🛏️ Feng Shui for Skeptics: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Move the Bed 🧙‍♂️

 How seriously can you take a discussion of Feng Shui without taking it too seriously?

It’s a delicate paradox. It’s like asking how earnestly you can wear a wizard hat to a dinner party without breaking character—or worse, becoming "The Guy Who Wears Wizard Hats to Dinner Parties." 🎩🍷

If we treat Feng Shui as a rigid system of magic where a mirror in the wrong spot curses your bank account, I’m out. I’m a pragmatist. I like systems that work, like Plan0 or a well-oiled text editor. But if we treat it as "symbolic spatial thinking"—a kind of ancient UX design for the soul—then we might be onto something.

It turns out, you don’t have to believe the map is true to find the territory useful.

The "Philosophical Psychology" of Dr. Hanks 🧠🃏

My willingness to entertain "woo" without swallowing the pill goes back to my first semester at UNO (University of New Orleans). I took a course called "Philosophical Psychology" taught by the late, great Dr. Donald Hanks.

It was a strange survey course. We started with the heavy hitters like Freud and Jung, which you’d expect. But then, Dr. Hanks took us off-road. We drifted into Transactional Analysis (Eric Berne’s "Games People Play"), then into NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), and finally—I kid you not—Tarot.

For a young philosophy student raised on logic and Daniel Dennett, this should have been heresy. But my takeaway was unexpected: It is possible to engage with these systems in a useful way without buying the metaphysics.

There is a "subtle truth" in these practices that is hard to put into words. They function as evocative fictions. They are systems for directing attention. They say: Look here. Shift your framing. Break the pattern.

The Hypnotism of the "Impossibly Cute" Classmate 🌀❤️

The most vivid lesson in "spatial framing" didn't come from a textbook, though. It came from the day Dr. Hanks decided to teach us hypnotism.

For reasons that belong in a Philip Roth novel, Dr. Hanks singled me out to practice induction. And for my subject, he chose a classmate who was, frankly, impossibly cute. She had a bit of a "baby girl" voice but a sharp philosophical mind. We were established as a "demonstrative pair" without our consent—a meta-demonstration of compliance right there in the classroom.

Maybe 6 times that semester, I was goaded into attempting to hypnotize this girl in front of everyone. I was nervous AF. I was earnest. And I was definitely checking her out.

Looking back, I realize the "hypnotism" wasn't in the script I was reading. It was in the room.

The classroom was the stage.

Hanks was the puppet master.

The tension between us was the energy source.

I was being hypnotized by the situation. The spatial arrangement of the room and the social framing created a reality where "trance" was the only logical outcome.

That, my friends, is Feng Shui.

Moving the Furniture in the Soul 🛋️✨

So, back to my 300-square-foot studio cottage on Labarre Road. It has exposed beams, temperature control issues, and a layout that defies logic.

When I worry about the "bed position" or the "wealth corner," I’m not literally worried that Chi is getting blocked by my laundry basket. I’m engaging in a ritual of attention.

If I move the desk to face the door, I’m not "channeling power"—I’m priming my primitive brain to feel secure so I can focus.

If I put a plant in the corner, I’m not "feeding the wood element"—I’m signaling to myself that this space is alive and worth caring for.

It’s design fiction for your life. You don't have to believe it’s objectively true to appreciate the ritual power of acting as if.

So go ahead. Move the bed. Buy the lucky cat. Wear the wizard hat to the dinner party if you must. Just remember: the magic isn't in the furniture. It's in the story you tell yourself when you move it. 🌗

Tags: #Philosophy #NewOrleans #FengShui #Skepticism #Interiors #Psychology #UNO