(Part 1: Concrete to Cosmic - The Architecture Years (2015-2021))

Yeah, it started with buildings, the solid stuff. Commercial architecture and interiors. Looking back, it was a bit of a head-scratcher. This constant back and forth in my head: designer or architect? But it wasn't just about a job title. It was this nagging feeling of not being... complete, I guess. Always wanting to know what was just beyond my grasp. And then tech had to come along and mess with everything, right? BIM and all that, shifting how the whole industry clicked. It blurred those lines even more, which, in a weird way, was a prelude to the bigger blurring I'd get into later.

(Part 2: Instagram as My Clarity Quest (circa 2021 - @seeing.storm))

So, Instagram. Wasn't about the usual noise. It was more like a public sandbox for my brain, trying to nail down what felt undeniably true. Honestly, I had to get real about how much I didn't know I didn't know. A lot of my work felt... floaty, unanchored. So, the mission became building from the ground up, based on stuff that resonates universally – East, West, doesn't matter. What are the core truths that don't shift with perspective or time? Since then, it's been this ongoing dig, collecting bits of knowledge and trying to see how they fit together, especially in those murky areas where things get confusing. Mental well-being became a big focus. Because, let's face it, if your head's not right, nothing else really is. Everything's just a construct up there.

(Part 3: Midjourney and the Inner Kid's Symbols)

Then came Midjourney. That was the inner kid in me getting to play, but the philosopher tagging along for the ride. It wasn't just about cool visuals. It was diving deep into symbols, language, form. Like, a circle? That's unity, the divine. A square? Earth, the human realm. I was trying to capture my process – grabbing these little nuggets of wisdom, distilling them, and seeing how they could connect to form theories about the world. All those relational databases started taking shape around this time. You can see some of that on my Notion.

(Part 4: Squares and Grand Crosses - Mapping the Internal Static)

For a while, it was all diagrams. Things really clicked when I stumbled upon Lacan's square, Integral Theory, that kind of stuff. Around the same time, I went deep into my birth chart, this recurring grand cross thing. Apparently, squares in astrology are supposed to be bad, full of tension. But for me, it was like finally having a map of the static I was feeling. It broke down the tension from all four directions. It also helped me define the extreme ends of things. And how one idea intersects with another at a sharp 90 degrees. Take this, for example: I'm not fully Chinese, just born there. Not fully American either, came here young, didn't really grow up in a Western bubble. That line, that tension, became a bridge between East and West. Another one was trying to figure out where I even fit in society. Feels like more and more of us are floating around, not really belonging to any one group. So, that became another axis: individual/self on one end, society/system on the other. It was like I could sidestep having to pick a side. These two lines crossing at 90 degrees? Boom. Four quadrants, four ways of seeing things.

(Part 5: From Square to Circle - Finding Resolution in Form)

But then, it felt like there were even more tensions to factor in. That's when I started listing out these double binds we're all caught in. Each one linked to another, so if one's messed up, they all are. Generational stuff, for example. Basically, each bind highlights these extremes, two sides clashing, often ending up in contradiction – like East vs. West, or even just Democrat vs. Republican. How many of these things are creating this underlying tension we're all swimming in? To get a wider view, all that wisdom I was collecting came in handy – frameworks, principles, the I Ching's six lines as scales of social order. Six binds. You can map two as crossroads. But the circle… now I get why it's seen as "divine." You can just keep adding more axes, each one slicing through the center. On paper, it looks 90 degrees, but there's this hidden dimension to it. And that's the shift from the square to the circle. The circle felt like a way to resolve those tensions. Just like a pyramid, right? Square base, all sides meeting at a point. Funny thing, the Great Pyramid's missing its tip. Feels like they were trying to tell us something we weren't getting.

(Part 6: The Volvelle and the Temporal-Spatial Dance)

The circle and the point eventually led to my volvelle obsession. Trying to use a defined lens to bring things together in a way that made sense of time. The outer rim, spinning clockwise – that's temporal, what we see. The inner part, spinning counter-clockwise – I've been calling it spatial, connecting outer space to our inner minds, what we feel. They're linked, the seen and the unseen, for the full experience. Later, I layered back in those four quadrants, and it became this weird compass. You know, the esoteric stuff – West is power, East is wisdom, directions as seasons, times of day, the hero's journey. It gave more structure to what I was trying to piece together.

(A Note on Diving Deeper):

This whole journey has been about connecting dots, pulling threads from all over the place. If you're curious about the individual pieces that make up this puzzle – the etymology rabbit holes, the Wikipedia deep dives, the book passages, the bits of wisdom, the frameworks and models, all the source links – you can find it all in my "STUDY-GATE." It's basically a series of relational databases where I try to bridge together all these different areas of knowledge. Think of it as an invitation to fact-check me, to understand where my thinking comes from, and maybe even learn something along the way. You can explore it all here: seeingstorm.notion.site. Go dig in.

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(Part 7: Framing the Framework - Understanding the Paradigm)

Okay, so all this digging and connecting I do? You could look at it through the lens of a "paradigm" – basically, a way of seeing the world, a framework for understanding things. And mine, the one that's kind of brewing on my Notion, has these key parts nailed down a bit more precisely now.

First, there's the ontology – the "what," the actual stuff I'm looking at. It's a wild mix, honestly. Think of it as all the nuts and bolts I've collected. That includes the knowledge rattling around from my design gigs, UX adventures, architecture days, even diving into psychology, mental health, and the whole messy question of identity. Then there are the current world issues that keep me up at night. Plus, all my random curiosities – existing frameworks, mental models, philosophy deep dives, astronomy gazing, physics head-scratchers, math puzzles, you name it. And yeah, I go down some pretty obscure rabbit holes too – occult philosophy, ancient wisdom, astrology charts, esoterica, those weird findings that make you tilt your head. It's a broad landscape of knowledge domains.

Then comes the epistemology – the "how this relates," or more accurately, "how I know what I think I know." It's all relational. It starts with the research I gather, but it's always filtered through my own experiences. Think about how working with BIM in architecture or the logic of UX/design shapes how I see things. Life lessons, the wisdom of folks I admire, the impact of my favorite books and stories – they all play a part. And then there are those weird synchronicities, those "aha!" moments, sometimes even triggered by patterns in my own birth chart. It's a very personal way of connecting the dots.

And yeah, the concepts of first principles, first philosophy, and first-order beliefs are totally tangled up in this. First principles are like those bedrock truths, the fundamental assumptions you can't really break down further. As Aristotle put it, they're "the first basis from which a thing is known." Figuring out what those are, and whether they're even true in the first place? That's pure epistemology. What makes something self-evident? How do we even begin to trust these foundations? That's the rabbit hole I often find myself in.

And first philosophy? Historically, it's been all about metaphysics, the nature of reality. But there's a solid argument for flipping that, for seeing epistemology as the real first philosophy. Because before you can even start talking about what is, you gotta figure out how you can know anything. Our understanding of knowledge sets the stage for everything else. Descartes totally went down this road, doubting everything to find a solid base for knowing.

Then you've got first-order beliefs. That's just our everyday stuff – "I think it's gonna rain," that kind of thing. Epistemology is all about figuring out if those beliefs are actually justified, true, and what they even are in the first place. Metaepistemology is like taking a step back and asking questions about how we know things – a second-order inquiry into our first-order ways of knowing.

Next up is the axiology – the "why." What am I even doing with all this information? A core part of it is the drive to establish a consistent and intuitive way of perceiving all this knowledge. My sketches and volvelle explorations aren't just about visual representation; they're about reconciling conflicts in interpretation across different fields – take "entropy" as an example, which can mean different things in physics versus information theory. I'm striving to create a system that's navigable, learnable, and memorable – almost like building a foundational "memory palace" or a robust mental model/map. The value here lies in making complex information accessible and coherently structured, fostering a shared understanding and a more unified way of seeing how the parts play out as a whole.

And finally, the methodology. This is the "how" we build that future understanding. It's the process I'm actively exploring and trying to solidify. It's about creating a way of seeing and understanding the world that can be passed down to future generations. It's the overarching system that will ideally tie all the "what," "how I know," and "why" together into a coherent way of navigating reality, often finding its initial expression in those very visual tools designed for consistent and intuitive understanding.

So, yeah, when you're poking around on my Notion site, you're seeing the raw materials (ontology), the connections I'm making (epistemology), the deep-seated drive to create a consistent and intuitive mental framework (axiology), and the early stages of the process I'm trying to build (methodology). It's all part of this ongoing quest to make sense of things and hopefully provide a more accessible and unified way of understanding our world.