Ken Lowry

Attempting to real-ize potential. Attention. Goodness, Truth and Beauty. No dogma, propositons as attempts at light reflection.

[Ken Lowry @KenLowry8]

The notion of the Incarnation might be the ultimate Symbol, which has been Idolized.

So much of Christianity today focuses on Assentio to this Symbol as real. But when Assent is the most accessed means to a symbol, the other modes of access are lost, and the Symbol becomes the Idol.

Stop answering the question in your mind. Was Jesus of Nazareth the real incarnation of The One, God beyond God, the Ground of Being, or wasn’t he?
Don’t answer the question.

Consider instead what you would be claiming in even attempting to answer this question.

All of human knowledge can be seen as exploration of God and Man, the Infinite on one pole, the infinitesimal on the other.

Thus to answer the question, one obliterates oneself to answer for adequate knowledge of Man and God. In so doing one gets neither, but remains in his tower.

Instead, look through the question stereoscopically, think Nicholas of Cusa’s Vision of God. Learn to put on this question like glasses. Then live your life through that Quest.

[john milbank @johnmilbank3]

Anger at evil must burn itself away into sadness and love or else it flares out as a counter-evil that is also evil.

[Ken Lowry @KenLowry8]

Whatever else may be said of Trump, and there is much to say, the experience of witnessing his engagement with the world is astonishing in the extreme

[Solas @solas_na_greine]

Francisco de Holanda, The First Day of Creation - Let There Be Light, c.1545

[Jordan Hall @jgreenhall]

Ideology: a substitute for participation that attempts to produce alignment through shared representations rather than shared reality

Thus introduces a specifics errors:

- Model-reality divergence

The model is always incomplete so local decisions become misaligned and errors accumulate.

- Combinatorial patching

To fix errors, you add exceptions, refinements, reinterpretations, meta-rules and the system becomes increasingly expensive to compute correctly.

Ideology shifts coordination cost from interaction-space to computation-space.

Instead of talking to others and
negotiating reality you must interpret doctrine, simulate outcomes and resolve contradictions against an increasingly reality-divergent model.

- Loss of grounding

Because the shared “one” is not real but representational, coherence must be enforced,
dissent becomes destabilizing and correction becomes difficult

The system becomes increasingly brittle, overfitted and prone to sudden failure.

[P.S. I Love ME @ps_ilove_me]

🚨In 1990s, Stanford researcher Dr. Robert Sapolsky discovered something that should have broken the internet by now.

He was studying dopamine pathways in primates and found that the brain doesn't just adapt to repeated stimulation. It actively fights back.

When you flood dopamine receptors consistently, the brain deploys what neuroscientists call "opponent processes." For every artificial high you create, your nervous system generates an equal and opposite neurochemical low. Not eventually. Immediately. The system is designed to maintain balance, so it starts producing compounds that directly counteract dopamine while you're still experiencing the dopamine hit.

This means every notification, every scroll, every digital reward doesn't just give you a high followed by a return to baseline. It gives you a high followed by a crash below baseline. You end up in neurochemical debt.

Tech companies never publicized this research. They probably never read it. They were too busy discovering that variable ratio reinforcement schedules could keep users engaged for hours. They built addictive systems by accident, then refined them into addiction machines once they realized what they'd stumbled onto.

Your phone delivers an average of 80 dopamine hits per day. Your ancestors got maybe 5. Each hit triggers opponent processes that create a corresponding low. By the end of a typical day of normal phone usage, your baseline dopamine is running in negative territory. You feel flat, restless, vaguely unsatisfied, and hungry for stimulation because your brain chemistry is literally below zero.

You think you're bored. You're chemically depressed by artificial highs.

The opponent process theory explains why nothing feels interesting anymore. Your brain isn't broken. It's precisely calibrated to maintain neurochemical balance, and you keep throwing that balance off with artificial intensity. Every Instagram hit requires an equal Instagram crash. Every TikTok high gets paid for with a TikTok low. Every notification rush gets balanced with notification emptiness.

Your reward system is running a neurochemical deficit that grows larger every day.

Sapolsky's research revealed something even more disturbing: opponent processes don't just create temporary lows. They become permanent changes to your baseline dopamine production. Chronic overstimulation doesn't just make you tolerant to digital rewards. It makes you insensitive to natural rewards.

The sunset that would have captivated your great-grandfather becomes invisible to you not because sunsets got worse, but because your dopamine system needs intensity levels that sunsets can't provide. A good conversation becomes boring not because conversations got less interesting, but because your brain requires the rapid-fire stimulation of social media to register engagement.

You've accidentally trained your reward system to ignore everything that isn't artificially amplified.

This connects to research from Dr. Anna Lembke at Stanford, who found that people who undergo complete digital fasting for just 30 days show measurable increases in dopamine receptor density. Their brains literally regrow sensitivity to natural rewards. Food tastes better. Music sounds more complex. Social interactions become genuinely engaging again.

But there's a catch that nobody talks about: the first two weeks of dopamine detox feel like clinical depression. Your brain has been chemically dependent on artificial stimulation for years. Removing that stimulation creates actual withdrawal symptoms. Restlessness, anxiety, inability to focus, emotional flatness, and desperate cravings for digital input.

Most people interpret these symptoms as evidence that they need their phones. Actually, they're evidence that they've been neurochemically dependent on their phones without realizing it.

The withdrawal period isn't a bug. It's proof the reset is working.

What happens after week three is remarkable. Colors become more vivid. Conversations become genuinely absorbing. Simple pleasures like hot coffee or cool air become satisfying in ways you forgot were possible. Your brain rediscovers that reality contains enough complexity and beauty to hold your attention without artificial amplification.

You don't need more interesting content. You need more sensitive reward systems.

The solution isn't better apps or more engaging entertainment. The solution is restoring your brain's factory settings for what constitutes a worthwhile experience.

Sapolsky's opponent process research suggests this can happen faster than anyone expected. Every day you don't artificially spike your dopamine, your baseline moves a little higher. Every natural reward you pay attention to rebuilds receptor density. Every moment of boredom you endure without reaching for stimulation strengthens your capacity for sustained focus.

Ancient humans lived in a world that provided exactly the right amount of stimulation to keep their reward systems healthy. Enough challenge to stay engaged, enough calm to stay balanced, enough novelty to stay curious, enough routine to stay stable.

We built a world that provides 10 times too much stimulation and wonder why nothing feels rewarding anymore.

Your brain is not the problem. Your environment is the problem.

Change the environment, and the brain heals itself automatically.

[Maryam @hell_line0]

When I first got married, I called my mom to complain about some argument my husband and I were having. My mom stopped me right there and said, "unless you are in danger, dont ever let anyone into your marriage, not even me". Its was the best advice I could've ever received as a young wife. It allowed me to take my concerns directly to my husband, think thru how I really feel without someone projecting themselves on me. Gatekeep the marriage.

[The Wonder of Tolkien @TolkienWonder]

"So it may be said that the chief purpose of life, for any one of us, is to increase according to our capacity our knowledge of God by all the means we have, and to be moved by it to praise and thanks."

- Tolkien
Letter 310

[Ken Lowry @KenLowry8]

This is, in my experience,one of the best articulations of the experience of a member of the “body” of a Spirit (the Jets) and the way that the movement of that spirit cannot be reduced to any one of its constituent members.

https://t.co/QvcgB9Dou7

[seraphim (richard) rohlin @richardrohlin]

I would wish a great lake of ale for the King of Kings;
I would wish the family of heaven to be drinking it throughout life and time.
I would wish the men of Heaven in my own house;
I would wish vessels of peace to be given to them.
I would wish joy to be in their drinking;
I would wish Jesu to be here among them.
I would wish the three Marys of great name;
I would wish the people of heaven from every side.
I would wish to be a rent-payer to the Prince;
The way if I was in trouble He would give me a good blessing.
I would like the angels of Heaven to be among us.
I would like an abundance of peace.
I would like full vessels of charity.
I would like rich treasures of mercy.
I would like cheerfulness to preside over all.
I would like Jesus to be present.
I would like the three Marys of illustrious renown to be with us.
I would like the friends of Heaven to be gathered around us from all parts.
I would like myself to be a rent payer to the Lord;
That should I suffer distress, that he would bestow a good blessing upon me.
- Traditional Prayer attributed to St Brigid of Kildare

I hope you are all having a beautiful day. Celebrations have been proceeding apace over here. If I can't have a whole lake of beer today, I can at least muster a largish pond.

[Ken Lowry @KenLowry8]

Highly recommend. Excellent use of a flashpan meme to drop deep insights which can open one up to God

[Louis K. Nicholas III @LKNIII]

Here is what I hope will be the definitive treatise on the profound meaning of the "6, 7" meme. Many thanks to @PageauMatthieu and @PageauJonathan for laying the theoretical groundwork for my thesis.

Read here: https://t.co/DFrhycmrHT

[Louis K. Nicholas III @LKNIII]

Here is what I hope will be the definitive treatise on the profound meaning of the "6, 7" meme. Many thanks to @PageauMatthieu and @PageauJonathan for laying the theoretical groundwork for my thesis.

Read here: https://t.co/DFrhycmrHT

[Isaac French @isaacfrench_]

https://t.co/J8uT2AHEBj

[Daniel Jeffries @Dan_Jeffries1]

"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule it."

H. L. Mencken

[Christina Boggess 🇺🇸📚 @cb4EdD]

My Fellow Citizens of District 8 and the Great State of Utah,

Today I declare, without apology or hesitation, that I will not seek re-election to the Utah State Board of Education. I am done lending my name, my vote, and my silence to a broken, corrupt, and morally bankrupt system that no longer serves the children or families of this state.

The corruption inside the Utah State Board of Education and the broader educational establishment is not subtle—it is brazen, pervasive, and rotting the soul of public education. Nearly every decision is now driven by not-so-hidden agendas, political cowardice, financial kickbacks, and raw personal ambition—not by what is best for students. The USBE has become a closed club that wages open war on the minds, values, and innocence of our children while systematically stripping parents of any meaningful voice. This is more than mere incompetence; it is betrayal on a grand scale - by the very people you elected.

Layer upon layer of dysfunction—mirrored and magnified in the Utah Legislature—has turned governance into a circus of gridlock, self-preservation, and faux theatrical outrage that accomplishes nothing. Good ideas are buried, brave voices are punished, and the status quo is protected at all costs. The chaos is not accidental; it is the design of those who profit from it.
I ran for this office to fight for you—your children, your values, your right to be heard. Instead, I have been forced to watch as even the loudest “conservative” voices fold, trade their votes for favor and money, or abandon every promise they made on the campaign trail. The Republican Party platform means nothing inside those walls. The Word of the Lord means even less. Your concerns—about pornography in libraries, radical gender ideology in classrooms, the erosion of academic excellence, and the assault on parental rights—are mocked, ignored, or drowned out by the shrill demands of special interests and the timid silence of those who fear losing their seat more than losing their soul.

I will not play this game any longer. I refuse to be a prop in their theatre of fake reform.

Serving the families and students of District 8 has been a great honor. You trusted me, you believed in me, and I have fought with everything I have. But the weight of the corruption, the chaos, and the spiritual abuse I have witnessed has become unbearable. Walking away is not surrender—it is the only honest act left to me, and a blazing call for the reckoning this state so desperately needs.

My final message to every parent in Utah is blunt and urgent: Get your children out of Utah's government schools as quickly as possible. Real change is not coming. The system is not broken—it is working exactly as the corrupt intend it to work. Your children’s minds, hearts, and futures are not safe inside it.

With unyielding resolve and unwavering love for the families of District 8,

Christina Boggess

[Ken Lowry @KenLowry8]

Had a great time chatting with @realIanCampbell the other day! Updates on where I’m at with Church, some fun with sports and a bit of the history of Climbing Mt Sophia. My misunderstanding of the initial question is significant

https://t.co/KpiRCjUKIA

[Ken Lowry @KenLowry8]

@aaronicopinion @thesuperegonaut Maybe. I suppose there is a hesitation around ‘body’ here to avoid materialism. As long as bodies are extended beyond material

[Ken Lowry @KenLowry8]

Suggestion: this is Mammon shifting direction away from antinatalism based on its obvious destruction of his body over time.

Signal, or noise?

[Financial Times @FT]

What is the ultimate luxury status symbol? Once upon a time it may have been a sports car or a flashy watch.

But with soaring costs of living, perhaps the most serious flex of wealth is something once considered a natural part of life: having kids https://t.co/9dmFphM0N0

[Ken Lowry @KenLowry8]

@DougWesney @aaronicopinion @thesuperegonaut Agreed. They always eventually will kill the host if left unchecked I imagine, but the more sophisticated and higher level ones seem better at managing this

[Ken Lowry @KenLowry8]

@aaronicopinion @thesuperegonaut No, it seems to me that purpose is within logos, but logos is more

[Ken Lowry @KenLowry8]

@aaronicopinion @thesuperegonaut I don’t know. Maybe, but I’m not sure. I’m hesitant to move in a direction that feels dualistic

[Ken Lowry @KenLowry8]

@aaronicopinion @thesuperegonaut Constitute his body. Goodness is here something like the real existence of things, and demons are by definition spirits who are attempting to parasitically collect reality to themselves and subsume reality. But like any parasite they must not kill their host

[Ken Lowry @KenLowry8]

@aaronicopinion @thesuperegonaut Demons are spirits, so they require bodies to enable them to have impact in the world. Any spirit’s body is made up of parts which adhere to the purpose, or logos, of that spirit. On the level of current discussion, mammon has a great many humans who worship him and thus