The Vajra Man: Transforming the Soul of Ideas

(This essay is the third in my “man” series — the other two being the Titanium and Polarity Man).

“Vajra” is a sanskrit word meaning “thunderbolt” and is also the mystical weapon of the Vedic God of Thunder, Indra. It also refers to Vajrayana Buddhism, where it means “diamond cutter” — the diamond that cuts through delusion.

The Vajra man involves:
1. Taking an argument, meme, or idea and re-expressing it from a different state of consciousness, mood, or feeling, ideally from a deeper, subtler, more sublime one.

2. Taking an argument, meme, or idea and remixing it with a new symbolic structure, aesthetic style, or visual presentation (including styles not commonly associated with that idea).

Whereas the titanium man allows us to see ideas from new angles, the Vajra man allows us to feel ideas in new ways. The titanium man remixes and synthesizes ideas with other ideas, the Vajra man blends ideas with new feeling states. Vajra manning breaths a new spirit, ethos, “mood” or “flavor” into an idea, which changes how we feel about it on an emotional, visceral, and somatic level.

An example of Vajra man #1: An ISIS terrorist may talk about the glory of Allah, Jihad, or other Islamic ideas, but it will feel completely different from a Sufi mystic…