comprised of six short stories: Space Maze, Paradise in Trouble, Honey Trapped, The People’s, The Devil You Thought You Knew, and Z o n e s. It can be found on Amazon and Smashwords.
Each story holds a strong concept and character motifs, with an emphasis on grasping the situation that each character finds themselves in. Space Maze inspired the creation of the short story collection, while Zones was an ongoing YouTube series. After beginning Tales Within, the ending to Zones has been intentionally withheld and now exists only in written form! So be sure to pick up a copy. Thank you.
Impossible places. It’s a vague title, I know, but I didn’t know what to officially call this one. Today, I want to go over the concept of impossible places, but ones you desire deeply to go to. Kind of like the inverse to liminal spaces. Where one gives an eerie sense of familiarity, one that hints toward a nightmare scenario of a real childhood experience you had in a specific environment that you buried deep in your subconscious, only now for it to come back to haunt you, the OTHER is one that has no connection to anything you know, and is almost always an environment you can never go to, but deeply desire to.
Welcome back everyone to another Thoughts piece by me, ya boy, Joe Van. So I want to start things off by giving you guys an example of this topic through my first brush with it. Considering I hardly have the words now to define this sensation, you can imagine when I first felt this as a child. I think I was in grade 3 or 4. I finished reading the Deltora Quest series and their subsequent spin offs by author Emily Rodda, and learned about another series she had written called Rowan of Rin. While reading it she described the land Rowan lived in. It had Irish-style rolling hills with a monumental mountain on the horizon line. At this point in my life I wasn’t drawing Canada as just a circle anymore. Hold the applause, thank you thank you. I knew the basic layout of the world. I was also previously exposed to other fictional lands like middle earth and the afore mentioned Deltora, so the concept wasn’t alien to me, yet for some reason with this specific place of Rin… It did something to me. It gave me a longing I had never felt before. I had dreams about being in that land. I told my mom about it and asked her if such a place existed, and she shrugged, suggesting Switzerland or the UK without such high mountains, but it settled in my mind that I would never truly be able to visit a place I had such a vivid imagination of. It was disappointing in an existential kind of way, like when you truly grasp that you will die one day.
I was able to get on with my life, but the feeling of longing for impossible places never went away, it just moved on. I found infatuation for places like 2005’s The Fountain’s future spaceship bubble, or Halo’s ring. It gave me a love for clouds, and space, these places I will never go, or maybe I had this love all along and I’m just attributing an initial trigger to Rowan of Rin because it’s the first time I felt so strongly for such a thing, but however you spin it, it has become an integral part of my personality. Films like the Matrix, Cube, and the YouTube series of the Back Rooms all scratch that larger than life itch I have.
I’ll regularly download pictures of nebulae or illustrations of otherworldly environments from the internet just to look at in admiration. What am I doing when I do this to myself? Am I a masochist? Am I exercising my own restraint? Humbling myself? Reliving that strong childhood feeling I had in late spring? All of the above? Who knows for sure. Even if I spent an extensive amount of time with a psychoanalyst, I feel like they would just come up with their own meaning to explain what I’m feeling just to shut me up about it. The whole thing is otherworldly at its core so how can it truly be locked down in a digestible explanation?
The best I can do with this video is give a theory or two to scratch at the itch of having an answer. We humans have certain instincts, like hunger, sexual desire, defending family and friends, and having fun at musical venues. These are all generally part of what makes us human. Another instinct I think we have, that comes out in today’s culture with the travel freaks, is a sense of exploration, a sense of entering the unknown. Other animals show similar activity like those that migrate, following the foods and seasons, but with humanity there’s clearly something more existential going on. We were all once homeless, in a sense. Before agriculture existed, there was little reason to settle down in one location, and so we ventured out into the unknown. At first it was with nothing but the newly invented meme that would be called clothing. It kept us warm in the colder climates, which had essentially life hacked our biology. We were now unlocked, able to go anywhere we dared. And that’s what many of our ancestors did. They explored never-before-seen lands; grassy hills, pine woods, beaches, swamps, rocky cliffs, mesas, seas, and mountains, Gandalf, mountains! This period in our collected history of constantly experiencing new incredible landscapes lasted tens and tens of thousands of years. It effectively changed the way we think. Evolution is a slow process, but incremental change can occur in a timespan like that.
Our psychology, as the smartest creatures on this planet, are rightfully complex and hard to crack, especially for our own selves. So it goes that I tip my hat to the universe, time, and all things and inventive people that changed the course of our species’ lives forever, bringing us to this point. While I wish I had all the answers, to both the universe and my own psyche, there is a strange sense of admiration and awe in the face of the unknowable, in a longing for impossible places, and in the drive for exploration.
And that’ll wrap up today’s Thoughts piece. As always thank you so much for listening, I wish you nothing but love in your life, and remember if any topic or concept peeks your interest to make sure to dig into it further by doing your own research, and finally remember to keep on thinking. If you liked this thoughts piece you might also like the final frontier. Until next time, ciao for now.
It’s late at night, and you’re home alone. You’re young and this is the first time it’s happened. You were excited at first but as the sun’s light faded beyond the horizon and darkness covered the outside world, you were compelled to turn on every light in the house. An urging sense of fear overtook you, and now you’re checking every room to make sure you really are alone. Next are the windows. You pull every drape and drop every blind. If a window doesn’t have one, you close the door to that room. You check for any slight crack in the coverings, and now become acutely aware of every subtle sound there is to hear. A ticking clock. Distant traffic from the main roads. A faint sound you can’t label. It was a wisping sound, or was it a whisper? At this point you are terrified, but you don’t know what about. You hear the sound again. It isn’t the wind. It can’t be. It isn’t consistent enough. What is it? You feel like you could die as you stand still in the living room, you head bowed, your fists clenched. All you can do now is listen. The sound comes again. It lasts for no more than 2 seconds, but it echoes in your mind on a constant loop.
You will not survive the night. You are certain of it. You can imagine someone breaking in, or they are already inside, waiting to simply reveal themselves to you. The sound comes again. It is beginning to have a pattern. Maybe it is just the wind, coming in small gusts, or maybe that’s just what it wants you to think. It is no longer an imagined person. It could still be human, but now it could also be a creature, one that has the same intelligence as humans, maybe even more, and it is a predator. Right now, it is slowly driving you mad before taking its action. Is it an alien? A vampire? A demon? An eldritch god? Some other form of entity so terrifying and unknowable that to even fear such a thing doesn’t make sense. You are already dead and don’t even know it. Could this all be a dream? Or are you in purgatory? The sound comes again. This time it brings a wave of relief. At least the sound is something real. It brings you back to the present. Your fear seems to revert. You imagine a human intruder again, come to kill you. But then that fear slowly fades away too. You raise your head to find yourself where you’ve always been, alone in your house. You feel foolish to have let yourself become so psychologically vulnerable. You take your first step in a while to realize that your muscles are sore from standing.
You make your way to your bedroom, sick of the night and wanting to sleep it all away. You close the door behind you, thinking you should turn the lights off, but won’t fear creeps back into your mind and you do everything you can to push it back down. You turn your lamp on and turn the main lights off. It seems darker than it should be, but you know your eyes will adjust. You get in bed and distract yourself by listening to music. It works profoundly well, carrying you off to sleep. But then, you hear a sound. It’s not a wisp, it’s a creak. You look down the length of your bed and your room has become longer than you remember. It stretches away from the lamp’s light into pure darkness. In that darkness you become aware of a presence. It doesn’t make a sound. You can’t see it. There is no way you can know anything is in the darkness, but you know with complete certainty that your gaze into the void is being met right back.
It’s not right, none of it is right. It shouldn’t have come to this. If you were always going to die tonight, why couldn’t it have been when you were standing in the living room? Why did IT wait until you asleep in bed to come for you? IT must have wanted that fear to subside. Maybe it makes a fresh wave of fear even greater? The thought is sickening. It seems sexual- like the act of intercourse being prepare beforehand by foreplay. It’s evil. You hate it. You hate this thing with everything you have. You want to kill it, trash at its throat, screaming the whole time. But as you lay, you are still, and silent. Your mind is on fire. And then…
You wake up. Natural morning light cascades into your bedroom, even against the muffling of drapery, and you blink to assure that you really are awake. The light beside your bed isn’t necessary so you turn it off. You feel like a spell is lifting. You remember how terrified you were last night but can’t pin down about what. Against your own wishes to forget the whole ordeal, you rethink what happened, trying hard to relive every moment. It started with lights, then the windows, then sounds. The fear appears again. It trickles down your spine like a faucet turned off that still had a few drops to release. You catch yourself attempting the same self-destructive imagining that cause you to become so afraid before. But as you do so you still question your own thinking, wondering why you tried to hard to make yourself afraid. And afraid of what? You couldn’t pin that down either. It wasn’t exact. It was a shapeless, out of focus fear. The main thing was that you didn’t know. Whatever it was you feared, you simply didn’t know.
Thank you for stopping by for to another thought piece by me ya boy Joe Van, and the topic today is: Fear of the unknown. I’ve covered fear before, but not like this.
I was born into a opened, burning world. Its wrath is old, tenable, and ceaseless. My fingers coil and brow furrows. I struggle to rise. The air weighs heavy on me. I pain to see through muddied light, but it seems, sadly, only the same sits staring on the horizon.
Yet something stirs. Now change comes. I feel a breeze. Wind brings new feelings. But it is a chill. My skin prickles. I wince and recoil, left only with one choice; I must construct a carapace for the long road ahead.
Nowhere is safe. Both burning and chills pass all obstacles to meet me. They breach the external self, and the internal. I am consumed by it. The carapace is all I need. Day and night I toil under the weight of it all.
Yet its construction will never end. Nothing can save me from the struggle. Momentary relief enters between waves, but are only destined to end. The pain persists. I may never complete my carapace, may, but I CAN do one thing. I can only persist. Persist, until my time is done.
Here’s the first video of 2022! Welcome back, and to kick things off we’re going to start with this little micro review of the novel Authority, from the Southern Reach Trilogy. Here we will go over one single scene in the novel and break down how it nails everything a scene can and should be. I hope y’all enjoy! Let me know if you’ve read Authority and/or if you feel the same way about this scene from pages 144 and 145.
Welcome everyone to episode #39 of The JAD: Unplugged! Joe, Aidan, and Derron are here with special guest Michael to give you insight on the topics covered in today’s episode: -Technology -Ghosts -Couch Guy
Welcome back to episode 68 of Joe Van’s Secret Podcast, where I have on another new guest. We talk about the simulation, relationships, multiple best friends, enjoying just yourself, dealing with realities of life, narratives bad actors with good intentions have, and the supernatural! Enjoy.
Welcome everyone to episode #33 of The JD: Unplugged! We re-welcome Aidan A.K.A. Movie Motel to spit more reviews on movies. The topics we cover in today’s episode are:
-Reunited at long last! -Jolt Review -The way of the world by narratives (A PSA by Joe Van) -Black Box Review
Hola Primate Nation! Welcome to another addition of Monke in Review, where we go over monkes both big and small across history! Today I present: Harambe the gorilla. He changed the world, sadly, in his martyrdom. But with his loss the collective internet began paying more attention to primate treatment in captivity. However, it was not enough. God saw what we did, and we’ve been living in his judgement ever since.
Hola Primate Nation! Welcome to another addition of Monke in Review, where we go over monkes both big and small across history! Today I present: Crystal the Monkey. She is as famous as she is talented.
Welcome one and all to PART 3 of the 2000’s MOVIES TIER LIST! Met with special guest host Samantha, we dive deep into our decade of young movie fun! Enjoy the final chapter!
Welcome one and all to PART 2 of the 2000’s MOVIES TIER LIST! Met with special guest host Samantha, we dive deep into our decade of young movie fun! Enjoy.
Welcome everyone to episode #19 of The JD: Unplugged! Today we have on another new guest while one of the co-hosts digitizes themselves! The topics we cover in today’s episode are: -Our location situations -Our guest’s experiences with movies -Gender stereotypes -Guest’s life speed round -Multiple personality order PODCAST: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/jd-streams/id1541025716
Welcome everyone to episode #18 of The JD: Unplugged! The topics we cover in today’s episode are: -David Dobrik’s downfall -H3’s role in the previously mentioned downfall -Justice League OG and the Zach Snyder cut -The dance of life PODCAST: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/jd-streams/id1541025716
Welcome again to Z o n e s. Follow our protagonist between worlds, before and after ‘the war’. His journey continues from zone to zone, while life in the city changes. A new mysterious figure haunts his dreams, and new love is sparked. Enjoy!
Welcome everyone to episode #12 of The JD: Unplugged! Today we have on a new guest with a wide array of work experience, both inside the film industry and out. The topics we cover in today’s episode are: -MOVIES! Snyder’s cut, eXistenZ, Strange Days -Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit -Xbox Game Pass -Halo Infinite -Endless email subscription -Audio devices are actual magic -Location situation -Freezing windmills -Greenland, The Day After Tomorrow -Joe’s 2012 end of the world experience -Horse Girl PODCAST: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/jd-streams/id1541025716
Welcome everyone to episode #14 of The JD: Unplugged! Today we have on double the dose of guests, both NEW, to talk about their lives. The topics we cover in today’s episode are: -Location situations -The last three years for our first guest -Ever-changing work life -Trekking in deep snow -Neanderthals -British Columbia -Travel issues -A frozen Texas -WandaVision season two with FUTURE tropes! PODCAST: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/jd-streams/id1541025716
Welcome back to episode 64 of Joe Van’s Secret Podcast, where I have on our new guest from last episode to continue the question train! We talk about our earliest memories, his second-hand experience with cults, a stable outlook on being alone, instinctual fear, and aliens! Enjoy.
Welcome everyone to episode #13 of The JD: Unplugged! Today we have on double the dose of guests, both returning, to talk shop. The topics we cover in today’s episode are: -Our Valentines’ -Location situations -Talking shop: the creative process -Research -Aidan being an extra -Keeping a grip on I.P.s by any means -Evil Disney and gas prices -Being rude to save yourself -Movies and television to look out for! Judas and the Black Messiah / Raised by Wolves / Horizon Line / and more!… PODCAST: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/jd-streams/id1541025716 #Canada #Podcast #Unplugged
Welcome to episode 62 of Joe Van’s Secret Podcast! In this episode I talk to a new secret guest about their work, rebellious adventures online, the power of optimism, finding peace in the randomness of our seemingly endless multiverse, and understanding human nature as natural. Enjoy!
Welcome everyone to episode #12 of The JD: Unplugged! Today we have on a new guest with a wide array of work experience, both inside the film industry and out. The topics we cover in today’s episode are: -Location situations -Nicknames -Work situations -Derron’s lost tooth -Tiff, working out, and work space -Joe’s journey to the film industry -Hard work trashed -Joe’s parking lot fight, New York mentality -“Treat every conversation like your last one.” PODCAST: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/jd-streams/id1541025716 #Canada #Podcast #Unplugged
Welcome everyone to episode #11 of The JD: Unplugged! The topics we cover in today’s episode are: -Location situations -Wisdom teeth -Cleaning Dave & Busters -Savage gifts -Game stonks -Foodies -Female hygiene products overpriced! -Reopening for the virus -Breaking into NASA #Canada #Podcast #Unplugged
Welcome everyone to episode #10 of The JD: Unplugged! We have two new guests on this week as we dive into the ever-changing landscape of exponential growth. The topics we cover in today’s episode are: -Location situations -Gaming iterations -Cell phones -Marketing -Napping and isolation -Progressive countries and conservative ones -Mounties and inequality -Hope and change #Canada #Podcast #Unplugged
The topics we cover in today’s episode are: -Location situations -Business independence -Politicians failing -Finding work -Helping others -Onlyfans -Sound of Metal and finding stillness -Karma -Visual information #Canada#Podcast#Unplugged
Welcome everyone to episode #7 of The JD: Unplugged! The topics we cover in today’s episode are: -Location situations -Festival food (raised without crans) -Politicians going on vacation -New Year -A 15-year-long dream -Daylight savings -Vaccines -Overthinking -YouTube doc and Sorry to Bother You -Lifetime of work -Art and business #Canada #Podcast #Unplugged
Welcome everyone to episode #7 of The JD: Unplugged! The topics we cover in today’s episode are: -Location situations -Edgy horror movies -The Wilds, peak boredom -What constitutes true struggles -Moral dilemmas
Welcome everyone to episode #6 of The JD: Unplugged. Today we welcome back episode #1’s third man to the scene! The topics we cover in today’s episode are: -Our locations -Cyberpunk 2077 -Minecraft -History -Scale
Welcome everyone to episode #3 of The JD: Unplugged. Today we welcome a creative savant to the conversation! The topics we cover in today’s episode are: -Our locations -‘Rona vaccines -Eras -Aliens -Space -Neighbours -Bidets -Wiping -Parting words of wisdom
Welcome everyone to episode #4 of The JD: Unplugged! The topics we cover in today’s episode are: -Our locations -Auditory hallucinations -Food Poisoning -The Paranormal and unknown -Destiny giving Joe an Xbox -Murmuring
Welcome everyone to episode #3 of The JD: Unplugged. Today we welcome Joe Van’s sister to the conversation! The topics we cover in today’s episode are: -Our locations -Protest -Lockdown -Businesses and taxes -Toilet paper rolls -Sundays or Mondays -Gendered roles -Mini worlds and babies -Dumb names -Scissors -Mandelbrots
Welcome everyone to episode #2 of The JD: Unplugged! The topics we cover in today’s episode are: -Our locations -Books -Afterlives -Antz and A Bug’s Life -Bruhs during COVID-19 -Dad jokes -No Regrets -Our friendship!
Welcome back everyone to the EE EH, also known as the Triple A podcast! Where we talk everything AA from alcoholism to recovery. In today’s episode we talk about the American election and what it means to not drink even when it seems like the right time. Enjoy!
Welcome everyone to Derron and Joe’s newest podcast series titled: The JD: Unplugged! For episode one we have on friend of the show Aidan from Movie Motel, to talk all things current in our crazy world. We had a blast opening this first chapter and we hope you all enjoy!
Welcome back everyone to the AA EH, also known as the Triple A podcast! Where we talk everything AA from alcoholism to recovery. On today’s podcast, we go over the changing seasons and how that affects people in Canada and abroad. Enjoy!
Welcome back everyone to the AA EH, also known as the Triple A podcast! Where we talk everything AA from alcoholism to recovery. On this episode we review the sequel to The Shining: Doctor Sleep, and discuss our takes on its portrayal of alcoholism. Enjoy! #AAEH #Alcoholism #DoctorSleep
Welcome to episode 62 of Joe Van’s Secret Podcast! In this episode I talk again, for the third time, with our first new guest post-COVID! This time we go over whether or not all of reality is simulated. We also talk about ideas, emotions, the concept of the 4th physical dimension, and personal beliefs. Enjoy!
Welcome to episode 61 of Joe Van’s Secret Podcast! In this episode I interview a newly acquainted gentleman and professional who specializes in the therapy of the body. In his words, he ‘beats people up until they’re better’. I couldn’t have put it better myself. Enjoy!
Welcome back everyone to the AA EH! Also known as the triple A podcast, where we talk everything from alcoholism to recovery. In this episode we go over societal norms around drinking and how smoking has changed. As well as the potential inclusions of parties for the future. Enjoy!
In episode forty-one of Thoughts, I read to you guys from the beginning page of my four completed novels. I start the narrative with a mini thought piece to prime y’all for the what the story will cover. Let me know if you guys liked this video however you can! It’s greatly appreciated. Enjoy!
Everyone welcome the 3rd and newest series to this RSS feed! The AA EH, also known as the triple A podcast! Where we talk everything AA from alcoholism to recovery. Co-hosted by Joe Van and Derron G. In our 10th episode, we catch everyone up to speed with the two of us and how we’ve been since Canada’s lock-down. Enjoy!
In episode forty of Thoughts, I talk about the one thing we all perceive yet all perceive differently: reality. I go over how much we know or could know about reality, along with how our minds construct the reality we all personally experience. Enjoy!
Well, once upon a time, Adam and Eve were made by God. According to the creation myth of the Abrahamic religions, they were the first man and woman. Okay, okay, I’m just messin’ with you, but for the longest time this story and others (where we all came from one pair) was the only answer we would get when asking about our origins? I mean, how could we possibly imagine what it really was before hard scientific work was put to it. After all, as magical as creation myths are, they don’t really answer the question, do they? So where did we really come from? Some fun folk suggest, or imagine, that we were once Martians before we nuked the atmosphere and fled to Earth. That’s why we have back pain and childbirth can be so lethal, because we were once from a planet that had less gravity. But, that still doesn’t work with what we know about reality, does it? So, where in the heck did we TRULY come from?
Most people can clearly see that we hold several similarities to chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans, and gorillas. They have opposable thumbs, expressive faces, and bipedal tendencies. The reason for these similarities is because… of these four great apes, we are the fifth! That’s right. There are five great apes on Earth and humans are one of them. An ape, or great ape, is any tailless primate, and seeing how we are primates and tailless, we fit in that category. So how did we come to be so clearly different from our discursive species cousins?
Wayyyyyyyyy back 85 million years ago, before the extinction of the dinosaurs, a common ancestor for every primate existed: Purgatorius. Then evolution did what it does, as it had always been doing, and diversified. Purgatorius migrated to separate areas and occupied different environments. These hominoidea then mutated through hundreds and thousands of generations, and completely new species developed. This is where a separation from monkeys and apes began. Certain primates stayed small with long tails while other grew big. Lemurs and Lorises were the earliest ancestors to branch out, around 60 million years ago.
Tarsiers split from our common ancestors 55 millions years ago.
Then 30 million later the final connection between monkey species and ape species would be forever separated. New world monkeys then old world monkeys (Yes it’s in reverse) continued to diversity on their own. Let’s take a moment to press ‘f’ in the chat to pay respects, and wave goodbye to all the monkeys we will forever drift further away from in lineage.
Gibbons were the next species to delineate, being labelled not as monkeys but as the one and only lesser ape, most closely related to orangutans.
Which means orangutans were the next species to splinter from our common ancestors, nine million years ago. Then gorillas parted ways around eight and a half million years ago, putting us closer and closer to human-looking creatures. The present day is catching up to us quick!
Six and a half million years ago, the genus ‘pan,’ which became bonobos and chimpanzees, forever delineated from our common ancestor. For this reason, they are our closest inter-species cousins. There are many physical mannerisms and sociological traits that mirror humanity’s because of this. If you’ve ever had the luxury of seeing these guys in action you can catch them doing things we would do, like flinging feces- wait, wait… actually… that is something people have done throughout history. Okay, chimps, you do you.
At this point our ancestors were the hominin category of species that we are still connected to today, but our lineage kept changing. Human still wouldn’t exists for another five million years. The famous ‘Lucy’ fossil was from around three million years ago from the species Australopithecus. They were still very chimpanzee-looking but at that point only led to us. Homo habilis came about one million years ago, leading to homo erectus. Homo erectus as the name suggests were the first stages of a purely upright species. They were around from one million to 600 000 years ago, leading to homo sapiens.
Now you might be thinking, “We made it! It’s us- who we are today! Hooray!!” And listen, I don’t wanna rain on your parade, but I’m just gonna stop you right there! Take a step back from that cheer and calm down, partner! We’re not there yet. Homo sapiens are discovered to have come about around 400 000 years ago, but it’s still early days. Believe it or not, the ancestors we refer to as cave-people: Neanderthals, actually came about more recently than homo sapiens!; around 200 000 years ago. However, they no longer exist today. Some would suggest it was due to their inferior communication skills to the homo sapien sapiens- whos’ anatomical ability to form vowel sounds (with their larynx lower in the throat, allowing for better resonance of vocal waves) kept them going. I am not one of those people, though. I haphazardly subscribe to another theory, as it is currently undecided in the scientific community, one which brings us to an uncomfortable truth about ourselves: our capacity for genocide.
According to Canadian scholar Adam Jones, if a dominant group of people had little in common with a marginalized group of people, it is easy for the dominant group to define the other as subhuman. As a result, the marginalized group might be labeled as a threat that must be eliminated. He writes, “While history today is generally written with some fealty to ‘objective’ facts, most previous accounts aimed rather to praise the writer’s patron (normally the leader) and to emphasize the superiority of one’s own gods and religious beliefs.” Hypotheses which suggest that genocidal violence may have caused the extinction of the Neanderthals have been offered by several authors, including Jared Diamond and Ronald Wright. This capacity for brutality can be found in our cousins, the chimpanzees, so it’s not a uniquely human trait, but it is nonetheless one- if not THE- worst trait we possess. 30 000 years ago, after homo sapiens spent thousands of years interbreeding with Neanderthals, they went extinct. All we have to go on is fossil records so it’s not like we have detailed accounts of a great war being fought, but it is clear that they were blinked out of existence and we were not, so it’s unlikely they suffered some rare disease or environmental disaster because it would have happened to us as well.
Moving on from the darkness, we will pedal backwards to 40 000 years ago. Cro-Magnon appeared; the most human-looking ancestor yet, and even this subspecies faded from time about ten thousand years ago. Now for one final backward pedal, our current lineage of humanity: homo sapien sapiens first came about 120 000 years ago, though it’s still debated if it could be older. For a long time, ancient structures like the lining of houses gave us hints at human-kind’s first civilizations back around 100 000 years ago in Africa, but that too is in debate as more recent findings might point us literally double as far back in prehistory, around 200 000 years ago. Our inability to glimpse the past other than through bones and scraps makes it all so mysterious.
What exactly was it like back in the earliest known civilizations? As we find ourselves now, humanity records everything. We created religions, migrated across the globe, created businesses, and governments. If anything jumping into the question of ‘where did we come from?’ grants, it’s a scale of time that we rarely glimpse and still won’t be able to comprehend even after going over these biological facts. The vastness of time dwarfs humanities entire history. Everything we currently know through teaching, from philosophy, to art, to mathematics, and physics, all comes from this long trial and error effort of survival from our countless ancestors. The world we know today has been given to us by great minds and everyone else who did their best to utilize the knowledge and spread it across the world.
Our quest to understand where we come from is not done, however! The vastness of what brought us to being biologically human is complete, but what about our lost civilizations to our current recorded history? I shall make that a part two of this! So stay tuned for that article to know when it comes. Until then, I appreciate all of your time, wish you nothing but love in your life, and ask you to remember, to keep on thinking! Byebye.
In episode thirty-nine of Thoughts, I go over Astrology, it’s history, objects and subjects involved in it practice, and my views on its legitimacy. Enjoy!
In episode thirty-eight of Thoughts, I talk about growing up, from childhood to adolescence to adulthood. Life holds so many changes for us and we’ve charted them to great detail, save narrowly for the ending of adolescence, in my mind. I go over this and what it means to really grow up. Enjoy!
In episode thirty-seven of Thoughts, I talk about Nintendo’s beloved video game franchise: the Legend of Zelda! With its countless iterations, each one reviving the characters we know and love, the Zelda series covers vast generations. Have you played any Legend of Zelda games? Let me know!
Before getting into it, I just wanted to preface this piece by saying that if you believe in astrology, turn away now! I come at it with my biases and am rude to the subject. Now, with that said…
Ahh the reading of one’s psychology through the motion of planets and stars, peak science. Welcome back everyone to ya boy, Joe Van, and my thoughts on given topics. Today we are covering astrology, not to be confused with astronomy, a natural science that studies celestial objects and phenomena. Where astronomy uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain the origin and evolution of the macro-verse… astrology (as a pseudoscience that claims to divine information about human affairs and terrestrial events by studying the movements and relative positions of celestial objects) uses tarot cards, newspaper pages, and apps; all done by con artists and true believers.
The similarities between these subjects are their objects of interest: planets, moons, stars, nebulae, galaxies, and comets. Where they differ is on the relationship of these objects to us humans here on Earth. Astronomy makes no claim that our universe has any pulling effect on our psychology, except to poets when they look up at a clear night sky. Astrology has been dated to at least the 2nd millennium BCE- or ‘Before Common Era’, and has its roots in calendrical systems used to predict seasonal shifts and to interpret celestial cycles as signs of divine communications. Many cultures have attached importance to astronomical events, and some, such as the Hindus, Chinese, and the Maya, developed elaborate albeit arbitrary systems for predicting terrestrial events from celestial observations.
Western astrology, one of the oldest astrological systems STILL IN USE, can trace its roots to the 19th–17th century BCE Mesopotamia, from where it spread to Ancient Greece, Rome, the Arab world and eventually Central and Western Europe. And one can see why it spread as far as it did. Aside from giving divine meaning to our every moment, it stroke peoples’ egos. Contemporary Western astrology is often associated with systems of horoscopes that purport to explain aspects of a person’s personality and predict significant events in their lives based on the positions of celestial objects. So now let’s get into the nitty-gritty.
A horoscope is an astrological chart or diagram representing the positions of the Sun, Moon, planets, and astrological aspects meant to chart significance at the time of an event, such as the moment of a person’s birth. The word horoscope is derived from the Greek words ōra and scopos meaning “time” and “observer”.
The tarot is a pack of playing cards used from the mid-15th century in various parts of Europe, and is still used today for that function. BUT, in the late 18th century, some tarot decks began to be used for divination via ‘tarot card reading’, or cartomancy, leading to custom decks developed for such occult purposes. The earliest evidence of a tarot deck used for cartomancy comes from an anonymous manuscript around 1750 which documents rudimentary divinatory meanings for the cards. The popularization of esoteric tarot started with Antoine Court and Jean-Baptiste Alliette in Paris during the 1780s, using the Tarot of Marseilles. Regular French tarot card players abandoned the Marseilles tarot (a type of deck) in favor of the Tarot Nouveau around 1900, resulting in the Marseilles pattern now mostly being used by cartomancers.
Now let’s pivot back to the big picture. The zodiac is an area of the sky that extends approximately 8° north or south (as measured in celestial latitude) of the ‘ecliptic’, the apparent path of the Sun across the Earth over the course of the year. The paths of the Moon and visible planets are also within the belt of the zodiac.In Western astrology, and formerly astronomy back in its infancy of science, the zodiac is divided into twelve signs, each occupying 30° of celestial longitude and roughly corresponding to the constellations: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces.These astrological signs form a celestial coordinate system, or even more specifically an ecliptic coordinate system, which takes the ecliptic as the origin of latitude and the Sun’s position at vernal equinox as the origin of longitude. So there you go! That’s the origin of latitude and longitude!
But what does it all mean? Can a website really tell me what kind of person I am due to what day I was born? You might as well ask yourself this: can a medium really talk to your dead loved ones by guessing letters of their name? It is… unfortunately… a trick. Or is it? Technically, if you follow the words of your tarot card reading to the letter then it did actually come true! You acted exactly as the stars predicted, but in doing so all you really did was commit a self-fulfilling prophecy. And EVEN if you didn’t follow your daily predictions to the letter but have found that external actions brought you to a place where many if not ALL of the things predicted came true, would that make it real and not a trick? Well unfortunately, that process of evaluation is called confirmation bias. When you want something to be true, you will find ways that it is and ignore other aspects that would say it isn’t, even if you’re not doing it consciously.
Isn’t it easier to understand that non-intelligent patterns exist in the universe, than imagine that elaborate celestial plans are being conducted to bring you love or good fortune? It doesn’t mean you should not get those things, just that if you did, it had nothing to do with the alignment of large object in space. There is one thing I’ll give you in that regard though; apparently rape and murder statistics go up on nights with full moons. We know the tides are caused by the gravitational pull of the moon, so what else could that pull be capable of? Irritation? Perhaps. Regardless, the world is endlessly fascinating without it having to have divine plans behind it, or have it be about you in some way. So with that, I shall say fin!
Thank you again so much for being here. I will endlessly appreciate your time with me. I love you all to no end, and remember to keep thinking!
Adolescence itself is the period following the onset of puberty, during which a young person develops from a child into an adult. We all know about adolescence. Aside from us personally experiencing it, countless coming-of-age movies and shows cover it. Most of the other major life changes are covered as well. Growing up is a thing collectively charted to great detail.
Starting as an only child to then having a sibling is one life stage found in films like Boss Baby and The Tree of Life. Both movies go through all the emotions that come with such an event… in their own way. Other stages are covered like making friends for the first time and navigating elementary school. Then having your first crush, and dramas in your friends’ group. Another is dealing with puberty in all of its insanity! Then one more extensively covered is trying to lose one’s virginity, like in Super Bad. Finally is the aspect of graduating high school with the future world looming over you and your friends.
All of these things cause radical inner turbulence and make for amazing story-telling, but one major life change that I feel gets covered very narrowly, (usually like in a montage,) is the ending of adolescence. Generally, the other major life changes are pretty uniform. First words, first walk, first friends, first day at school, first crush, and puberty; everyone goes through these beats in one way or another, but would it be crazy to think that not everybody passes through the milestone of adulthood completely? We’ve all heard of the people that peeked in high school, or in general I’m sure we’ve all come across adults that make us ashamed to be their peer.
Major societal life milestones are getting a job, getting a house, settling down with a spouse, and having children. While none of these are needed to mature to adulthood, they help par the course. The period of time between leaving school and making your way to independence is a tough road to walk. The future holds so many possible paths. A film that covers this period in its own unique way is The Social Network. But, something stopping this film from being a prime example of one leaving their adolescence for all to lean on is how Zucc has lived; in other words it’s not very relatable.
There are other films out there like the classic: Clerks, that are about young adults in the in between of still being a kid and being middle-aged. If anything, Clerks seems to be the blueprint for such a vague stage of life. We’re given a protagonist that’s down and out on their luck that hasn’t made much of themselves once leaving the nest, if they’ve even done that, and they find themselves stuck at that beginning ADULT milestone on the road of life. Then an inciting incident begins their journey to help them out of said rut. Now the only issue with this premise is that it can apply to any adult from 30 to 60. The new Bill and Ted movie coming out has that exact premise.
So is it just a thing that some people don’t necessarily grow up all the way? Well of course, humans are complicated, and external milestones don’t really tell us if an individual is a mature person per se, just that they did something other people that ARE mature have done. Someone can get a job, a house, get married, and have children, and still be standing at adolescence’s door. So our system at its core isn’t fool proof, but maturing usually means: coming to terms with or understanding our place in society as a whole, deciding in what way we wish to contribute to society, finding a mate or partner to love and parse life’s challenges with (like finding a home), then usually but not always either having children or adopting.
Why are there not more stories being told about the period or stage of all our lives when we leave our nest, or find our career job, or finish college or university? We all go through our twenties with way more variety than we all go through our teens, by the mere situation of our educational system, but its still a period of great growth for us all. Ending adolescence is the internal shift from taking orders to giving them, or from co-dependence to independence. It is the realization of our position as adults in society, no longer in school or under our parents’ rule. Ending adolescence doesn’t mean no longer being able to have fun or act wacky, it just means rising to the task of taking responsibility.
How are you guys, the readers, doing with life? Am I off-base with any of my thoughts on ending adolescence? What was it like for you to shift into adulthood, and when did it happen? Was finding your career a major milestone, or having your first child? Let me know anywhere you can comment! Thank you as always for taking your time to read. I truly appreciate and love you all! I wish you nothing but the best, and until next time, keep on thinkin’!
Welcome to episode 60 of Joe Van’s Secret Podcast! In this episode I bring back my first new guest post COVID-19 to continue our deep dive into various subjects! We cover the economy and how by not increasing pay during something like inflation IS in itself an action, we cover our earliest memories, health and fitness, milk, simple solutions, art, and emotional films. Enjoy!
In episode thirty-three of Thoughts, I am joined with a guest appearance by Ben from stuffwithben to talk about language! We give our take on what it is and what it means for us as a species. Enjoy!
Welcome to episode 58 of Joe Van’s Secret Podcast! Today I have my first NEW guest, post COVID-19. We waste no time jumping into heavy topics such as belief, hard concepts that will ne’er have an answer, working to learn how you want to work, and living situations. It was a blast to have him on by the mere earnestness he gives with his opinions, as you’ll hear. Enjoy!
When you think of tolerance, do you think of physical tolerance, or philosophical tolerance? The capacity to endure continued subjection to something, be it a drug, transplant, antigen, or environmental conditions, without adverse reaction, is physical tolerance. The ability or willingness to forbear something, in particular the existence of opinions or behavior that one does not necessarily agree with, is philosophical tolerance.
What should one tolerate? At high school dances there is a zero alcohol tolerance and that is easily understood at face value. In parenting, the adults must tolerate their children’s lack of understanding of things like table manners. Again without further explanation we all get that kids are wild because they’re in the middle of growing. In american society, people are charged with the task of tolerating injustices to not upset the status quo. Whether from your perspective that means not talking back against PC culture, or not protesting against police brutality toward unsuspecting people of colour, I leave for you to decide, but the one thing that’s clear is perspective plays a huge role in individuals’ capacity for tolerance.
Evangelical Christians are known to have little tolerance towards the idea of homosexuality. Twitter users by the very nature of how Twitter works have little tolerance for nuance. I have little tolerance towards people who think evolution is a lie. And I’m sure you, reader, have certain things that really push your buttons above others. While some people can tolerate almost anything like a zen master, it reveals what having a maximum tolerance achieves, or lack-there-of. In my piece, Importance, I talk about how people should care about things. If they didn’t, we as a species wouldn’t have found the motivation to get out of our caves and innovate! But this drive, though used to currently fight for equality in the western world, is the same drive that gave us religious wars, slavery, genocide, and all other terrible setbacks we as a species have endured because of the will of the powerful.
Civility is the hope for a brighter and more peaceful future in society, but it shouldn’t be expected right now when equality is not yet set. Right now in America, the vast majority of the population are white Christians, which also tracks to political power. If an atheist, Jew, Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist, or Jain tried to run for power, the masses would not vote them in. That shows a clear disparity against the minorities when the will of one group controls the others. The only things keeping Christians from enforcing their specifics beliefs like anti-abortion, anti-gay rights, and so on across America, is the separation of church and state laws. If they were not placed into effect by the country’s founders… America would be a much worse place currently. Now, if you have taken offence by my ragging on Christianity’s place of power in America, I’m sorry. It was not my intention to offend, but merely inform. The western world is currently the most inclusive pair of nations on the planet, but just because it’s not like Saudi Arabia or Japan, does not mean there isn’t still a long way to go with inclusion.
Tolerance by its nature does not spread evenly across a given matrix, it pulls and wanes depending on the population and vigor of groups of people, so all we can do is get it as close as we can to equality without loosing liberty and freedom in the process. Every person deserves a fair start at life. Kids deserve the benefit of the doubt while growing up. Pains deserve a modicum of tolerance before seeking to disband it. And as always, we all deserve love. Thank you for reading. I’ll talk to you guys next time.
In episode thirty-two of Thoughts, I talk about how conflict as an entity is fused to the meaning of life. It is what gives us rise whether we like it or not. Enjoy!
I gave you guys a late night thought of mine in Transient Thoughts, and here I just wanted to talk about late nights in general. They are the time of a 24 hour cycle where most people are asleep. It’s when it’s quietest in your corner of the world, and it’s when deep thoughts can emerge. Free from the pull of work and socializing, we have a chance at reflection. Our thoughts can breathe, with either brevity or torture. It can be a time of great peace, or great melancholy. Though, even under the ever-judging scrutiny of our own mind, late nights wash waves of benign calm across our brows, soothing any hard edges. Its ability on us is undeniable. Should we bathe in the glow of our computer screens, or walk under the pale moon light? Do we reminisce on the past, or ponder the possible future, regardless of what may come in the morning to follow?
Work, studies, exams, trials, or tribulations are not found in the moments of peace formed from the late nights, instead we get a chance to just breathe. The peace hark like a light cast to the dark sea, that we are indeed here. We are conscious. We are alive. Our past has gone and our future is unseen. Our time is limited, but in the moment it is infinite. In the moment, we are present with the buildings and the birds and the trees and the wind. The universe has been here long before us and will long outlast us, but in the moment, we are both here, together. Tomorrow we may be gone, but not now yet. No. Here, we find ourselves. Here we be, for an unforeseen moment more, and in it we can think about our place. Should we only do right with our time. Time will tell.
Thank you as always for giving me the opportunity of your eyes. I appreciate your time, and hope for you nothing less than love and peace.
Shamans and heroes! Serial killers and singers! Fame. The subject of fame is cool as hell because it’s one of those other things that’s completely unique to humans. It’s the state of being known or talked about by many people, especially on account of notable achievements. People the world over know who Tom Cruise is. It doesn’t matter if they’re young, old, rich, or poor. So where did this kind of thing come from? What are its humble beginnings?
There’s a term called altruism that is the belief in or practice of selfless concern for the well-being of others. In ancient times when our ancestors practiced in the life of hunters and gatherers, the hunters would often find themselves in dangerous scenarios. For example, we can imagine an encounter where a sabre-toothed cat. (BIG side note here but apparently the term ‘sabre-toothed tiger’ is incorrect, and even sabre-toothed cat is close to a misnomer {a wrong or inaccurate name or designation} where the sabre-toothed thing’s genetic lineage is actually closest to marsupials! {like kangeroos or opossums!} But that’s niether here nor there.) In ancient Canada, a tribe of humans would typically scatter away at the sight of a sabre-toothed cat, hoping the predator wouldn’t chase them from the others. But now imagine a man at the back of the pack, noticing their son or best friend at the front… and in that moment the man decided to run toward the beast, sacrificing his life to save the life of the others. The man would indeed most likely die from this encounter, and the hunters that returned would hail praises at the man’s altruism, or heroics. They knew of no such words then, but the rare ideal to strive towards would have been set in the tribe.
As once something that no one yet knew they could be, the idea of a hero set itself upon civilization. Tribes that never met would all have similar encounters of singing praises to one doing something selfless, through pure chance, before it became ingrained into humanity’s conscience as a whole. But, as we are social creatures of all different brain chemistrys’, tricksters too would come out of the woodwork. After all, many heroes perform feats of greatness and live to tell the tale, and tales are so easy to fabricate, so these tellers of tall tales would sow seeds of grandiosity to anyone that would hear it and do what they could to swindle those around them. Everyone wants to be a hero, but not everyone has the courage or opportunity to excel themselves to that status level.
Now, there were other forms of fame that spread word across the lands of early civilization, and those were the opposite of heroes: those were the monsters. Ones to fear, that killed women and babies, or performed cannibalism. These individuals had tribes across the land warn all they could of their evil deeds. As time moved on, both leaders, inventors, and killers were talked about by the masses across even larger stretches of land. To be famous was a thing people of all walks of life could achieve if only they were loud enough. Before long, entertainment grew in popularity. What was once something localized to theatres or circuses, entertainers could now be found at every city with a nickelodeon. (Not to be confused with the children’s channel owned by ViacomCBS, a ‘nickel odeon’ was what existed to show citizens motion pictures before movie theatres became commonplace.) Great dancers, singers, and actors stole the hearts of millions with their performances. It wasn’t long before Hollywood changed who we considered famous.
Infamy through wrong-doing hadn’t changed in the slightest since the concept’s birth, but fame was now for the taking by anyone talented or attractive enough. Interestingly, though, since the popularization of reality television in the 80’s and 90’s to what it’s become now, for one to be famous, you need only be a fucking wreck of a human being. Okay, that’s probably not granted. There’s tons of reality T.V. that shows decent people living their life or completing difficult puzzles, but so much emphasis has been put on people living their life wrong now-a-days like in 90 Day Fiancée. It has become something people love watching, and it’s clear to understand why. One might think, ‘my life might be subpar in my eyes but at least it’s not as bad as this person.’ Watching people be absolute disgraces is like a confidence booster! It feels good to know you’re better than someone else, that’s just how our brains work. It’s probably why jesters were such a hit for royalty back in the day. If the king wanted to de-stress from a long day of making potentially wrong decisions, he could just watch an idiot bumble around.
You could have thousands or even millions of people notice you on the street because of your career choices. You could be noticed as someone great, someone silly, someone disgraceful, or someone dangerous. You could choose to be someone famous, or it could happen against your will. You could be someone who thrives from all the attention, or someone who crumbles from it. Alternatively, you could be someone who seeks fame your whole life but never gets it. Fame, as stated at the beginning, is a uniquely human trait. Our closest genetic cousins, chimpanzees, hold many similarities to us like social class and war but even they do not register fame. Fame is a part of the language game. It’s the retelling of an individual without them there, be it for good or ill. It’s the recognition of someone’s existence without their recognition of yours. It’s the masses’ acknowledgement.
Do you want to be famous? Why or why not? Let me know! Thank you again for stopping by. I love you all, and I’ll see you next time.
At my elementary school, when you rose to grade five, you were inducted to the fictional island of Foo. You learned their language and pastime sports, and near the end of the year you would compete with your peers to claim victory in each category. That was the first and only time I truly learned another language. All you had to do was add ‘INIG’ in front of every spoken vowel. Hinigellinigo, minigy ninigame inigis Jinigoe. It was really cool to have an understanding of a different mode of communication than the one you were raised with. Don’t get my educational system wrong though, I was taught French from grade four to nine, but it didn’t stick in the slightest. My theory as to why, aside from me not paying enough attention, was because their sentences are reversed. So aside from having to learn every basic word in their dictionary, you also had to learn how to form sentences in a completely different way than what your brain was automated to do.
Language is a trippy thing. Think of how you would form thoughts without it. Think about trying to understand someone else without it. It’s downright impossible. Babies want things but have yet to learn language, and look at how hard it is to find out what they want when they cry. Same with dogs. “What’s that, girl? Timmy’s stuck in the well?!” Our entire civilization depends on our ability to communicate thoughts to each other using the best means we have. Certain academics use the phrase ‘language game,’ when they talk about how we are all using words in society. Is there a possibility that in the future we will outgrow language for something more streamline like telepathy?
It is known that the German language has a word for almost everything. Whenever we, the English speakers, find ourselves unable to find the right words to express a feeling or idea, the best we can do is combine other words. It never quite works the same as having the right word. There is another phrase used when talking about potential advanced A.G.I. (artificial general intelligence) called a ‘black box.’ It is used to describe how we are all living now, never truly knowing what everyone else is thinking. Our only window into another individual’s mind is their own ability and… permission?- allowance- for us to bear witness of their raw thoughts. Otherwise we truly have no idea what is going on behind their eyes.
Now we must ask, what in the world would we as a species do in the unlikely event that aliens really visited Earth? Would we say hi? Hola? Salute? Would we attempt communication through Morse code? What if they only communicated through dance? Or in reversed meaning, where happy was sad and peace meant war? What if they only communicated through dreams, acting aberrant and uncooperative in waking life if you tried to do anything otherwise not talked about beforehand? Our brains formed solely through Earth’s evolution, from scratch. Alien life could have radically different minds if they even resembled Earth-like organisms.
Language is what built the life we have now. As a society, talking to each other built us up to being technologically advanced. It allowed collaboration of nations, democracy, infrastructure, and general stability. But just like the internet, language as a tool is a double-edged blade. It can grant us the best possible life in our individual situations, but it can also give us great pain. Sticks and stones may break my bones, AND words do also hurt me. It’s scary how effective words can hurt us. We have no ability to stop hearing things in front of us. Sound enters our ears and our brain computes it into meaning (if we know the language) and there’s nothing we can do about it. We have the ability to use our words for ill, or for good. It is up to us how we use it, and how we react.
With that in mind, I suggest we put in the effort, or attention, to use our words for better. Thank you again as always for reading. I love you all! And I’ll see you next time.
Does life need conflict? More specifically, do humans need conflict in our lives to keep things interesting? Just look at animals in zoos for Pete’s sake. They got no worries in the world, but also nothing to do. Good stories certainly need conflict. And states of higher consciousness or enlightenment are merely momentary, so it leads one to wonder what our resting place is. We try so hard with everything we do to not try so hard with everything we do. New inventions are created to help us relax more and struggle less, but it has yet to bring people any kind of lasting peace. People are just as mired now in conflict as they were a thousand years ago. Life has definitely improved where we don’t need to be in physical pain all the time anymore, but our resting mental state is still one that looks for conflict to fuck with. It doesn’t matter how much we meditate, pray, or fast, if someone less enlightened than us fucks with our shit, it’ll work. Our shit’ll get fucked up. And those people will always come. As a species we are only as strong as our weakest link.
Even if we spend the next hundred years working as hard as we can to bring everyone to a place of proposed peace, what would happen if we got there? Nothing would happen, really. And then what would be the point of all our lives? Everything would be so docile. Our goal is one we strive towards, but in actuality is one we maybe cannot obtain. Like passing the speed of light, it is something we can only pursue. It’s similar to the idea of living forever. We all strive to live as long as possible, but no one really wants to live forever. It would strip away the meaning of life from us. And so, that is the conflict with conflict. We kind of need it, if only mildly. Though it can suck and hurt, conflict also gives us purpose.
I hope you guys have a great, exciting day. Thank you for reading. I love you all, and I’ll see you next time.
When you first saw Halo, were you blinded by its majesty? Before I jump into the video game that I’m actually referring to, let’s cover the other uses of the word. A halo is a disk or circle of light shown surrounding or above the head of a saint or holy person to represent their holiness. It’s also a circle of white or colored light around the sun, moon, or other luminous body caused by refraction through ice crystals in the atmosphere. Synonyms of halos are rings, belts, or bands.
So with that out of the way, let’s talk about the video game franchise. I could honestly make my YouTube channel a Halo channel, I love it so much. I’m honestly kind of annoyed at how much emotional power it has over me. The latest game is set to launch at the end of this year of our forerunners 2020 and I’ve been checking the r/halo Reddit every day since E3 2019. It’s sickly, guy, I’m a mess. So when did my love of these games start?
Growing up, my family was a Nintendo household and I loved it. I had the N64, the Game Boy Pocket, and then the GameCube and Wii when they came out. I didn’t even hear about Halo until grade nine, which for me was 2007. I made a new friend who came over to my place one day after school and we played Super Smash Bros. His reaction to it was honestly insulting. He ragged on the fact that it was a platformer and had inferior graphics to Call of Duty. He had just recently got an Xbox 360 with its new high definition graphics so my Wii couldn’t compare. After a few days of mulling it over, he decided to give me his old Xbox so that I could have a real gaming experience! I was beyond grateful. The only game he gave me with it was Halo: Combat Evolved. Everyone talks about this so I get how its not a unique experience, but when I started the second level and looked up for the first time, I was blinded by Halo’s majesty! I was in awe, and I was hooked. I remember getting my first legal job at 15 just so I could buy an Xbox 360, which I did, then I quit. I wasn’t really money oriented at that time.
So now for the people who’ve never played Halo, let me quickly break down it’s story. 500 years from now, humans take to the stars with slipspace engines that let them go father than we currently can, and with it we inhabit like hundreds of planets. After some wars between the UNSC and insurrectionists, our farthest out Planet, Harvest, makes contact with aliens for the first time. They’re called the Covenant; a collection of different species all working together to uncover artifacts of a long dead OTHER alien race that they revere as gods. So, side note, but why was humanity not inscribed into the covenant? It’s probably mentioned in a book, who knows.
The first game Halo starts in the middle of our space war with the aliens, and we’re losing. The Covenant has far superior weaponry than us so we never really had a chance. The ship you’re in comes out of slipspace after running away from the last planet we’ve inhabited aside from Earth. You play as John 117, better known as the Master Chief: his military rank, alongside Cortana as a chip in your head, Captain Keyes, Sargent Johnson, and Echo 419. You wake up to find that the ship you’re in has come across some kind of giant artificial planet in the shape of a ‘Halo.’ The aliens are on your tail so you descend onto the ring and fight on the ground. After discovering the Halo is a part of the alien’s religion, you seek to control it, later discovering that the ring is actually a giant weapon made by the ‘forerunners’ to wipe out all life in order to starve ANOTHER, parasitic alien species called the flood. Bingo bango, you blow up the Halo to save all life.
Second game brings you back to humanity where we’re still in the middle of losing. We get introduced to the Arbiter, an alien ship master that lost to you in the first game and must now make penance. As it turns out, the Covenant have no idea that firing the Halo will kill them all. They think it’ll teleport them to heaven or something. Meanwhile with the Master Chief, an alien fleet found Earth. Lucky for us, for the first time in a long time, we outnumber them, and force them to retreat into slipspace. You follow them this time and when y’all get out of slipspace, wouldn’t you know it but you’re at another Halo. You fight to destroy the aliens’ leaders but get picked up by an intelligent form of the flood, that instead of consuming you, convinces both you and the Arbiter to work with it to stop the Covenant from firing the ring. You do that and head back to Earth.
Third game has you back at Earth where the aliens are gaining the upper hand, but they also seem to be digging some structure up in Africa. You fight your best but run out of time as the aliens activate this forerunner device, creating a portal. They go through it and you follow. It leads to a Halo MAKER called the Ark. On the Ark, the Covenant can activate all the Halos scattered throughout the galaxy so you gotta stop them. You do, then save Cortana who got mixed up with the flood dude, blow up ANOTHER Halo and skip dodge as shit blows up. You nearly die but make it out only to be floating in a random part of space for an unforeseen amount of time.
There’s a lot I left out there but that’s the gist of the original trilogy that everyone loves. Years later, after I had played the prequel and spin off games, I headed to College. At this point a brand new Halo 4 was announced! I was excited for it but also nervous. It was the first new game by 343, who took the mantle of responsibility by Bungie, who had done 1-3, ODST, and the prequel. Would they continue Master Chief and Cortana’s story in a good direction? The game came out to mixed reviews by fans. Some loved it, some hated it. Most people hated the multiplayer because it copied Call of Duty’s load out system, and I agree to that point but didn’t care at the time. The only thing that grinded my gears was the Prometheans. They were a new robot-esque enemy to fight along with the Covenant, and they just aren’t good, man. Like, the Covenant are living things. Each species have their own history for how they ended up in the Covenant, and the faceless robots don’t have jack. Suffice to say, it didn’t feel like the same caliber of games as the O.G.s. At that point in my life I began to lean off of playing video games, for one reason or another, and the new Xbox One came out so I simply passed on the next Halo game that came to the system.
Halo 5: Guardians continued Master Chief’s story. In my mind they used that subtitle, Guardians, to lean off of numbers like they have now done with Halo 6. It’s been a marketing strategy used by other studios like Ubisoft with the Assassin’s Creed games. I’m not against it, but just thought I’d note it for y’all. Now, the story of Halo 5. Oie. Again, my opinions here aren’t unique but damn did they do Cortana dirty! And Buck (you don’t know him from me but he’s great,) but most of all, they did Chief dirty! They had such a bad writer come on to do this game. Like, guys! The reason people like Halo is because of its story! I mean, all of the other elements need to work too like the music, graphics, game play, multiplayer UI and so on and such, but the story is the hook! Anyway, at this point I wasn’t with it anymore. It sucked because I really loved the story. It kind of hurt not continuing with the franchise.
After many years passed, I started a relationship with the most gorgeous woman on the planet, and during Black Friday of 2018, she suggested I get a Nintendo Switch. It had been so long since I actually played video games, but now I wouldn’t be playing alone. It would be like my childhood when my siblings, cousins, and I played Mario Party and Mario Kart. So I got it, and really quickly got into the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I’d never been much of an open world player, but BotW on IP alone sucked me in. I was in love again with a gaming franchise! It wasn’t even a year later that I made up my mind that I was going to buy an Xbox One. I did so, buying the Master Chief Collection and Halo 5. I got Game Pass for a number of months and played Halo Wars 2 through that, and may I say, it was great. I’d say I was right at least to wait, because apparently MCC and Halo 5 at launch had HUGE problems. I never had to suffer any of it, luckily. The MCC has been going through new glitches as 343 ports every game to PC, but it gives me little grief knowing it isn’t permanent.
So there you have it! My time with Halo. The newest game is on the horizon (a potential end to 343’s trilogy) and they have decided to go back to Bungie’s art design. It has a lot of people happy, myself included, making this year not CONCLUDE quick enough! Is my love of this franchise a bit much? I’d say so. But hey, everybody’s gotta have a thing, right? For some people it’s religion, for some it’s sports, others it’s Star Wars, and me in part it’s Halo. Will all my dreams be answered from the new game? I figure, yeah. Whether or not it’s good like Halo 3 or bad like Halo 5, I just want the thing out so I can decide once and for all if 343’s a botch studio. Either way I’ll still give it 80+ hours of playtime/my life. One thing I’m wondering is what the fate of the Master Chief will be? If he’s continues on after this game’s campaign I feel like it might dull his appeal. That’s probably what they’ll do, but our boy is getting old! If he were to die or retire or something, it would feel granted in my mind. Let him rest I say, and give him a nice send off.
But any who! With that, I’d say my thought piece is finished. It’s done. Halo is one of those franchises deserving of its place in pop culture because of its rich story universe. There are endless books to read, forums to pose questions and theories on, and movies/shows to watch. What do you guys think will happen in Halo Infinite? Let me know! Thank you for reading and until next time, wake me when you need me.
In episode twenty-seven of Thoughts, I dive deep into the philosophical standpoint of Determinism. Is it the truth of reality? One must make up their own mind. Enjoy!
Love is compassion and attraction. It’s kindness and well wishes. It’s hidden magic, being in it, and something worth fighting for. If life is a game, love is the prize! It’s the one thing everyone wants. But does true love really exist? Sorry to keep playing the word game with you guys, but let’s look at what love is defined as, then what we understand it as. Love according to Google is an intense feeling of deep affection. I wouldn’t personally use those words to describe love, but that’s the definition. I’d say that’s definitely a type of love, but I’ve understood love in my life to be an unbreakable bond. It can waver, but exists as an absolute. No matter how much my dog might annoy me, I’ll always love him. Even if my family becomes estranged, I will still love them. In saying that, I feel like my dad and I never had love, so just because he’s my family there was never an initial love to tether the storm he brought upon my family. There can be other variables to your family not being people you should love, like if they are abusive, but usually families are the people you will always have in your life. And so, if you want to live a good life, you must love your family accordingly, if only at first for personal harmony.
There are many forms of love. You have the above mentioned familial love which can extend to friendship love, then you have general love for humankind, or a sports team, or your country, or some other form of people you will never meet per se. Then you have a deep ass love. That’s the meaning of life kind of love. Deeper than any love you could have otherwise. This type of love might actually branch to best friends, depending, but is usually reserved for a romantic life partner, and for your children. This is the love that keeps giving. It’s the daily love and drive of one’s existence. Ain’t no love like a lifetime love! It’s the number one love sought after by most. For this reason, so many people jump into marriages and end up divorced because it’s not what they thought it would be. Love still takes work. It’s not some unconditional coddling of a parent figure, it takes two. Expectations usually ruin relationships, like: poor communications that make one believe the partnership was going to be one way and ended up another way completely. This can also happen because people are still growing and they might end up becoming a different person than the other thought they would have for life.
Love is love. What can I say? Does true love exist? It does depending on the person. The thing comes in so many forms. How about I give you guys some fun facts at the end here. Did you know the shape of a cartoon heart is two real hearts together? Another one! Did you know that kissing was invented as a greeting, and later became incorporated as a romantic gesture? Before this it’s hypothesized that cave people we would sniff each other if they were romantically interested. Another fun fact, the drug of love that most people feel when they meet someone new that’s cute (hot) is an actual chemical, known as oxytocin. Oxytocin, not to be confused with oxycodone the pharmaceutical drug, releases naturally when we social bond. It becomes active during pregnancy too and plays a role in post birth for breast feeding, for some reason. It also has a negative side effect known as jealousy. The feeling of jealous is this hormone.
So there you have it! My weird take on love. It’s the best of things, it at times can be the worst of things like when you’re love sick with a crush you’re too shy to talk to. But either way, it’s undeniably us. Thank you so much again for reading. I freakin’ LOVE you all, and I’ll see you next time. Stay lovely!
Welcome to episode 57 of Joe Van’s Secret Podcast! Today I have another 2nd time returning guest come back from the top of the year to discuss their experience during Canada’s quarantine time. We talk about Black Lives Matters protests, films to watch, Jay-walking, what the odds are that we live in a simulated reality, and what we’re scared of. Enjoy!
Strength! Power! Austin POWERS. What is strength, and what is power? Strength is physical, and strength is emotional. Power is external control and authority, and control is an illusion. So what does that say about the people seeking power? One could say they’re chasing a fleeting dream, like chasing the pink dragon- something they might grasp for a moment or two before it disappears into a wisp of smoke. These two concepts of strength and power serpentine through each other, meeting in one field of thought and being completely separate in others. I was originally only going to write about strength in this thought piece, but figured it would be best to include power as well.
The word strength is defined as… wait. Oh my God. There are too many definitions. I can’t one-off this, you guys. Okay! So, let’s run off the list here. There are twelve definitions separated into five sections. SECTION ONE. 1) the quality or state of being physically strong. 2) the influence or power possessed by a person, organization, or country. 3) the degree of intensity of a feeling or belief. 4) the cogency of an argument or case. 5) the potency, intensity, or speed of a force or natural agency.
SECTION TWO. 6) the capacity of an object or substance to withstand great force or pressure. 7) the emotional or mental qualities necessary in dealing with situations or events that are distressing or difficult.
SECTION THREE. 8) the potency or degree of concentration of a drug, chemical, or drink.
SECTION FOUR. 9) a good or beneficial quality or attribute of a person or thing. 10) a person or thing perceived as a source of mental or emotional support.
SECTION FIVE. 11) the number of people comprising a group, typically a team or army. And finally 12) the number of people required to make a group complete.
So, what do these sections tell us about the nature of strength? The first two are pretty general, but the last three are separated properly. Third section is potency, the fourth describes an emotionally secure and mature person, and the last details military force. Who’d have thunk these vastly different fields would have such a core connection? Language is interesting in this regard. Strength means so many things! It as a concept really gets its worth. You could say strength is a STRONG ass word! Luckily, there are adjectives to help describe its many forms: Brawn, supremacy, intensity, force, stability, resilience, stoicism, aptitude, magnitude, anchor.We have body builders and we have mothers. We have Keanu Reeves, a man who has lost so many loved ones and still holds a positive demeanour, and we have life itself! Life is stronger than anything; throw asteroids at the Earth and life is still here!
Now where does power intersect with strength? Brute strength has power over another in a tug-of-war. In a fight, a lighter person could out-maneuver the heavier one but in something like tug-of-war, it’s done before it begins. In a game of wits similar to how polite neighbours might be nasty to each other, the one who best holds their emotional stability wins the power. To contrast, there are many cases where the weak can have more power, like in politics. Authority is where the abuse of power is found with individuals that may have never had a sense of control before. Strength is not needed to sign papers or bark orders, but great power is housed in it.
It’s a curious thing to have strength or power, and all the more to lose it. People who have just attained either, or have yet to lose one often look down on others without in however mildly disdain. Only when you lose one can you have a better perspective on life. Most people with more money than they need who give to specific charities, do so because they had someone in their life go through whatever the charity is aimed at. New people coming into the game of life as independent adults seek riches either because they were taught to, to compensate internal anguish, or because they grew up with very little and want their kids to have the opposite kind of life.
In the end, though, we lose everything. Any kind of power or strength you gain, will leave you before the end. It doesn’t matter how much you work out, how sharp you make yourself, how much you make or how many things you name after yourself, in the end we all lose to death. One can hope for a future world where we learn the humble lessons of past peoples and gain their perspective of what really matters in the end. We could maybe finally mature as a species, instead of one at a time and often too late, but that kind of thing is only a hope. I don’t want to write it off, but our minds are clearly wired to compete. And compete we will. Maybe we can compete to a point to equanimity one day- who knows.
One thing we do know, is that with all things, time will tell. Thank you again for reading. I love you all, and I’ll talk to you next time. Be good.
In episode twenty-three of Thoughts I go over the heavy subject of substance abuse, what factors play into how it develops and how breaking through mental walls is all part of living a better life. Enjoy!
In episode twenty-two of Thoughts, I talk about the concept of identity, what it is, what it means, where it could come from, and what we make of it. Enjoy!
Is determinism the truth of reality? For starters, what is the idea of determinism and what are its counters? Determinism is the philosophical belief that all events are determined completely by previously existing causes. Causal determinism in physics is known as cause-and-effect. It is the concept that events within a given paradigm are bound by causality in such a way that any state (of an object or event) is completely determined by prior states.
Now, there are two main counter philosophies: indeterminism, and predeterminism. In science, most specifically quantum theory in physics, indeterminism is the belief that no event is certain and the entire outcome of anything is probabilistic. Predeterminism to determinism is like Christianity to Catholicism. It’s the philosophy that all events of history, past, present and future, have been already decided or are already known (by God, fate, or some other force), including human actions. It implies that there is a conscious reason behind every event and a story to tell. Determinism tells no such story, other than: events happen because the previous thing happened.
When talking about determinism we have to start with the human aspect. Humans are us. Humans are smart. We develop our minds over time and grow in autonomy. This shift, from complete dependency as babies and children to general independence within society as adults, is the reason most of us think we have freewill. As youngin’s we have almost no control. Then we go through a ‘mine’ phase. Slowly we develop friendships, like with our cousins, fellow neighbourhood kids and classmates. It teaches us that there are others just like us and we should consider that in our actions, but we maintain holding on to our confused idea of control. It doesn’t help that most religions teach this too. To give the example of Christianity, they teach BOTH that we have free will so it is on us if we sin or not, but then completely contradict that idea by saying everything that happens both big and small are all a part of God’s plan. If every action you take, both big and small, are preordained through God’s plan, then you don’t have freewill. You’re actions are prepared and carried out as part of HIS will, not yours.
In the realm of science, freewill is proposed to exist in the multiverse theory. To extrapolate, if we are to choose left or right, two timelines branch out. We exist in the one where we chose, say, left and an alternate version of us exists in the other universe where we chose right. The issue with this idea is, how and what would constitute this branching process to happen in the universe? Are human minds so powerful that we rip portals in the fabric of spacetime, creating two universes to house the alternate choice? Isn’t it easier to propose that there is no alternate universe where you chose right instead of left? Because how did you chose something different? Let’s take a step back from where you chose left. What precursors lead your mind to make that decision? You might say nothing, that no influence affected that decision and you just thought about either or, and came to the decision of left through your freewill. People think they have way more control over themselves than they actually do. We are influenced by how other people treat us, both strangers and loved ones. We are influenced by childhood nostalgia and traumas. We are influenced by self reflection, and responsibilities. We are influenced by our diet, the last time we were sexually active, and literally every other factor. Were you stressed when you made this decision, or calm? Were you aware of the importance of the decision, or was it inconsequential? These factors will lead your mind to making the decision you make. If it is said as, not that our minds cause this branching phenomenon, but every interaction both human related and not human related have equal and opposite reactions in the infinite multiverse, then to that I say Occam’s razor. I understand quantum physics is trippy as hell, and when attempting to observe interactions we notice how particles can be in two places at once until we look at them (superposition). But what are the chances that reality in this regard is ‘boring’ and it just seems that way, and the particles are actually always only in one position?
A natural disaster like a flood is something that, in theory, we could predict days, months, or even years beforehand according to causality. All we would need is an entity like a computer to calculate every atom on Earth and beyond that would influence the weather. Today, we as a species have created a golfer robot that can calculate distance and wind to make a perfect hole in one, every time. What does this golfer robot tell us about how the universe works? It tells us that we live in a deterministic universe. That every action has a reaction, and that in theory we can predict these future actions because of the fact that they are determined through previous actions. Predeterminism or destiny is like the romanticized version of this. The only thing that makes reality a little colder than the idea of destiny is that, what is destined has no promised growing element to it. Imagine villagers who live under a volcano and one day it suddenly erupts. The villagers are destined to die, both adults and children. There is no sense to be made of it. It was just an awful event. Meaning comes from us because, to our core, we are social and pattern seeking. So we’ll say things like, ‘that terrible thing happened to those villagers to teach US not to live under volcanoes.’ And that’s fine, but it’s important not to be confused about the matter of fact.
The world isn’t cruel because of natural disasters. It isn’t cold because of evolution leading to predator and prey species. It just is. Racists, rapists, and murderers will always exist due to mismanaged human nature, but does that make what these people do non-committible offences? Of course not. It’s still actions against humanity. People who use that as an argument to the absurdity of determinism are as confused as those obsessed with control. The principle factor of punishing people has nothing to do with whether or not they were in complete control of their actions, it has to do with whether or not they committed the action. Our systems of punishment just need to be updated to accommodate the fact that people are crazy AND need to be jailed.
Is it more important to be deluded and happy, or aware and sad? I say it really shouldn’t be up to those two things. Sugar coating is fine in moments of emotional distress, but we as a species should overall have the same understanding of what the real world is and find a way to be okay with it. Santa is not real, but it still feels good to think we are being rewarded by our good deeds. Events happen with no teaching behind it, but we can still find silver linings without having to say ‘it happened as a part of God’s plan.’ Happiness and good will exist with or without a world view of us being in control or us being coddled by cosmic parents. Like I said earlier, to our core we are social. That’s where morality comes from. That’s where true happiness is found, in relationship with those around us.
Being kind and finding peace are not exclusive to predeterminism (kindness) or indeterminism (freewill/peace). We can understand what happens was always going to happen, without a story to it, and still be good people at the end of the day. It’s not paradoxical to understand freewill is an illusion AND understand your choices still matter. Being self aware of determinism ought not give you supposed free rein to act like a fool, but I mean, act however you want. Your reaction to these ideas was always going to be what it was, without cosmic good or bad intentions behind it. How to live a life with meaning ought to come from your own PERSONAL idea of your life and your place in others’ lives. Even if it’s not real, it still comes from collected, agreed upon perceived places of control. The concept of karma is interesting in this regard because it’s like karma does exist to a fault within society. If you’re a dingus, people will catch on and treat you bad in return. Karma, bitch. But that doesn’t extend to nature, meaning it’s not a fundamental law of reality.
When it comes down to me concluding this thought piece, think whatever you want about reality because the only ACTUAL important thing is that we all treat each other good. Even if you are confused about reality, so long as you aren’t hurting anyone, you’re doing a-okay. Security, harmony, and peace are the truly important things in life. It’s only once you have those, can these aspects of philosophy become something worth diving into. If you guys don’t know about the motivational psychological theory of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, it goes as such:
As always, thank you guys so much for being here! I love y’as, and I will see y’all next time.
In episode twenty-one of Thoughts, I talk about the theory of Dyson Spheres, their potential origin in myth, and what it means for us looking out in the universe. Enjoy!
Hey everyone! Here’s another video of me reading a sample of my writing. This time it’s the very beginning of my first book: Deviance. I hope you enjoy! For those hooked and want more, if you google smashwords and search my full name: Joseph Van Landschoot, you can find Deviance as an ebook for free!
Fear is tucking your daughter in for the night only to realize once you’ve closed the door that you don’t have a daughter. Fear is laying in bed as a figure walks into your room from the hallway and you can’t move. Fear is being three hours into a hike and hearing a crunch beside you, seeing a mountain lion crouch in preparation to pounce. Fear is the dark, fear is the unknown. Fear is the uncanny, or inhuman. Fear is the alone, and always being watched.
How would you describe fear? Seeing a face dart out of view from the corner of your window in the night? Or an elderly woman entering your personal space to whisper how you die? Fear is a guttural thing. Are you a fan of horror movies like me? It would make sense if you’re not. Fear is our instinctual mind’s response for survival. Avoid that thing, FEAR IT, so that you may live. In ancient times, predator animals and diseased people were the things to fear, and uncomfortable body language from potential killers. Try to imagine how evolution could warn us any other way than to use the uncanny valley and the dark as precursors or triggers. Evolution does not think. It cannot see or hear. It developed its method of fear for survival through trial and error.
Why fear spiders and other creepy crawlys’? Because they could be poisonous! Why fear big things with claws? Duh. Why fear the dark? Because we are at a disadvantage. It all makes sense, but one: Supernatural fear. We have somehow over the generations developed a fear of ghosts, demons, and specters. Should they suck our souls from our bodies? It’s one heck of a unique fear to have. I was raised Catholic, but was never enough of a believer for it to stick, yet every so often I have a fear that grips me, usually in my dreams, related to ghosts. In my dreams they are real. They are an enemy that would take my life and I cannot fight back against them! I can only run away and hide.
Ghosts are kind of like the ultimate fear. They check off the dark box, the unknown box, the uncanny or diseased box, the predator box, and the socially uncomfortable box. Some say dragon were the amalgamation of the ultimate predator to fear, but I say it’s ghosts! And just like dragons, ghosts aren’t real, or are they? Let your own fear response tell you!
This has been another thought piece by Joe Van. Thank you for reading, and I’ll talk to you guys- LOOK OUT BEHIND YOU!
Welcome to #56 of Joe Van’s Secret Podcast! Here I talk to another returning guest about her early past, quarantining with friends, what the point or lack-there-of is regarding the theory that reality is a simulation, and virtual babysitting among other things. She was a treat to have on and I hope you all enjoy!
Welcome back to #55 of Joe Van’s Secret Podcast! I talk with a returning guest about how the current quarantine has affected his plans, what scares him most, and states of the mind. Enjoy!
What constitutes living a good life? While individual happiness is particular to each person, general well being is quantifiable. A good life includes a healthy diet, or healthy enough for you to still enjoy what you’re eating, a moderate fitness regiment, an open dialogue with your inner circle of loved ones, and having a life purpose. I touched on how life purpose and moderation lead to longevity in my piece: Longevity, but in this thought piece I wanted to touch on the particular issue of the pursuit of happiness, and how so many people seem to be lacking general happiness in their daily life.
I’m sure you’ve all heard the golden advice: manage your expectations, but in what way can we apply this concept to our daily lives? We can’t help but want things, so how are we suppose to trick ourselves into not minding if we don’t get said things? A strange thing about the mind is the subconscious. It directs our emotions, knee-jerk reactions, dreams, and general worldview. People born in a third world country are people who have only known that life. They want far less than us and would be far happier to receive even a sliver of what we consume regularly. They may have a general sense that life ought to be more, but most people simply accept every day as another gift to be alive. Somehow, hardships make individuals extremely appreciative. People tend to strive after undergoing something hard. It doesn’t mean you HAVE to suffer in order to be happier with what you have, but simply being self aware makes a big difference.
I’ve mentioned this before, but one of the greatest things to happen to me in my life was when I had a slipped disc. At the time it was just awful and misery-inducing, but afterward I couldn’t help but feel more alive than ever. I was inspired to write! I didn’t know in what medium then, but I knew things would never be the same. I’ve also had other accounts of difficulties, (not to be compared to anyone else of course but just to use as examples,) of having an ego death after taking too many magic mushrooms, falling into a K-hole, and having my already half-absent father leave my family. My most recent difficulty was quitting drinking, and since then I couldn’t be happier with my life. It’s made me more honest than ever after admitting to everyone that I had a secret addiction. Regardless of the current quarantine Canada is under, every day in my eyes has been like glistening golden honey under a shining sun.
So to expand on the idea of being honest, secrecy is a unique form of internal toxicity that no one can truly manage. Sociopaths are the best at lying and then sleeping like a baby, but it doesn’t mean their existence isn’t torture. Living double, triple, quadruple or whatever-the-heck lives makes a mess of your unseen subconscious. Honesty will set you free, as many have said over the ages. It may seem like telling the truth is impossible. I mean, why mention things from years ago when the person never found out? Because it may be eating YOU inside. Could honesty ruin relationships? Yes. But if you truly seek happiness, you must let it go.
I’m not yet thirty, so proper life advice can’t really come from me. It doesn’t mean that I haven’t discovered certain insights into the human condition, though. Even back when I was a teenager, I remember uncovering elements of the mind that struck me as such an easy thing to care for yet so many people seemed to have problems with. The difference time makes to insights, I have found, is coherence. It is the difference of information, to knowledge, to wisdom. So I still very much have growing to do, but for now just remember that your own happiness is predicated off of your ability to look inward and see what you can see that may be hindering daily harmony. Thank you as always for reading. I love you, and I’ll see you next time.
In episode sixteen of Thoughts, I lay out my list of the twelve certainties and suggestions about reality as a human on Earth in our lifetime… just to be specific. Enjoy!
What is time? I’ll let you guys answer this one. For real, I’ll wait… and wait… and wait. Even if it takes a lifetime. Even when the stars burn out and matter is dissipated into a heat death of the universe. All will be dark, but you’ll still have time. Time is known to do things, like heal, be cruel, teach us lessons, and fade the past away. Time is fast when you want it to be slow, and slow when you want it to be fast. Time is a clock on the wall, and it is made up. Now you might say, ‘Made up, eh? What’re you talking about?’ Time, as a unit of measurement, is arbitrary! Seconds are just something we made up. If we wanted, tomorrow the UN could declare that one second will now be the length of two seconds, and nothing in the universe would change. We would all live with thirty-second minutes, that’s all.
Time as defined by Google is the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole. The truth about reality is in that PROGRESS bit. The motion of molecules are what we perceive as time. Time began at the Big Bang, according to the theory of the Big Bang. It leads one to wonder if maybe time needs matter to exist? Like time and matter are two sides to a coin; one cannot exist without the other. If we were to freeze time, we wouldn’t actually be able to gallivant around. There are examples in media of people doing this, like freezing time and stealing from banks, art museums, and such, but the movement of molecules are required for aspects like solid objects. If we stopped things from vibrating closely together, we’d fall through it. Or more so, we’d instantly die from the universe ending.
There is a temperature called ‘Absolute Zero.’ It is the lowest temperature that is theoretically possible, at which the motion of particles that constitutes heat would be minimal. It is zero on the Kelvin scale, equivalent to –273.15°C or –459.67°F. This temperature is out in space, and has been briefly reached in labs on Earth. Pluto is 44 Kelvin (-229 Celsius or -380 Fahrenheit) and is the coldest planet in our solar system. A reason science fiction stories in space have things like cryogenic chambers to hibernate its occupants is because of the real effects lower temperatures have on cellular motion. So, the reason I bring absolute zero up is because if such a temperature could either be found or created to DESCEND EVEN LOWER than absolute zero, would time stop? Would it collapse into a black hole? Who knows!
One thing we do know is that we can never go back in time. Forward, however, well, that’s relative. It has to do with gravity. The simplest example is this: Astronauts leaves Earth’s orbit, saying goodbye to their families and friends as they chart a course around the supermassive black hole at the centre of our Milky Way galaxy. The trip takes them one year. They enter the dense black hole’s orbit and circle it once before heading back to Earth. One year had passed for them, but upon returning to Earth, 100 years had passed. It’s a strange and phenomenal effect gravity has on matter. Not just matter actually, but also light. The heavier an object is, on the astronomical scale, the slower time moves. I’m hesitant to say that the molecules vibrate slower, because even if that is what they’re doing, it wouldn’t as simple as that. Cold temperature does that, but doesn’t seem to slow time down. I would simply say gravity works as a dial, like fancy light switches! The more you crank it, the slower things get.
A thought experiment the glorious Stephen Hawking had, regarding time, involved a futuristic train. He wondered, or proposed, that say there was a train humanity created that wrapped around the Earth and traveled at near the speed of light. Matter cannot go or surpass the speed of light, but this train was designed to go just under as fast. He then proposed that a girl in the train decided to run forward in it. Would the laws of physics break? Or would they correct the matter at hand and visibly slow the girl down, making sure not to allow her to pass the speed of light. Individuals sitting in the train would watch as she slowed down, making each stride and seemingly hover in the air as she leapt.
Time is a trip, to conclude this thought piece. We have no control over it. It goes up and down, shrinks and stretches, but never stops or reverses. We are a slave to time and we are freed by it. Time is us and we are time. Make what you will of your slice, and I’ll make mine. Thank for reading, and I’ll see you guys next time!
In episode fifteen of Thoughts, I talk about how snitches get stitches! Just kidding, I talk about how that phrase or concept doesn’t just work as a threat.
How does someone find themselves at the receiving end of a destructive habit? No one plans to live a life of degradation. It’s something that happens slowly, like a frog in boiling water. One doesn’t notice that certain actions have a predictive outcome of addiction until they reach that point down the line. It can start with partying on the weekends as a seventeen-year-old, to drinking alone every night ten years later.
Many variables lie under substance abuse, like a bastardized clandestine iceberg of submerged painful memories and torment. The most understood variables are loss, and lineage. Grief is the most painful emotional state in life. We as a society have seen countless people get swallowed by substance abuse to numb the pain, and have overall understood that standpoint. Not accept it, but understood it. Lineage is also easy to understand. If you have the blood of a drinker, you may have drinking problems. The actual science behind substance abuse says that genetic predisposition plays a role of fifty-percent to an individual developing a problem.
Other factors that are harder for people to understand are childhood traumas, and general stressors. The reason childhood trauma is hard for people to understand is because those people in the individual’s life were most likely there in their childhood, so it’s a matter of coming to terms with something they may have had a role in. The human mind is a survival mechanism. Children absorb experiences like a sponge so when something distressing happens, their mind will go to great lengths to bury the event in order to keep the lights on.
General stressors can be otherwise described as school, family life, friendships, or work. Coping with life’s hardships can be as easy as taking a hit. You may have started just once or twice, but soon fall into the habit of ritually needing the substance. It can get to a point where you’re blowing off your friends and other engagements so as to continue the ritual you’ve started one lonely night.
Homeless heroin addicts were once innocent children. But bit by bit, one event after another things kept going wrong and getting worse, pushing the person down the path to where they are now. Substance abuse isn’t the end of the road, though. One in the pit of their deepest hole might say it is, but so long as one is still alive, there is a chance to get out. An optimistic spin might be to say, ‘If you’re at your lowest, then you have nothing to lose.’ Dependency is a construct of the mind. It is a damn tight construct, but a construct none-the-less. Joggers talk about a mental wall they hit at a point of deep exhaustion. It’s a moment when your body, instincts, and soul scream for you to let go. To know what it is, and know you can say no allows you to break the impossible wall and push past it. Once you do, a weight is lifted and everything becomes lighter.
It’s a hard truth to face but the fact of the matter is that life is a constant struggle. It’s not easy, but like working out, it gets better if you put in the effort. Let daily pessimism die under the light of a hopeful mindset. Ring it out to let the sober winds of realism breeze your cheek, and stand tall to let a ray of optimism shine on you every now and then. I hope this helped anyone reading to better sympathize or understand that many things go into how someone can fall from grace. We are all in this thing called life together, and all need to help each other out. Thank you for being here, and I’ll see you guys next time.
Identities! Also known as personalities made from a collection of memories. I’ve written about the concept of identities in bits and pieces throughout my blog, like in Duality and Perspective, but I think it deserves it’s own work down. Would the ninth grade version of yourself even recognize you? Are you still you if you undergo amnesia? What’s up with multiple personality disorder? Or the concept of reincarnation? It begs the question, what is the point of the soul without memories? It is culturally evident that identity takes the main stage in certain countries like the U.S. and China. So to expand on that, country identity has to do with government systems and how people are rooted in their historical philosophies and cultures.
China is housed to the creation of the concepts of Confucianism, Daoism, and Legalism. These are the top three, arguably. Confucianism is from the man Confucius, who derived his teachings from Legalism, and is in a nutshell: Xin – Honesty and Trustworthiness. Chung – Loyalty to your work, the state, et cetera. Li – includes ritual, propriety, etiquette, et cetera. Hsiao – love within the family, love of parents for their children, and love of children for their parents. Daoism, or Taoism, is a philosophical or religious tradition of Chinese origin which emphasizes living in harmony with the Dao. The Dao is the source, pattern and substance of everything that exists. And finally, Legalism, or Fajia which literally means “House of Administrative Methods”, is a philosophical belief that human beings are more inclined to do wrong than right because they are motivated entirely by self-interest. Today, the driving structure of China is Communism.
America, or the Western world including Canada, was founded and subsequently ruled through the religion of Christianity and the philosophy of Manifest Destiny. While most know about Christianity, with their testaments and beatitudes, Manifest Destiny was the idea that white Americans were divinely ordained to settle the entire continent of North America. The ideology of Manifest Destiny inspired a variety of measures designed to remove or destroy the native population, horribly. It was a widely-held cultural belief in the 19th-century and drove its settlers to expand across the land. Today, the driving structure of America is Capitalism.
If you grant me some more wiki definitions here, Communism is a philosophical, social, political, and economic ideology and movement whose ultimate goal is the establishment a socioeconomic order structured upon the ideas of common ownership of the means of production and the absence of social classes, money and state. Capitalism on the other hand is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Characteristics central to capitalism include private property, capital accumulation, wage labor, voluntary exchange, a price system and competitive markets. One can see just by reading their definitions, how individuals raised with either idea can form their identities based off of these ideas. They are both very practice-based and communal. Generally, Americans stereotype China as a country full of drones that work and die, and Chinese stereotype Americans as egotistic overweight blowhards. While everyone is an individual, statistics do show behavioral patterns among people under certain communities. But is there anything wrong with that?
Well the concern is all in the mind of the viewer. If we take a step back from nations and look at humanity as a whole, there are things we all do. We all want a purpose, want love, have good food, entertain ourselves and continuously grow with the people in our lives. When individuals like psychopaths, sociopaths, the morbidly depressed, or those with identities issues such as individuals who believe they are robots or animals in human bodies, go against common connective tropes, we as a society reject them out of fear.
As we all know, we don’t chose who we’re born from, what brain chemistry we’re born with, how we’re born, when we’re born, or where we’re born. These are important markers of our identity that we had no say of from the get-go. It begins to paint a picture of how identity works and what it really is. Could our personal identities be an illusion? I can say with certainty that no, regardless of if we have free will, it is certain that everyone, no matter how entirely they are influenced by external forces, is an individual with their own fingerprint of a mind. From a biological standpoint, even identical twins that look to be the complete same person, have different DNA.
So now we can talk about how individuals can go through identity crises. It’s known as a period of uncertainty and confusion in which a person’s sense of identity becomes insecure, typically due to a change in their expected aims or role in society. If you’re experiencing an identity crisis, you may be questioning your sense of self. This can often occur from advancements through life stages, be it childhood, school, or work. So many things are out of our control. How many people wish that they could just be a kid forever? People take care of you and you have no responsibilities, like a pet! Not to trash people who actively wish this, but it is important for one’s own sake of sanity to strive in their CURRENT situation. It is unhealthy to wish one was living a different life. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t want to change your life situation because there are many legitimate reasons one could want to do this, but while having a desire to depart one’s current life one must still make the most of their situation. Happiness is predicated off of it.
There are accounts of individuals who live to be fifty or older before realizing or admitting they have gender dysphoria. There are people who remain closeted homosexuals their entire lives. These points of perceived, or real, relationship expectations that repress one’s true identity are tragedies against all of humanity in my opinion. People are who they are. We shouldn’t have to hide that. There are outliers like serial killers and pedophiles, of course, but aside from those that would bring harm to others, we as a society are doing our part, individual by individual, to accept people of every possible identity. We are all our own people, and we are all one, however paradoxical that may sound. I am Joseph Van Landschoot, born of Jane and Carl, and you, reader, are you, with your parents, and lineage, and beliefs, and hopes, and wants, and dreams. We are all fellow humans beings, and we are all worthy of love.
One one-billionth of the Sun’s total energy output actually reaches Earth. Of all the energy that does reach Earth, 34 percent is reflected back to space by clouds. The Earth itself reflects another 66 percent back to space. Wouldn’t it be great if we could harness even one percent of the Sun’s energy? That thought brings us to today’s topic, the idea of a Dyson Sphere. Not to be confused with Dyson vacuums, the definition of a Dyson Sphere is: a hypothetical megastructure that completely encompasses a star and captures a large percentage of its power output. There are similar variations to this such as a Dyson Ring, Dyson Swarm, Dyson Bubble, and Dyson Shell. All these things would perform the same goal.
The original concept of the thought experiment was attributed to physicist and mathematician Freeman Dyson, though like most things, there was someone who thought of it first. It was surely unintentional but back 2 400 years ago, Plato the philosopher wrote about enormous subterranean tunnels both broad and narrow that made up the Earth’s interior. Later in the 17th century, the term Hollow Earth became a now debunked theory, claiming that there is indeed an inverted world inside our world, with it’s own light source! Such a thought experiment is not unlike a creative version of a Dyson Sphere. Its purpose ultimately being a power source which as we all know in a broad sense, our sun is. It gives us life! In vegetation and in vitamin D.
So the myth of Agartha, which is what some groups called the Hollow Earth, was really the first idea of a Dyson Sphere. But Freeman’s description of such a thing was humanity’s first good description of a truly conceivable version of it. To harness the sun in the palm of a species’ hands. It seems like pure theory now, that a race could build something so massive to wrap around the sun, a body in of itself that could fit over one million Earths in it, that it’ll never be possible. But ALREADY we have found anomalies through NASA’s Discovery Program of potential Dyson Spheres out in space made by advanced intelligent alien life.
Granted, reality is often disappointing and the anomaly these scientists are finding are most likely large planets obscuring the stars’ light, it’s still fun to think of the possibility. We often imagine aliens being almost just like us: bipedal, carbon-based lifeforms using air from their throats to communicate. If that is the case, it would take a civilization of China-levels of cooperation to construct such a device! But in a more creative sense, if alien life out there were something like silicon-based, or A.I. managed, construction of larger-than-star-sized devices could be a thing. Regardless, I just wanted to talk about this subject because things like this inspire my imagination, and if it could do the same to you, then the world would be a little brighter.
Sexuality is both praised and abhorred in society. It’s either handled with exuberance or repression, the latter form there arguably running both the show and amok in the western world. The current dominant religions are clearly against it, yet have their own twisted viewpoint on what it even is. Everyone remembers when puberty really changed them; there were the physical changes, but also a change in the mind. Hormones that were once not part of us became introduced, forcing us to change how we interacted in the world, forever. It’s the driver of life, but without any need for research I can tell you that most sexual acts don’t end with both parties producing life. So what gives?
Well, sexuality when it was first developed, was a game changer. Early life went from almost no diversity through asexual reproduction, to this new… thing, of mixing deoxyribonucleic acid or DNA, to create a new version of the hosts. It was shooting in the dark. As we all know, evolution ala natural selection is not a conscious process. It has and is happening through the mutation of genes. In the case of most mammals, we get ‘in heat’ and do the deed via organ in organ shotgun blast. But what makes us humans unique is that we don’t have a season for being in heat. Granted some people are nearly never in heat, the others are in heat on a daily basis.
We aren’t the only animals to have this opportunity, or curse, (depending on how you feel about sexuality and your own sexuality,) we know dolphins and elephants, along with bonobo primates and other species have sex any old time too, and not purely for reproductive purposes either. Sex, when done right, feels good. It can be the best feeling in the world. A lot of what makes sex feel so good comes from more than rubbing sensitive bits together, it comes from emotional intimacy, and niche pleasures being met with a trusting partner. There are a great many people in the world that have a fetish for stuff like leather, or feet, and when someone with that itch finds the right partner that loves them, having the same fetish is the cherry on top. Most partners once having created an emotional bond, will test out sexual positions and acts if it makes the other partner feel good, because at that point they truly want the person to feel good.
Sex is a lot like a dance. When you don’t know the basic steps yet, it’ll be awkward, but in time you will learn the moves. Some people are exploratory while others stick to what they know. Others are so free with the dance that they’ll try to create new moves with hopefully equally exuberant partners. So, at this point I have to key in that there is of course a great many evils in the world, and most evils are sexual based. Aside from stating the obvious that you must use more than perceived body language when not sure if someone’s down for sex, most cases when an act without consent occurs, it’s not by mistake. Nature is not conscious, so it has no conscience. If it did, there would be some kind of shield-mechanism in our orifices that would activate when attacked, but it doesn’t exist. Morality is a strange thing, because most people have instinctual morals, like they don’t like seeing people get hurt, but nature houses no such morals. There’s a term that exists now-a-days called toxic masculinity, and I think it exists to describe how male hormones work. Men with terrible parenting seem to think that because they’re horny all the time, it gives them a right to sex. While I don’t agree in the slightest that the western world has a rape culture, I think rape and violence in general is a touchy subject for most religious people of power because they themselves are repressed. It doesn’t mean they want rape to continue, but that they don’t know what to do about it. Programs and rehabilitation centres would be far better than one current model of just jailtime then out again only angrier. We have a long way to go as a society but I still feel that we are generally going in the right direction to better every person’s life within it.
Getting it on is great, especially with foreplay. Music helps set the mood. Stretching is important, along with hydrating afterwards. What else should I add to this before finishing?… Love not war, people! Be like bonobos, not chimps! And until next time, love you all and be good to each other.
Hey everyone! I hope you’re having a safe and enjoyable quarantine period. To help you pass the time, I read aloud a section from my second book. Enjoy!
“Adults with ADHD who are undiagnosed and untreated in childhood are at greater risk of low self-esteem, substance abuse, anxiety and depression,” Labour’s shadow minister for mental health, Barbara Keeleyshe says. “Despite the serious problems that adults with undiagnosed ADHD face, many living with the condition say it has had a positive impact on their lives too.” I pulled that quote from the Guardian, under an article titled: ‘I assumed it was all my fault’: The Adults Dealing With Undiagnosed ADHD. My reason for this and the main inspiration behind me writing this thought piece, is that I’m pretty sure I have ADHD. ADHD is an acronym which stands for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. I’d claim that I just have ADD but that no longer exists as a classification.
Attention, and retention. What makes us pay it? And what makes us forget? I joke that I have a terrible memory, but truth be told I remember things fine in the long term; it’s just the little things like dates made for next week that seem to enter one ear and exit the other. I don’t mean to not pay attention either. It just happens. We can find through evolutionary biology and psychology that our primate brains were made for the untamed savanna. We can feel a presence watching us from behind when nothing is there. Shadows in the night keep us up in horror. Negative acts or event reside permanently in our minds but happy ones can be easily forgotten. Why? All for the silly sake of old world survival. So many of our instincts now are not only useless, but actually harmful. Anxiety can make a person’s life a living hell. The fact that I’m an alcoholic, (though now recovered,) is clearly from a compulsion that if I don’t binge now I might not get a chance again. All of these defects in the human mind suck, to be sure, but the pros that come out of them may make the pain worth something.
I consider myself a very creative person. Flashes come to me of inspirations, ideas, and images from seemingly nowhere. I’m certain this experiential process exists in me due to my mental makeup; the fact that I zone out and daydream. I remember always daydreaming when I was a kid, but the flashes started happening in a serious way when I turned twenty. That’s also when my drinking habits increased to an unhealthy degree. It was unfortunate that I relied on drinking alone as much as I did, but though great fear came with it, once I stopped drinking I found that there was zero dip to my creativity. Lucky me. Many artists rely on unsustainable methods to keep the wheel spinning. My fear was that I’d lose it, but when I took my out, it hindered nothing.
I also figured once I stopped drinking that my attention to things and people in my life would improve, but that actually wasn’t the case. I seemed to pay just as much attention as I always did. I can’t say I wasn’t at least a little disappointed, but keeping an open dialogue about that helps keep harmony in my relationships. What one must do with their intentions as life continues to flow and form and mold one’s character, is take the time to try. I may have little attention span in my resting default mode, but during waking hours I must simply TRY to pay better attention to those around me. They appreciate it. I feel better about it. And everyone wins.
To close, pay attention to those you love because they’re worth the extra effort. I love you all… and, as always, thanks for reading.
On #54 of Joe Van’s Secret Podcast, I talk with an old boss of sorts about her years of growth, identity, and philosophies about our species. What does the future hold? We know as much as we dare to.
Hello adoring fans! I just wanted to make an announcement that future installations of the Joe Van Secret Podcast will no longer be named by season, and will no longer be weekly! I thank you all so much for tuning in, and appreciate your future time with us. This is the end of an era, but only the turning of a chapter for the Secret Podcast.
On #53 of Joe Van’s Secret Podcast, I speak with a not-so-new friend from the big city about her life, from over the pond to here and everywhere in between. We also talk about how one makes friends and which friends to keep!
On #51 of Joe Van’s Secret Podcast, I have on return guests Sam and Xerxes! We sing only to jump head first into deep talks that have no end in relation to there being a possible conclusive answer. Life is a dance so we might as well sing too!
On milestone #50 of Joe Van’s Secret Podcast, I speak with a new guest about everything under the sun, from childhood and love, to wonder and hoping. Disclaimer; my dog appears throughout the episode schlopping and clopping.
On #49 of Joe Van’s Secret Podcast, I break a sacred rule and edit! What are rules for anyway? In the first promotional interview for a project, I talk with Writer/Director Reem Morsi on her first feature: Hysteria.
On #48 of Joe Van’s Secret Podcast, I talk with a fellow self employed, recovered alcoholic about the journey one takes to better their lives. We discuss addiction, scammers, persistence, cycles of bitter habit and finally taking that leap. Sometimes it takes getting shot in the head to wake up.
Happy New Year and new decade my fellow dudes! On #47 of Joe Van’s Secret Podcast, my guest from last week returns, making it the first ever back-to-back interview! Also clocking in as the longest episode so far, we discuss her early world and how she came to be city-neighbours with me. We talk about history, the current political facade of multiculturalism, representation in movies and a slue of other topics worth talking about.
Merry Christmas and happy holidays! On #46 of Joe Van’s Secret Podcast, I interview a public health worker in the criminal justice world. We talk about finding one’s path, community, authority, justice advocacy, the entertainment world, belief and judgment, the holiday of Eid, the British royal family, one race, and climate change consequences.
On #45 of Joe Van’s Secret Podcast I talk with a past co-worker about movies and the work that goes into them, secrets of the universe, addiction, trauma and how it can change people, whether or not free will exists and how the universe really works.
On #44 of Joe Van’s Secret Podcast, I speak with a young couple about their meeting and falling in love, what they do now and what we know about pop culture.
On #43 of Joe Van’s Secret Podcast I speak with a couple that have been neighbours to generations upon generations of kids. They talk with me about their early life, coming together, years of travel, the controversy of immigration, and finding time to talk.
On #42 of the Joe Van Secret Podcast, I speak with a fellow cinephile about recent and not-so-recent films, comic books, manga, nearly perfect television, and the dangers of interpretation.
On #41 of the Joe Van Secret Podcast I have my very first co-host! We speak with a returning guest about our love lives, past relationships, the importance of love languages, and friendship.
On #40 of the Joe Van Secret Podcast, I speak to one tall drink of water about growing up with positive influences, standing out and finding your inner child.
On #39 of the Joe Van’s Secret Podcast I prove that it’s better to be together, when person after person joins the conversation! In one long sit down, me and several guests talk about so much stuff I can’t even condense it for you here. Just sit back, tune in, and enjoy the ride!
On season two, episode ten, Joe Van’s Secret Podcast #35, I talk with two amazing people at the end of my first LSD experience. We discuss shows we were raised with, outdated metro-sexuality, taking advantage of the social market, magic mushrooms, k-holes, Macbeth, LOVE, women’s rights, and my own little book plug.
On season two, episode nine, Joe Van’s Secret Podcast #34, I talk to a designer at an architecture firm about early life, after life, dreams, animals’ rights, and the importance of not hurting others. She was a guest to have back eagerly.
Part FOUR and finale of the great Canadian debate… and episode #33 of Joe Van’s Secret Podcast, I talk again with Bobby Rose and Big L on the topics of climate change action, mandatory military, females in combat, the death penalty, euthanasia, abortion, the burka and feminism. We finish things by agreeing to disagree, and we say our farewells.
In episode #32 of Joe Van’s Secret Podcast, I bring back two amazing guests to talk about past trends, what the future could hold, where we came from and our perspectives of the Raptors at the start of June 2019.
In the Secret Podcast #27, I bring in two boys to talk politics. We hit the topics of commercial drones, legal cannabis, nationalism, globalism, and gun freedom.
In Joe Van’s Secret Podcast #26, I talk to an old friend about close calls, the flat Earth, addictions, the uncanny valley, video games, roasts, and family.
The Joe Van 