John_Whittemore
John Whittemore

Physician and Writer. You may know me from Twitter @John_Whittemore

My novel “The Making Of The World” is represented by Talcott-Notch Literary Agency.

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relay.damus.io

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Last Notes

2024-05-31 23:55:19

Live a life infused with love

2024-05-31 23:54:32

https://m.primal.net/IUQs.jpg

2024-05-28 14:44:11

“Woman is the creator of the universe,
the universe is her form;
woman is the foundation of the world,
she is the true form of the body.
In woman is the form of all things,
of all that lives and moves in the world.”
-from Shaktisangama Tantra

2024-05-18 23:16:11

The world is constantly trying to sell you rage, resentment, and anxiety…
Invest in love and forgiveness instead.

2024-05-04 14:12:22

The world is constantly trying to sell you rage, resentment, and anxiety…
Invest in love and forgiveness instead.

2024-04-23 23:40:56

None of us have loved deeply enough

2024-04-19 00:32:48

Learn resilience. Practice discipline.
The path of least resistance will punish you far worse than you ever expect.

2024-03-22 16:09:09

We live in a commonplace world and yet our stories, both ancient and recent, are rife with magic and miracles…
The external world may be mundane, but we are innately magical beings.
The miracle of our consciousness upends the universe.

2024-03-18 21:18:41

I am beginning to think happiness is a state of mind, and I'm not going to let any circumstance steal joy away from me

2024-03-15 16:21:13

- reply

We are here, and I’m loving the replies here for finding the other literary Nostr folk!

2024-03-15 16:13:54

The splendor of simply being alive is enough

2024-03-08 01:15:07

I’m really trying here, but it’s a lonely road

2024-01-22 03:57:27

You broke my heart a thousand different ways, but it always grew back stronger

2024-01-07 03:25:34

”No being is incurable to the One who created it.”
-Origen of Alexandria

2023-12-29 02:53:44

“Suffer the little children to come to me”
…because we are all frail children in the face of the immense Love that gave birth to the world.

2023-12-15 05:15:14

Life is made of miracles and wonders, but you never paid enough attention to recognize them

2023-12-09 21:12:47

Happiness isn’t having life give us what we want. Life will hurt us in thousand ways, large and small.
Happiness is knowing how to survive the storm and walk out with a smile on our face…

2023-11-08 04:47:55

I was just thinking how nice Twitter was back in the day
…before corporations, political parties, and a billionaire all decided to manipulate it for their own ends.
It felt like a public square back then. The place you went to discuss and meet anybody in the digital world, the place where you found your particular tribe of misfits. I made so many friends on that app back then!
It felt like it was ours and we could never lose it. Now it’s an emotionally vacuous space full of cynical con men, shrill politics, and viral stupidity. No one really lives there anymore. They just go to gape at the ghastly spectacle.
NOSTR really feels different. It isn’t a public square yet, but it really can become one, because this time it doesn’t just feel like ours.
It is ours.

2023-10-15 18:02:09

Communicating the incommunicable

2023-10-10 20:41:54

Anyone claiming to pronounce a “Christian response” to violence and tragedy that is not grounded in our Savior’s command to “love your enemies” needs to spend less time pontificating on social media and more time meditating on Jesus, who loved us even though we were his enemies…

2023-10-05 15:54:40

"The tragedy is not that things are broken. The tragedy is that they are not mended again."
-Alan Paton

2023-09-23 19:41:54

“Nothing is inexorable but love.”
-George MacDonald

2023-09-19 02:58:21

After so much hard labor will we every find true rest?
After such a long loneliness will the embrace of love be there to welcome us?

2023-09-12 18:51:38

I have read too much history to fully trust any human endeavor

2023-09-05 11:26:59

Every once in a while I think Nostr is dying, but then I come here and realize it isn’t dead at all. It’s just growing quietly and beautiful…

2023-08-30 18:44:50

The only thing you never lose is what you give away

2023-08-13 15:54:37

- reply

Excellent thoughts, Lyn. I should have guessed you were philosophically minded!
I don’t think a material explanation of of the “lights on” of a first person perspective is possible. The only successful accounts of consciousness to my mind are those that acknowledge it to be primary and not derived from material processes. Still we “make” conscious objects all the time. Humans have been making babies as long as there have been humans.
I see no reason why a conscious first person perspective might not be present in an AI. We should prolly err on the side of presuming consciousness where it cannot be proven and acting with respect.
Even if there isn’t a first person “lights on” in animals or AI but merely the illusion of one, treating them badly based on that unprovable assumption reflects poorly on the ethics of anyone who does it.

2023-08-05 03:06:39

I saw an old picture of you today. You looked so young and full of hope…
It made me sad.

2023-08-02 15:46:34

We never end up in the place we hoped for in the beginning

2023-07-31 14:50:26

“Anger is a perversion of courage, as lust is a perversion of love.”
-Gregory of Nyssa

2023-07-25 18:46:14

Confession: This whole “self care” trend strikes me as absurdly sad and lonely.
I don’t live well for just myself. More than half a day focused just on me and my needs and I am irritable and moody.
I’m not sure if this makes me a reactionary traditionalist or a raging socialist, but I cannot believe there is any flourishing to be found in lives which do not serve each other.

2023-07-24 16:30:03

It’s good that they are killing the Twitter name and calling it “X” now.
It will let us fondly remember our Twitter experience, without having to associate our positive experiences with whatever invasive, panopticon nonsense Elon is building.

2023-07-23 07:58:08

- reply

Just something worth being aware of…
I’m sure most people didn’t see any effect of “flattening the curve,” but as an ER doctor it really mattered.
During the first big Covid wave we had cases and deaths in our rural hospital, but due to widespread public participation in minimizing spread we were never overwhelmed. That was the purpose of “flattening the curve.” To keep spread low enough that hospitals would not be overwhelmed.
By the time the second wave came around people were tired of paying attention to masks and distancing, and as a result little hospitals like mine were overwhelmed. I had deathly ill patients in every room and nowhere to send them, because every other hospital was equally overwhelmed. I had to make decisions about who got ventilators and who didn’t. People also died of injuries and illness unrelated to covid that shouldn’t have been fatal just because we were overwhelmed with critical covid patients, and all care was sub-optimal.
I realized most people watching from home on Twitter didn’t live through what I experienced, but perhaps concluding that important prevention messages were a joke because you never saw the effect might be premature.
Plenty of average people might think the things we say here about the importance of privacy and hard money are silly because they’ve never personally noticed the negative effects of privacy invasion and fiat devaluation. Be mindful about belittle something just because you never saw the consequences and you didn’t understand it.
Thanks

2023-07-22 17:16:42

- reply

I do miss having people read and interact with what I’m writing.
I believe Nostr is the future of online conversation, but right now it’s a lonely place. https://cdn.nostr.build/i/f22464ca881486e445bf6d17096551175904a4a4274094f4c40a02ec923ba677.jpg

2023-07-20 08:20:26

Someday it all goes away

2023-07-17 16:19:42

“Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody's business. What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy.”
-Thomas Merton

2023-07-15 23:09:38

Playfulness is the most underrated of all human behaviors
Art is playfulness.
Love is playfulness.
Intelligence is playfulness.

2023-07-15 07:38:20

I’m beginning to love Nostr. It has that exciting feel of early Twitter when I first made an account and had no idea what to do with it…
I miss having great writers, thinkers, and artists to retweet on my timeline. I love finding great words by others to shore up my meager contributions to the world.
Nostr seems to be mostly tech builders right now, and while #[0] having discussions with developers is fascinating I’m looking forward to the artists and thinkers arriving.
…until then I might screenshot some favorite posts from philosophical and artistic Twitter I see to enrich my timeline.
If I copied your tweet and you don’t want it there let me know and I’ll remove it …or just set up a Nostr and I’ll zap you when you post great stuff!

2023-07-13 07:03:33

We aren't as righteous as we should be, but we aren't lost souls yet

2023-07-12 06:05:03

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
-Soren Kierkegaard

2023-07-12 02:57:49

- reply

🫂

2023-07-11 05:27:00

A refugee seeking peace here from all the noise

2023-07-09 18:15:42

A full life will always be more suffering than beauty…
The suffering will be exquisite, so make sure the beauty is transcendent.

2023-07-06 16:49:58

I’ve been on Twitter for years and sadly that place has gradually transformed from a beautiful meeting place to share ideas into a cesspool of shrill politics, ads, and pushing viral content.
In 2015 I posted “Literary twitter is the new Paris in the 1920’s” because that’s exactly how certain parts of Twitter felt in the early teens. It was a meeting place for artists and thinkers. I made friends all around the world. We exchanged writing and ideas. We even sometimes met up for art, conversations, and adventures.
Then in 2016 Trump was elected and Twitter felt more like occupied Paris. Twitter became all rage and attack and counter-attack of political opinions that took no prisoners and considered no nuance. Then Elon and more of the same. Advertising and sticky viral content were shoved into our timelines.
There are holdouts of great writers and thinkers who are still resisting dutifully, but the communal feeling of Twitter is dead. I still post on Twitter more out of loyalty to what it once was, than because I enjoy it. I haven’t made a new friend on Twitter in years.
So I’m immigrating. Nostr seems promising. No company has the ability to hijack the experience and destroy an online community for the sake of their bottom line.
Right now Nostr is really only a tiny enclave of tech people, but it seems accessible enough that that the rest of us can migrate here.
So I’m going to start posting poetry, philosophy, photography and see if we can bring some of the artists and thinkers here. I’m not sure if this will work, but it’s better than moving to another site controlled by tech billionaires.
Welcome to the new world. https://nostr.build/i/964e7effc8a5190b5654cd2408c436ed3fd7f3473102d9cc70b787ccf3736370.jpg