HermeticAscetic

I'm brand new here (as of February 2017), have heard good things about this place so here's a quick intro. I have three things that I'm really passionate about these days - drum n bass, I grew up on the stuff and could listen to it for days on end, Hermetic philosophy (Rosicrucian, Martinist, Golden Dawn, anything along these lines), and strong and astute political and societal analysis - particularly by those of the center who've been equally critical of both the right and the left lately and coming down strongly on the tribalism that makes up the extremes. As far as the ascetic part of my name - I am and I'm not, the way I'd put it is I'm enough of an introvert that I tend to stay in and read a lot. I enjoy digging through truth, human subjective experience, the possibilities of what consciousness can be or do, at some times listening to guys like Jordan Peterson, Jonathan Haidt, Gad Saad, or Sam Harris and at other times listening to interviews and podcasts by people like John Michael Greer, Mark Stavish, the guys at Phalanx, and even going back for a lot of Manly P Hall's older lectures. I find my mind works a bit differently than a lot of other people's, not terribly so, but it's enough where I've really put quality over quantity on my social activities and perhaps its to say I'm using my private time enrichingly enough that I don't quite sense a driving need to chase people around. I still have several close friends these days but we're all in our 30's, living a distance from each other, and I've had a lot of time and autonomy to really dial in on things the way I've wanted to in the past but perhaps not always had the time or opportunity. By trade I'm in the accounting and finance field, I'm starting to shift toward programming because I'm finding I enjoy that a lot more. In my side activities I've been a member of BOTA and AMORC for three years, Minerval in OTO for nearing a year, and I'm a little over eight years into a really good blend of Filipino and Southern Chinese martial arts - very similar to Dan Insosanto's blend, my particular instructor has preference for Kuntao a bit over the Silat however. If anyone has any good feeds on political philosophy, spiritual practices, martial arts, or anything that's useful in moving humanity forward scientifically or psychologically feel free to share it - that's the kind of stuff that brightens up my day! That said I don't know a whole lot yet about content management here - I'll try to post things as I see them and pass them regardless of whether it's on here and good or whether it's something I can pull in from Youtube that caught my attention. At this point I haven't really thought about video blogging just because I find that enough people are saying what I would say and with more eloquence and experience. I'll do my best to support them in their endeavors and if I find something that I'm not sure anyone has their finger on yet but that I'm keenly aware of I'll test the waters to see if its worth doing a video blog about.