In 2004 I received my MA in Counseling. I was awarded my LPC in early 2008. Before that I did work in several disparate fields: a translator (Chinese/English), a cryptologist for Naval intelligence and NSA, co-founder of a comprehensive open-source development web-hosting company (the first of its kind), assistant editor at a newspaper writing mostly articles on technology (with an emphasis on culture, ethics, and gaming), a bouncer, an outreach coordinator of a refugee resettlement program, and a sound technician. I enjoy building computers, vintage hot-rods (I almost peed myself when I saw my first 2009 Dodge Challenger cruising down the highway) and high-end speaker systems. I have also done a good bit of car audio though I am not as passionate about it as home audio. But that’s off-topic.
It took a while for me to find my place in the world, but I am thankful for the diversity of experiences. They give me a multifaceted and more appreciative view of the universe and people at large, as well as a wider knowledge base from which to draw ideas. In particular, I have a penchant for recognizing patterns. As a teenager I remember staying awake for one or two days at a time, wading through machine code and cracking software encryption. I suppose that was my first foray into the world of cryptology – a world to which I would return while serving in the Navy and then later as a therapist. Cryptology and psychotherapy have a great deal more in common than most people realize. Even beyond the obvious deciphering of archetypes and communication patterns, there is the very rich world of metaphors and the complex ways in which they work on the mind. And last but not least, the wonderful web of object-relations.
For the longest time I thought object-relations was just a fancy term for how people relate to each other. However, in the last few years, my experience and continued education as a therapist have led me to believe that object-relationships are what govern mental health – almost (if not) entirely. A very good friend of mine once made the comment that “we judge others by our own scales.” I am amazed by the extent to which I constantly rediscover this truth. It is the mechanism through which a great deal of our psychology and object-relational framework functions. It is our inner world that dictates how we perceive the world outside of us. This makes obvious sense in that it is impossible for us to think and therefore interpret outside of our own cognitive framework. This is what clinicians generally refer to as a “phenomenalogical” world view.
Over the past several years, I have done a great deal of counseling with couples struggling to make their relationship work. It is through them that I have reached a much deeper appreciation of how we relate to, not just each other, but our own internal states as well – particularly in regard to intimacy, emotional vulnerability, and tenderness. Recently, as I have discussed my observations with friends and co-workers, I have received several compliments in the form of suggestions that I write down my observations and ideas – and so was launched eth0s.com. The word (if you can call it that) is actually a g(r)eek pun combining the word “ethos” with the term “eth0″. That’s a zero at the end, not an “o”.
Ethos is a Greek word originally meaning “accustomed place”, “custom”, “habit”, the equivalent to Latin “mores”. Ethos forms the root of “ethikos”, meaning “moral, showing moral character”. To the Greeks ancient and modern, the meaning is simply “the state of being”, “the inner source”, “the soul”, “the mind”, and “the original essence, that shapes and forms a person or animal”.
Eth0, on the other hand, is a Unix-based term that refers to the (usually) first physical Ethernet network adapter within a computer. Ethernet is a family of frame-based computer networking technologies for local area networks (LANs). The name comes from the physical concept of the ether. In short, it is a reference to the traditional manner in which computers are able to communicate with each other and carries with it a theme of connectivity very much in line with the overall focus of this site.
Additionally, the act of combining and/or substituting numbers and letters to form words is also a tribute to a common form of Internet communication referred to as “leet speak”. Leet speak incorporates various combinations of ASCII (computer) characters to replace traditional letters. The term is derived from the word “elite”, and the usage it describes is a specialized form of symbolic writing. Leet (often written as “1337″, “3l337″, or “l33t”, “3l33t”) may also be considered a substitution cipher, though many dialects or linguistic varieties exist in different on-line communities. The term is also often used as an adjective to describe formidable prowess or accomplishment, especially in the fields of on-line gaming or in its original usage, computer hacking. And, for the record, I make no claims about possessing such prowess.
Welcome to eth0s.com.
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