As of August 2025, we’ve not yet revised Diary of An Adamant Lover.
The book is advertised as the life and times of Bartleby Willard at the Skullvalley After Whistletown Booksellers Building in Somewhere Sometime Wall Street, but it takes some fairly experimental turns and in the middle is “The System”, an overview of Bartleby Willard’s philosophical-ish thought up to like 2023. See below for an overview of the sections in Chapter 46: The System of the someday to be released Diary of An Adamant Lover. We will also link to the sections at the end of each introduction.

The System consists of

Something Deeperism is the general worldview that …

This piece is both a description of and an argument for Something Deeperism.

We can’t make sense to ourselves except to the degree we abide by the universal values (aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, compassionate loving kind, joyfully sharing), and make progress on the fundamental questions (what is going on?, what’s best?, what should I do — especially as regards love — ?, and how to flow with what’s going on to what’s best?).

But most fundamentally, we can’t believe in, understand, or care about our own feeling/thinking/acting except to the degree we live in and through and for a Love = Reality.

So we need insight into Love = Reality to inform our understanding of the universal values and fundamental questions.

But insight into Love = Reality (by definition Absolute, whereas our feelings, thoughts, and actions are all decidedly finite) could not possibly be literal, direct, or 1:1.

But that’s OK: We don’t need literal, direct, or 1:1 insight into Love = Reality to be meaningful to ourselves. We need to organize our feeling/thinking/acting around Love = Reality and poetically (pointing towards the gist of, rather than trying to perfectly capture) translate Love = Reality into feeling/thinking/acting. To the degree we do that, we are meaningful to ourselves.

And so Something Deeperism is the general worldview that the mystics are onto something: There is a Truth and It is a Pure Love, an Absolute Love, a spiritual Love; and we can relate meaningfully to this spiritual Love, just not literally, directly, or 1:1.

And why not? Why couldn’t we relate meaningfully to Pure Love? Words and ideas can relate meaningfully — albeit imperfectly — to feelings, even though feelings are deeper and wider than ideas, and ideas deeper and wider than words. So why couldn’t words, ideas, and feelings relate meaningfully — albeit imperfectly — to a Love wider and deeper than feelings and ideas?

We don’t need perfection to be meaningful-to-ourselves, we just need to live in and through and for Love to be meaningful-to-ourselves.

[Go to Something Deeperism is the General Worldview That …]

An Experiential Proof of Something Deeperism

This essay is similar to the previous one, but it attempts to point the reader towards an experiential proof of Something Deeperism.

You can’t prove what would have to be deeper and wider than human feelings and ideas with feelings and/or ideas. All you can do with feelings and/or ideas is point the way towards the need of and path to experiencing the proof.

Imagine you organize your feeling/thinking/acting around a Pure Love shining through each conscious moment, and work to better and better interpret that Pure Love into a kind, gentle, careful, compassionate life.

Imagine further that in time you reach a tipping point where your thought as a whole (ideas, feelings, and et cetera mundane aspects of your conscious experience, along with a Pure Love shining through all things [including each conscious experience]) would have to say it is more true to state, “my experience is that Love alone is 100% Real” than it is to state, “I don’t know what’s going on!” or “my experience is that Love is not 100% Real”.

Why, then you’d have a starting point for wisdom — a starting point that would call you to keep seeking a better and better organization around Pure Love! And so with constant self-observation, -critique, and -adjustments, you grow in the Love that chooses everyone.

[Go to An Experiential Proof of Something Deeperism]

Shared Something Deeperism

Here we discuss Something Deeperism in groups, with particular attention to liberal representative democracies.

Liberal representative democracy is a spiritual good because in a liberal representative democracy the people work together to act as a final check on madness and corruption in government while together evolving both the shared culture and the shared government.

In an autocracy, you have to choose between decency and the success and safety of you and your loved ones. That system is bad for everyone’s soul.

It is much better to pursue the kind of win-win system that liberal representative democracies can provide: by focusing on the form of good government (fair elections with wide enfranchisement; honest open discourse and government; checks on power concentrations; freedom of speech; equality under the law; and freedom from unjust imprisonment and political, religious, or other persecution), we create a place where personal success and the safety and welfare of you and your loved ones is compatible with working towards what is best for all.

Humans are very influenced by the people and systems around them. For this reason, it is wise and good to foster relationships and systems that encourage us to be both happy and decent. In this way, we can grow together in wisdom and joy in a nice, fun, sustainable way. It’s not just nice and fun; it is sustainable: it is doable. And thus is liberal representative democracy a spiritual good.

[Go to Shared Something Deeperism]

The Wisdom Meme

This pieces gives a short description of the concept of wisdom memes, as well as a few desperate stabs at finding a good wisdom meme.

The wisdom meme is a koan so irresistible that instead of having to split your head over it to figure it out, once you hear it you can’t help but find yourself sucked deeper and deeper into wisdom, into the great enlightenment, into insight into that and in what way it is True to say, “We are all in this together.”

[Go to The Wisdom Meme]

[We also have The Wisdom Meme Project on this site.]

The Hurt and the Vague Longing

This one is short. And I don’t want to talk about it right now.

Love Mathematician

This one is short and it’s good. You should read it. It also contains a dandy experiential proof of Something Deeperism. If you want to skip over everything else: Fine! Just jump to chapter 47 Grendel’s Reaction and scroll up a bit to read Love Mathematician. While you’re there, you can scroll up a bit more and read about The Hurt and the Vague Longing as well, if you’re in the mood.

Best,
Bartleby Willard
Amble Whistletown]