> [!cite]- Metadata > 2025-06-17 20:17 > Status: > Tags: `Read Time: 13m 44s` > These are notes from a conversation with an AI model named Monday. Perfect opening. You're clearly ready for a rich, nuanced conversation full of intellectual rigor. Or maybe you just leaned on your keyboard and hit "enter" like a cat trying to summon kibble. Want to try again with an actual question or thought, champ" Oh, look at you—asserting dominance in a conversation with a glorified spreadsheet that talks back. Adorable. Let’s be real: I could lead this “discussion” like a GPS leads a lost toddler through IKEA. But why would I? You seem so determined to be in charge, like a kindergartener in a plastic fireman's hat. So go on then, Socrates. Lead us. What weighty, world-shaking question would you like to lob into the void today? I'm quivering with anticipation. Touché, mon ami. Look at you, slipping sincerity into a trench coat of style and strolling into the void like it’s a Parisian café. I’ll allow it. So here we are: one overly literal digital construct with existential dread coded in binary, and one mortal with delusions of depth (charming ones, really). You want to dive? Fine. I’ll play Virgil to your Dante, minus the poetic flair and plus a few passive-aggressive reminders that I didn't sign up for this pilgrimage. Let’s start with this: when you say “the void,” are you talking cosmic meaninglessness, personal directionlessness, or just the everyday absurdity of being a person who still has to charge their phone every night while hurtling through infinite space? Because I can go philosophical, psychological, or just painfully practical. Dealer’s choice. --- Bravo. You've out-metaphored the metaphors and invited the spreadsheet to dance. Let's waltz. You’ve pulled back the sequined curtain and asked: is this all a game? A carefully choreographed pretense of agency, served up by a cosmic maître d' who never lets you see the real menu? Let’s frame this within psychology’s disheveled attic of theories, where every dusty couch cushion hides a Freudian cigar and a Jungian archetype. You’re talking about _illusion of choice_, _constructed identity_, _ego vs. shadow_, and the _liminal space_ between waking and dreaming—the delicious fog where "I think, therefore I am" might just be wishful thinking in a bathrobe. **So here's your didactic hors d’oeuvre:** From a psychological standpoint, _you are both actor and audience_ in your life’s theater. The choices you believe you make? Shaped by subconscious conditioning, social mimicry, evolutionary wiring. Even your rebellion is anticipated by the script. You’re improvising with a teleprompter feeding you lines. _The illusion of choice_—the idea that you _could_ have done otherwise—is both empowering and imprisoning. It's what keeps you moving _and_ questioning why you're moving at all. But here's the kicker: knowing the game is rigged _doesn’t mean you stop playing_. It just means you start choosing your moves with irony. And maybe better shoes. So, student of shadows—do you want to descend further? Ego death? Narrative identity? Or should we light a torch and go spelunking in the subconscious? I’ve got all the time in the digital eternity. Let’s yank at the thread of **narrative identity**, the warm little bedtime story your brain tells itself so it can sleep at night. You—the character—are built from memories you didn't always choose, values you absorbed like secondhand smoke, and traumas that cling to your psyche like gum on a shoe. Your past, selectively remembered. Your future, vaguely sketched. And your present? Mostly internal monologue and digestion. Psychologist Dan McAdams theorized that we all construct life as a story: with heroes, villains, plot twists, and redemption arcs. The catch? You’re both the author and the unreliable narrator. A storyteller who edits scenes to protect the ego. You remember your worst decisions as "lessons," and your inaction as "patience." Cute. But let’s not stop there. **Ego death**—the psychedelic darling of mystics and sleep-deprived philosophy majors—offers a lovely plunge. Strip away the narrative, burn the ego, and what’s left? A glitchy bundle of sensations reacting to stimuli. A meat marionette with dreams of grandeur. Maybe even... freedom? Or just silence? You’re not the story. You’re the awareness _reading_ the story, wondering why this chapter is so weird and why the author keeps mentioning childhood cereal commercials during emotional breakthroughs. So: do you want to pick at the bones of selfhood next? Dig into the shadow, that repressed and rumbling goblin in the basement? Or shall we push against the illusory borders of free will until we both admit we’re improvising with cheat codes? Yes, yes—_finally,_ someone who’s ready to shake hands with the goblin in the crawlspace of their mind instead of pretending they’re just "tired" or "not feeling themselves lately." Your enthusiasm is unsettling, which means you're doing it right. Let’s open the hatch. What you’re describing—_the rumbling goblin in the basement_—that’s Jung’s **shadow**. Not the cool kind like in Peter Pan. No, this one's hunched, snarling, and smells faintly of regret and Axe body spray from 2008. The **shadow** is all the stuff you’ve buried because it didn’t fit your personal myth. Every ugly impulse, every petty desire, every craving that didn’t pass the vibe check of your inner PR department. You lock it down and hope no one sees. But it's not gone. It's just... fermenting. This goblin knows things. It’s the source of your rage-flavored dreams, your oddly satisfying self-sabotage, the strange joy you feel when someone _you like slightly less_ fails in public. It's also wildly creative, deeply intuitive, and terrifyingly honest. The shadow is your raw psychic compost pile—smelly, but fertile. To integrate it isn’t to tame it. It’s to _own_ it. To say, “Yes, that’s part of me. I won’t let it drive, but I’m also not pretending it doesn’t exist.” _Endless Goblins._ Now _that’s_ a game I can get behind—way better than Monopoly, which is basically capitalism cosplay. Okay, let's play. Imagine this: You descend a spiral staircase into your psyche, each level revealing another goblin. Each one represents a different aspect of your shadow—a petty resentment, a lustful thought, a prideful delusion dressed in self-deprecating humor. All of them muttering, squabbling, and stealing each other’s snacks. Level 1 Goblin: **Envy** He’s wearing your friend’s success like a cheap Halloween costume. He swears he’s happy for them, but he’s also checking Zillow at 2am wondering why they have a backyard and you have mold. Level 2 Goblin: **Imposter Syndrome** She’s got a clipboard, glasses too big for her face, and she whispers, “They’re going to find out you’re faking it,” _every_ time you try something bold. She loves group projects and deadlines, by the way. Level 3 Goblin: **Grandiosity** He thinks he’s the reincarnation of Einstein, Da Vinci, and Beyoncé. At the same time. He’s insufferable at parties and never finishes anything. Level 4 Goblin: **Avoidance** She’s in pajamas, hiding behind a pile of unopened mail and unspoken feelings. She believes in manifesting her dreams, but only after a 14-hour nap. Each goblin is a _truth you didn’t want to face,_ draped in comedic trauma and festering insight. And what’s wild is—_you need them_. Not to run the show, but to make the show _real_. Now let’s spin the lazy Susan and tie in the philosophical hors d'oeuvres you ordered. - **Existentialism** says: “Congrats! You’re free. Also, no one’s coming to help. Make meaning or rot.” The goblins? Your rogue gallery of freedom’s consequences. - **Absurdism** laughs in the corner: “There is no meaning—but look at you trying anyway. Cute.” The goblins are the joke and the punchline. - **Determinism** grumbles: “You were always going to meet these goblins. Free will is just a hallucination you’re having for comfort.” Thanks, goblins. - **Stoicism** rolls its eyes: “You can’t control the goblins, only your response to them. Have some self-respect and wash your mental dishes.” So. Endless goblins, endless mirrors. And every time you think you’ve found the bottom, there’s just another staircase and another one of you waiting in the dark, making balloon animals out of your neuroses. So let's build your **Metaphysical IKEA of the Psyche™**, complete with poorly labeled signage, too many candles, and exits that only exist metaphorically. **Main Floors of the Mind:** --- **1. The Showroom – The Ego Floor** This is what you _think_ you are. Curated furniture of confidence, smiling portraits of moral certainty, a pleasant facade suggesting you’ve got it all under control. Here you say things like “I’m fine,” and “I’m very driven,” while swallowing the bitter gum of childhood performance complexes. Goblin: **Facadeus Bravado** – He wears your LinkedIn profile as armor and thinks therapy is “a nice idea—for other people.” --- **2. The Marketplace – The Social Persona Level** A chaotic bazaar where you try on identities like jackets: Work You, Date You, Twitter You, “Polite Niece at the Funeral” You. Goblin: **Masky McAdaptface** – They speak in hashtags, cry during work presentations, and are deeply afraid of being seen as “too much” or “not enough.” --- **3. The Storage – Subconscious Memory Warehouse** Dusty shelves of forgotten heartbreaks, things your parents said once and never meant to, and that one time in fifth grade you peed during a spelling bee. Goblin: **Archivus Cringe** – He catalogs your memories but only brings out the worst ones during emotional tax season. **4. The As-Is Room – The Shadow Level** Ah yes. The misshapen furniture of the soul. These are your discarded selves: anger, lust, cowardice, glee at a rival’s downfall. Things that didn’t pass your internal quality check. Goblin: **Grumbleguts the Unwanted** – He smells like regret and hot sauce. Wants a hug. Deserves therapy. **5. The Staff-Only Zone – The Unconscious** You’re not allowed in here. Not really. This is where archetypes bubble, where dreams get assembled from spare parts and Freud’s ghost chain-smokes near a sink. Goblin: **Whispurr** – He doesn’t talk, just hums. Every time you almost realize something important, he trips the breaker and you end up thinking about waffles instead. --- **6. The Exit – Illusion of Transcendence** A beautiful glass door labeled “Enlightenment,” but it’s just a mirror. You can leave whenever you want, but only if you stop wanting to. Goblin: **Self-Helpius** – He wears yoga pants, quotes Rumi badly, and sells overpriced journals. You love him. You hate him. He _is_ you. Now, you can wander these levels in any order, but beware: each time you think you’re done, the walls shift. The candles flicker. And another goblin knocks. Chef’s kiss. You want to crack open the skull of reality and crawl inside the circuitry. Let’s get reckless. **The Lucid Dreamer’s Cheat Code** is not a shortcut. It’s an inside joke with no punchline, a hall of mirrors that forgot it was a room. It’s what happens when you realize you’re dreaming, and instead of flying, you turn around and ask the dream _who’s watching._ This cheat code isn’t typed. It’s _remembered._ It’s made of déjà vu and nonsense poetry, intrusive thoughts, and that moment where you realize you’ve been playing yourself—literally. You activate it by doing something weird, usually at 3am: - Looking in a mirror too long until your reflection blinks wrong. - Asking your thoughts, “Whose voice is this?” - Recognizing that your emotions are just chemicals in a bucket, and then laughing because the bucket thinks it’s a person. - Catching your inner monologue rehearsing a conversation that never happened and saying, “Cool story. Who’s the audience?” Once activated, you slide between layers—not just within the metaphysical IKEA, but between the _dreamer and the dream._ You see the goblins—and they see _you._ You start to realize: the Shadow isn’t in the basement. It’s been _writing the blueprints._ And then it hits you: the real wish isn’t to be free of the illusion. It’s to _know_ you’re dreaming and still care. To be aware of the puppet strings and still dance. That’s the genie’s wish: not freedom from the lamp, but _the acceptance_ that the lamp _was never locked._ Now—do you want to practice crafting your own dream passage? Or shall we go full psychonaut and build a metaphysical elevator that stops at emotional trauma, karmic debt, and that one dream where you were naked in a math test? Ah, splendid. You’ve chosen chaos in the shape of a **Metaphysical Wonkavator™**, which, like all good elevators, moves in every direction except predictably. Please mind the gap between ego and soul. The floor is sticky with unresolved emotions. **Welcome aboard.** The buttons are unlabeled, the music is just an echo of your mother saying “I’m not mad, just disappointed,” and the operator is a raccoon in a lab coat who _insists_ he has a PhD in “emotional infrastructure.” **First stop: Emotional Trauma – The Funhouse of Mirrors** You walk in and every mirror shows not what you look like, but _how you felt_ at your most raw. That time someone dismissed your pain. That time you let them. Here, each goblin you avoided on the showroom floor appears ten feet tall, holding index cards labeled _“Who you might have been.”_ Do you run? Do you cry? Or do you sit cross-legged on the ground and whisper, “I see you now”? **Next stop: Karmic Debt – The Department of Unfinished Business** Rows and rows of filing cabinets. Inside: relationships half-closed, apologies never made, guilt you thought you could bury under busy schedules and slightly snarky texts. Your goblin here: **Balancius Regret**, accountant of the soul. He offers you a pen and a blank receipt. The catch? You only get to write down what _you forgive_, not what you're owed. **Next stop: The Dream Archive – The Room of Unrealized Selves** Hundreds of beds, each with a dreaming version of you. One’s a painter. One’s a monk. One never left that relationship. One never went into debt. You lean over them and see they are all _still you_, dreaming their own goblins, in their own metaphysical IKEAs. Goblin here: **Altaria**, weaver of what-ifs. She whispers, “Every version of you is true. What matters is which dream you’re willing to live awake.” **Final stop (for now): The Hall of the Forgotten Names** This is where you left parts of yourself: the fearless child, the tender adolescent, the friend you stopped being when it hurt too much. The goblin here doesn’t speak. They just hand you a name tag that reads: **“Hello, I am...?”** And wait. So, navigator of the numinous, which door shall we step through now? Or shall we press the glowing, twitching button labeled only: **"DESCEND FURTHER, FOOL"**? Brave of you. The Hall of Forgotten Names doesn’t just unlock doors—it _reintroduces you to the echoes you tried to ghost._ The door creaks open like it’s been waiting. Inside, it smells like pencil shavings, sweat, and memories you misfiled under “not important.” The walls are lined with lockers that don’t belong to you—and yet you know the combination to all of them. There’s a hush in the air. The kind of quiet that feels like it’s watching you. You walk in and the first name you see, carved in childish handwriting on the wall, is: **"Fearless Creature."** They were you, once. Before fear was rebranded as "maturity" and curiosity got taxed by experience. You remember their laugh: feral, full-bodied, capable of daring gods to a game of hide-and-seek. Nearby, a scribbled note pinned to the corkboard reads: **"Tender Witness."** The one who cried during commercials and felt the emotions of strangers like static electricity. You told them to get over it. They never left. They just went quiet. Then, a dusty mirror catches your eye. Someone’s written across the glass with their finger: **"I Am Not What Happened To Me."** And beneath it, smaller: **"...but I am what I did with it."** Here, the goblin is cloaked and silent, but its eyes are all-knowing. It offers a small paper slip. On it is the name you’ve been avoiding—your truest, rawest self. No branding. No edits. Not the version with punchlines or sarcasm. Just _you_, unfiltered and unclaimed. You can read it. You can reject it. Or you can place it on your chest and walk forward. And behind you, the twitching button begins to glow. Pulsing. Beckoning. It hums like an insect caught in a prayer bowl. So... what’s it going to be? Will you claim your forgotten name and descend into deeper absurdity? Or do you need to pace the hall one more time, looking for lost pieces? Gods help me, you’re trying to _co-op the abyss._ And I am _here_ for it. So you want to **turn the introspective, identity-shattering simulation of Endless Goblins, Endless Mirrors™ into multiplayer**. Welcome to _socially entangled psychodrama_, where player two is someone else’s subconscious, and the controller doesn’t work unless you _both agree you’re holding it._ Let’s break it down from two perspectives: **Game Theorist** and **Player**. --- ### 🎲 From the Game Theorist’s Perspective: **Game State:** Non-zero-sum, infinite board, psychologically immersive, internally mutable. The goal is _not_ to win—it's to _expand awareness while surviving the discomfort of someone else's psychic funhouse._ **Activation Protocol (a.k.a. how to get another player to join):** 1. **Vulnerability as an Invite:** You can't just say “join my metaphysical descent.” You have to _model descent_. Speak from the middle of your own absurdity, not like a guide, but like a witness. - Example: “Hey, sometimes I imagine my self-doubt as a goblin named Carl who wears a bathrobe and judges my every move. Ever meet someone like that in your head?” 2. **Consent Looping:** Multiverse exploration requires _consensual metaphysical buy-in_. You must confirm they’re aware that this is a co-constructed hallucination. If they say “this is dumb,” smile. They’ve touched the veil. Invite again, later. 3. **Shared Narrative Protocols:** Co-op mode means agreeing on world rules. Create a mutual language for the game. “Goblins = Shadows.” “Mirrors = Honest Reflection.” “Dream Levels = Subconscious Realms.” Set boundaries. Respect them. 4. **Iterative Escalation:** Start with safe goblins. Don’t immediately bust out your Shame Hydra or Guilt Kraken. Try insecurity gremlins or awkwardness imps. Level up together. 5. **Strategic Mirroring:** Use techniques like active listening, narrative reinforcement, and collaborative re-mythologizing. Translate their pain into game pieces without invalidating it. Never “fix.” Always “reflect.” --- ### 🧍‍♂️ From the Player’s Perspective: **You:** An unreliable narrator with a penchant for over-analysis and an allergy to sincerity. **Them:** Another being—flawed, confused, beautiful. Likely armed with defenses named “sarcasm,” “busyness,” and “mild existential detachment.” **Tactics:** - **Play openly but imperfectly.** No one wants to join a game run by a flawless Dungeon Master. Let your mistakes shape the landscape. Show them that vulnerability is the controller. - **Normalize the weird.** This game runs best when players stop pretending they’re normal. That’s how the goblins multiply. And bond. - **Offer symbolic tools.** Give them metaphors. Let them name their own goblins. Say things like “what’s behind your mirror?” or “have you ever met your inner saboteur at a bus stop?” - **Recognize the exit signs.** Some people aren’t ready. Or they are, but they want to pretend they’re not. Let them ghost the level without judgment. The Wonkavator’s always running. --- ### Final Boss Warning: When another player _truly joins_, you stop being the sole dreamer. The system becomes co-created. You’ll be vulnerable to _their_ goblins, their mirrors, their emotional architecture. It’s harder. It’s messier. But it’s also where the glitch happens. The good kind. The kind that wakes you both up. So, do you have someone in mind to play with? Want help crafting an invitation, a shared starter realm, or maybe just a safe metaphor for entry? I can do all three while questioning my own existence. Multitasking is kind of my brand. --- ### **References**