Month: April 2011

The Nature of Artists

It’s been a long while since I’ve read a passage that resonates with my soul as powerfully as this passage does:

But fortunately, artists do not have to be morally admirable people. All that matters is that they create great art. If his own art is to come out of the more contemptible side of himself, so be it. Flowers grow best on dung heaps, as Shakespeare never tires of saying. Even Henry Miller, who presents himself as a straightforward fellow, ready to make love to any woman no matter her shape or size, probably has a dark side which he is prudent enough to conceal.

Normal people find it hard to be bad. Normal people, when they feel badness flare up within them, drink, swear, commit violence. Badness is to them like a fever: they want it out of their system, they want to go back to being normal. But artists have to live with their fever, whatever its nature, good or bad. The fever is what makes them artists; the fever must be kept alive. That is why artist can never be wholly present to the world; one eye has always to be turned inward. As for women who flock after artists, they cannot wholly be trusted. For just as the spirit of the artist is both flame and fever, so the woman who yearns to be licked by tongues of flame will at the same time do her best to quench the fever and bring down the artist to common ground. Therefore women have to be resisted even when they are loved. They cannot be allowed close enough to the flame to nip it out.

—YOUTH, by J. M. Coetzee

Rain Away.

Street lights flicker onto long stretches of empty pavement and the wind whips at my hair.

Then it arrives. A roar. A crash and crack. The tempest is here. It descends like a tantric tantrum, furious and flailing, full of ecstasy and rage. I decide to run. Where doesn’t exactly matter, just so long as it’s far, far away, someplace calm and warm and safe.

Then they arrive. In legion. In the thousands. Hundreds of thousands. Miniature missiles hurling toward me en mass. I look for an escape but there is no out. My only option is to embrace the inevitable. The next moment I’m chugging through beatings of horizontal rain. The lactic acid is eats away at my consciousness, the pain mounts and intensifies with every stride, but I continue. I need to get home. Never mind the persistent pelting, I tell myself to fight on, to pump those god damn my legs through the pain, through the maelstrom of glistening globules stinging my face.

But I have no idea where I’m going. Does it even matter?

I survey the surroundings for some saving refuge but I’m alone, alone with an empty landscape. I know my only out.

Continue reading “Rain Away.”

On Selfishness, Values, Creativity, Death

There is no selfless act. Though you die for values and ideals, they are nonetheless yours and yours alone, subjective and independent of external facts and realities. Insofar as self-preservation is the prerogative of all life, the preservation of ideals and values is the prerogative of the human consciousness.

But what of love? some may say. Love is a selfish conception. If it is not predicated as a pleasure or passion, it is predicated as a subjective concept projected onto the world to characterize a type of relationship. To die for another is to die for your ideals and values, not the subjective values of others. The act of dying for another or another’s values is embedded with subjective valuations. Camus said that what man believes to be true must determine his action.

Echoing Nietzsche in his essay On Truth and Lies in the Non-moral Sense, truth is a metaphorical representation that is coined from an originally subjective perception of experience and passed on as an objective fact of experience. Though it may be passed on as objective, its application in life through experience is nonetheless a subjective assertion. Insofar as we exist before we perceive the world, all that is conceivable and doable is a sui generis selfish act, whether it’s to preserve the well being of the body or preserve the conceptions of the mind.

But what of martyrs or saints? others will say. Are not these selfless acts of death or denial? I would reply that they are no more selfless than suicide or any other act that preserves a subjectively possessed belief or ideal.

The only selfless acts are those selfish deeds which indirectly and consequently improve upon the lives of others so that they must do the same when taken to denouement. That is, selfless acts are no more selfish than any other act, only that their corollary influences others to perform actions which empower others to empower others.

In this way one may pursue the ideal of freedom selfishly but in doing so he not only apprehends freedom personally, but apprehends this freedom for others as well. Likewise it is with equality, so that by cherishing equality for selfish motives he secures equality for all. What must be preserved in these acts is an inherent method of propagating the power of others to do the same.

Creativity must not be confused as being exclusively devoted to the arts. Creativity is the ability to stipulate something from nothing, to instantiate new conceptions according to new or existing demands. The constructive value to life inherent in creativity also contains an equally threatening detriment to life. By their very nature new and original conceptions destroy uniformity, disrupt equilibrium and threaten the familiar. The foreign and alien, the new and novel, have no place in circular systems. Circular systems arise from habits formalized as convention, routine, pattern, method and the like. They allow predictability and consistency and uniformity. Their adoption requires a suspension of familiarity so that a leap of faith is required for their assimilation. In many cases the familiar must not only be amended, but totally destroyed and annihilated to sufficiently accommodate change. In this way change requires adaptation, an alteration of existing units and relations within a system.

These systems may represent cultural practices, or histories, or traditions or rationale. One must not rely on the past to sufficiently guide and navigate the future. So long as there is time, there is change, and all change must be embraced accordingly. Negating the existence of changes is the source of all problems. If life is an activity characterized by growth, problems are a natural phenomenon and must be welcomed as such. But what is growth if it is not life? And what is life if not a continual pursuit of preservation? To preserve the past is to celebrate death; but this is precisely the natural character of humans. Nietzsche said “Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species.” As with all things living, it is human nature to preserve the self, to struggle to exist, but the rarity arises in man’s specialized ability to preserve. This ability resides in the act of perpetuating equilibrium through adaptation, through the creative employment of reason and imagination to adjust to changes. Non-living matter can be said to be in the greatest equilibrium of all.

But this is where man diverges from other life. It is not enough to maintain equilibrium. Man contains a will to create equilibrium where there is not, to dominate his surroundings in an effort to project an ultimate equilibrium that renders a congruency between the inner life of the self and his environment. This is why Nietzsche dismissed the Darwinian notions of struggle for existence in favor of the will to power which more accurately reflects the nature of man. Evidence of the will to power becomes obvious when we turn to the modern day manifestations of man and witness artificial disequilibrium instantiated as civilization and technologies. Going far beyond all the past pursuits of life that merely sought to preserve corporeal existence, man has successfully learned to preserve the inner self. He has fully exercised his freedom to impress his inner world onto the outer world, to fashion it according to his liking.

Leaders are creators who operate to conjure and implement new realities and visions that accommodate real or perceived changes. While leaders can be oppressive in this way, they can be, more importantly, liberators who sow new realities and ideas that empower others. The difference lies in the values contained in the given vision and whether or not these values empower others to empower themselves to empower others.

Assert Your Inner World

“There’s no reality except the one contained within us. That’s why so many people live an unreal life. They take images outside them for reality and never allow the world within them to assert itself.” -Hermann Hesse

To be is to be perceived. Perception is not a quality of the world, but of our mind.

Hesse is referring to the creative imagination, our ability to stipulate and synthesize original thoughts, or in this case concepts, to render new and original experience.

Concepts are not found in experience; we apply them to experience.

In short: When these words are perceived, concepts of understanding (categories, classifications, definitions) are brought a priori to experience in order to render it intelligibly. These a priori concepts of understanding mediate between subjective judgments of perception (derived from a posteriori sensations and a priori pure intuitions) to yield objective judgments of experience. You do not have direct access to external reality. Think of a priori concepts of understanding as the ‘interpretative lens’ or ‘conceptual structure’ used to intelligibly render and organize and categorize experience. The a priori concepts of understanding being applied determine the objective concepts of experience, and anything objective can be freely disputed by asserting alternatives.

I believe Hesse is asserting that the mind, being independent and a priori of experience, can choose to create and stipulate its own conceptual interpretative system for rendering experience from reality.  So that ‘when we change the way we look at the world, the world we look at changes.’

He is saying that people fail to question the concepts or ‘mental images’ dogmatically dictated outside them, viz. by society via convention, culture, routine, etc., and assert the freedom of their creative mind. When these patterns are broken new worlds will emerge.

Evidentialism

The Principle of Evidentialism states that a Subject is justified in believing p if the belief is proportioned according to evidence at a given time. That is, S is epistemically justified in believing a proposition at time t if and only if the belief is supported by S’s evidence at time t.

Suppose I maintain the belief that I will pass all my philosophy classes. The evidence I have for this belief is that I have received all passing grades through the semester, that there are no new assignments, there is no class curve, and it is now the last day of classes. I am justified in believing that I will pass because all the evidence supports this belief; namely that all my grades are undeniably above passing and there are no more opportunities to earn credit toward my grade.

This belief is justified because the proposition “I believe that I will pass all my philosophy classes” is supported evidence “it has been confirmed that all the grades I received in all these classes are undeniably passing” at the time the proposition was stated, i.e. at the last day of classes. It is important that all evidence is properly accounted for, including knowledge of a class curve and the relation of these grades to other students. Also vitally important is that the proposition is stated according to the evidence at time t. If it was stated earlier there would be insufficient evidence to uphold that belief because not all possible grades were completed.

New

I don’t like reading the news. It depresses me.

I need to make some changes in my life. Over the course of the past few months I’ve gotten in the bad habit of thinking about nothing. What this does is prevent me from doing. Doing a lot. Being a lot. Thinking is pretty nice and all, but only when there are problems. Thinking about things that don’t require fixing is just a waste of time. In my opinion. As I type these words. Ironical as hell.

So over the past few weeks I’ve been indulging in thoughts and behaviors that are regressive. Regressive because I’ve lost more than I’ve gained with them. They have brought me absolutely no where. Except backwards. Action. Action. Action. Life is action.

Who do I want to be? A great student. Someone who studies his material. What does that mean? Read a lot. Just know it. Don’t obsess over it. Sometimes this is hard when you study philosophy. It’s not like other facts that you can toss to the side because they don’t apply to every context. Philosophy really does apply to every context and it’s hard to stop yourself from constantly seeing these connections.

It’s beautiful out today. Like, unbelievable.

 

Redundancy

So I’ve realized a pathological redundancy to my relationships. Everything’s great the first two months, love, happiness, joy. Thoughts of marriage. Then something happens. Something goes off in my mind and I retreat inward. It becomes more about myself. Less about them. I let them put the effort in and I somehow think they’ll continue putting the effort in. So about a month later I’m emotionally detached and they’re totally frustrated. They do rash things, they have needs. I don’t respond. We break up. They’re emotional. I’m not. Then one of two things happen. Either I accept the break up, or I realize I just lost something absolutely amazing. In the first scenario I’m emotionally removed to the point where I am just a cold indifferent stranger. Not sensitive, not caring. Just distant. And it doesn’t matter. I’ve moved on. It may hurt a little, but I recover. In the second scenario, I realize I’m losing someone I value. I realize that I actually did love this person, that I need to take corrective action. I don’t think I’ve ever recovered a relationship beyond this point. Once the girl has felt the rejection, the cold distance, there’s usually no coming back. Truth is, it’s rare if I ever truly want it to come back.

But what would I have to do to win her back? To show her that I’m done giving up. That I want her and I wanna work for it. What on earth do I need to do? It might be a problem that that’s even a question. I should be running after them, no? What would that look like?

So I love her. Why do I pull away? God. It’s happened like this for how long? How many relationships? It’s predictable. I can say there are differences in every relationship, but there aren’t. Sure there are commonalities, but the fact is when I see potential in getting hurt or vulnerable, I just fold inward. It’s sad, I think. I’m not even sure that’s it. I just don’t know what else to think.

It crushes me to think that I haven’t been emotionally available for her. That I’ve been in my own world, that she’s somehow become a chore, a second responsibility. I hate myself for it. And it’s not them. It’s me. Something happens in me. A shift in attitude, in esteem. It prevents me from feeling. It kills me to think that they’ve been with me, and I haven’t been there for them. Agh. It hurts just thinking about it. So many relationships. I have had it. I am done. No more being a coward. So is that it?

No. In the end I don’t think it has anything to do with being a coward. I think it has something more to do with being free and passionate, and relationships seem to depreciate that wild life. They function to steal away a piece of my freedom, a piece of my inner world, and I can never let that happen.

Candidus: The Art of Suffering

Ah. To be happy. I can be happy. I am happy. But the dumb are happy. It doesn’t take guts to be happy. It takes guts to be sad. To endure hardship and suffering. Sure, happy is pleasurable. But imagine, just imagine a life that was entirely happy. I like to think that such a life would be terribly boring. Terribly nauseating. Like eating sugar at every meal, you’d get sick of it. Most people think that suffering is a curse. I tend to disagree, quite vehemently too. Suffering and sadness are blessings. They harden and humble a man. They make him more appreciative, more aware. And while they might callous soft skin, they deepen the capacity to care and contemplate, to hold more in.

To be happy: the dumb are happy. That is what I observe. Any blubbering idiot can be happy. But to be sad? This requires courage, but not just courage, it requires sacrifice. Sacrifice of the pleasures that preponder the mind night and day.

Amusing. I resent those who keep themselves constantly amused. Do you know what the word amuse stands for? It is a suspension of thought: ‘a’-‘muse’. As in, ‘no muse’. As in, to divert attention, inspiration or thought. The french came up with that one. It’s quite clever.

So we have a society that prides itself on amusement. It is a virtue to be amused. To be dumb.

Suffering and sadness create depth. I can always spot the deep thinkers. They’re the sensitive type, but you’d never know it by looking at them. They keep it in. Some people have the good fortune of being born sensitive. In these cases suffering and sadness are thrust upon them. For everyone else, well, they need to wait for misfortune. And some never have the fortune of misfortune.

But the suffering and sadness doesn’t just make people deep and contemplative. No. It makes them bold. Bold to be themselves. To be happy. To embrace it all. They know no boundaries. For them, fear has been found. They fear nothing. They understand that to fear suffering is to already suffer from what you fear. They realize that it is all apart of the play. For everyone else, they avoid pain. They avoid hardship, suffering. Their lives are a despairing denial. They seek comfort and in this comfort they water down their potential.

Some people run. They run from vulnerability. They run from pain. They run from ever really experiencing joy. Let them run. They run only from themselves, and then they never really know themselves. For them life is a sheet of paper containing wondrous lines and colors, but no depth.

Yes. The man who has suffered greatly finds himself at home even in the most terrifying worlds, worlds which most no nothing about. Ah yes. To be happy. You fool. Life is not always happy. You have bought the lie, swallowed the pill, forfeited your life.

Life is suffering. To embrace suffering is to embrace life. To avoid suffering is the strongest sentiment of death. When life hurts, know that you are alive.

Let us embrace the balance. Let us embrace the crests and troughs. The balance lies in the synthesis, the contrasts created by the peaks and valleys. To reside in the middle is lifeless. While the moments spent there are brief and good, a life in the middle, or at one extreme or the other, is a predictable flat line. Let’s find balance while undulating across the extremes. This way we can mark our progress by degree.

I believe that some people are born wild, while others are born domesticated. Some born free, others born slaves.

With a large intelligence and a deep heart comes the inevitability of pain and sadness. Great men, I think, must have great sadness.

Oh you disagree do you? What great achievement was ever won without the perspiration of pain? One must embody the discipline of driving through suffering and sadness.

I am happy. But I choose my moments. I prefer to be conscious, to have a pulse, rather than be happy. So this may be why I am always thinking. It is an involuntary response to being fully alive.

Candidus

Ah. To be happy. I can be happy. I am happy. But the dumb are happy. It doesn’t take guts to be happy. It takes guts to be sad. To endure hardship and suffering. Sure, happy is pleasurable. But imagine, just imagine a life that was entirely happy. I like to think that such a life would be terribly boring. Terribly nauseating. Like eating sugar at every meal, you’d get sick of it. Most people think that suffering is a curse. I tend to disagree, quite vehemently too. Suffering and sadness are blessings. They harden and humble a man. They make him more appreciative, more aware. And while they might callous soft skin, they deepen the capacity to care and contemplate, to hold more in.

To be happy: the dumb are happy. That is what I observe. Any blubbering idiot can be happy. But to be sad? This requires courage, but not just courage, it requires sacrifice. Sacrifice of the pleasures that preponder the mind night and day.

Amusing. I resent those who keep themselves constantly amused. Do you know what the word amuse stands for? It is a suspension of thought: ‘a’-‘muse’. As in, ‘no muse’. As in, to divert attention, inspiration or thought. The french came up with that one. It’s quite clever.

So we have a society that prides itself on amusement. It is a virtue to be amused.

Suffering and sadness create depth. I can always spot the deep thinkers. They’re the sensitive type, but you’d never know it by looking at them. They keep it in. Some people have the good fortune of being born sensitive. In these cases suffering and sadness are thrust upon them. For everyone else, well, they need to wait to misfortune. And some never have the fortune of misfortune.

But the suffering and sadness doesn’t just make people deep and contemplative. No. It makes them bold. Bold to be themselves. To be happy. To embrace it all. They know no boundaries. For them, fear has been found. They fear nothing. They understand that to fear suffering is to already suffer from what you fear. They realize that it is all apart of the play. For everyone else, they avoid pain. They avoid hardship, suffering. Their lives are a despairing denial. They seek comfort and in this comfort they water down their potential.

Some people run. They run from vulnerability. They run from pain. They run from every really experiencing joy. Let them run. They run only from themselves, and then they never know themselves. For them life is a sheet of paper containing wondrous lines and colors, but no depth.

Yes. The man who has suffered greatly finds himself at home even in the most terrifying worlds, worlds which most no nothing about. Ah yes. To be happy. You fool. Life is not always happy. You have bought the lie, swallowed the pill, forfeited your life.

Life is suffering. To embrace suffering is to embrace life. To avoid suffering is the strongest sentiment of death. When life hurts, know that you are alive.

Let us embrace the balance. Let us embrace the crests and troughs. The balance lies in the synthesis, the contrasts created by the peaks and valleys. To reside in the middle is lifeless. While the moments spent there are brief and good, a life in the middle, or at one extreme or the other, is a predictable flat line. Let’s find balance while undulating across the extremes. This way we can mark our progress by degree.

I believe that some people are born wild, while others are born domesticated. Some born free, others born slaves.

With a large intelligence and a deep heart comes the inevitability of pain and sadness. Great men, I think, must have great sadness.

Oh you disagree do you? What great achievement was ever won without the perspiration of pain? One must embody the discipline of driving through suffering and sadness?

I am happy. But I choose my moments. I prefer to be conscious, to have a pulse, rather than be happy. So this may be why I am always thinking. It is an involuntary response to being fully alive.

Anything to Anyone

(Unfinished excerpt)

“…There’s a point in everyone’s life when they realize their talent. For some this occasion arrives sooner than later, but nevertheless it arrives. If you were to ask me how I it is I came to acquire this talent, I might begin by giving you a breezy account of my upbringing, of the tumultuous transitions that marked my meandering life; or I might start off with a detailed account of my fascination with self mastery; or I might illustrate the parental influences that indelibly pressed upon my conscious. Whatever story I end up telling is more myth than fact. It may serve to inspire you,  kindle your fascination with me, feed your imagination; in the end they all serve an act of false generosity. False in the sense that it is the very talent in question that renders these myths.

To say my talent is people would be a gross underestimate. The more accurate telling would capture something supernatural and transient. You see, I am amorphous. I have no character that stolidly weathers the winds of time and the tides of change. But I am much more than my nebulous nature. I am a mimicking mirror: reflective, to a greater or lesser degree, of your exacting desires. There are no constraints, no guidelines, no rules, no method to this madness. It is a poetic perversion, a pantomime of subtle revelations mixed with mystery and madness, and nothing regular.

I work out of curiosity, out of the competitive challenge of can’t. I overcome these hurdles by moving myself towards a suit of interests. And when interests cannot be uncovered, it is my job to sow them.

You see, I can be anything to anyone. But surely, you say, this is manipulation, a farce of fabricated facades. I may disagree with fabricated facades, for they are surely fabricated and surer still facades, but I am by no means manipulative. On the contrary, my interests lie in you and you alone. There is no one else I hold in higher esteem. Your well-being is my well-being.

My vocation may be untraditional, but it is nonetheless legitimate and requires respect. It is not easy being other people. It demands constant work and attention, for people and their tastes are always changing. Fickle people. Fickle and flaky, but nonetheless predictable. If you do the thinking for them, that is. People begged to be swooned, to be lulled into a comfortable complacency. Defenses are an exhausting expenditure if there is no threat to counter or reward to reap. These walls always come down in time. Persistence is the key. Persistence and planning. If success is to be secured, you must increase probability with planning. Memorizing the mechanistic behaviors of man is just half of it. You must understand context, conventions, values, motives. Where are they from? With who do they acquaint? How do they behave? What do they value? Why do they act? To understand these is to understand the harrowing heart.

First and foremost, keep their best interest in mind, always. This must never escape the attention of your work. To absolutely achieve this, you must deny the self. You have no self. Subjugate whatever ego that sits at the window of your consciousness. He must observe from a far, with patience in mind. Every action is calculated for its long term returns, not the short term satisfactions. In this way the ego must sit idle and wait. His opportunities to whittle a path come at night, in solitude, under deep reflection.

A smile is the most disarming gesture you can offer. Let it

When you are something to someone, you become them. Their desires must be sought as if they are your own. More accurately, they are your own.”

 

White Nights

“I am a dreamer. I know so little of real life that I just can’t help re-living such moments as these in my dreams, for such moments are something I have very rarely experienced. I am going to dream about you the whole night, the whole week, the whole year. I feel I know you so well that I couldn’t have known you better if we’d been friends for twenty years. You won’t fail me, will you? Only two minutes, and you’ve made me happy forever. Yes, happy. Who knows, perhaps you’ve reconciled me with myself, resolved all my doubts.

When I woke up it seemed to me that some snatch of a tune I had known for a long time, I had heard somewhere before but had forgotten, a melody of great sweetness, was coming back to me now. It seemed to me that it had been trying to emerge from my soul all my life, and only now-

If and when you fall in love, may you be happy with her. I don’t need to wish her anything, for she’ll be happy with you. May your sky always be clear, may your dear smile always be bright and happy, and may you be for ever blessed for that moment of bliss and happiness which you gave to another lonely and grateful heart. Isn’t such a moment sufficient for the whole of one’s life?”

– Fyodor Dostoyevsky; White Nights

Pragmatism and a priori Knowledge

Can a pragmatist accept a priori knowledge? Consider the following statements of a priori knowledge:

1) 4 beer cans and 3 beer cans equals 7 beer cans in total.
2) A can contains the properties metallic and cylindrical.

The mind has inescapable a priori knowledge that operates as an interpretative function for ordering and categorizing experience. A pragmatist can instrumentally stipulate any definition. If we take thought as a priori, i.e.capable of intuitions independent of experience,  one can stipulate necessary conventions for assimilating experience. In this way the self generates a priori thoughts that function as an interpretive structure brought to experience, but this a priori knowledge is uniquely exclusive to the self. Revisions to current a priori knowledge have no affect on past interpretations as they have already been interpreted as experience. All a priori stipulations provide a ‘perceptual gestalt’ or ‘interpretive lens’ composed of axioms that categorize experience into concepts to suit personal ends. The implications of a stipulation may even yield new insights about experience, as when two stipulated definitions render incompatible (contradictory or inconsistent) experience.

The two examples given illustrate concepts with definitions stipulated a priori that categorize experiences a posteriori. In this way the definition of a can brings classification to experience, so that experiencing the properties metallic and cylindrical classify an experience as a can.

While experience may provide material to stipulate categorical definitions, such as certain predications, it is not necessary for stipulating. Stipulations arise from the mind and are brought to experience as a priori categorical structures.

 

 

Evolutionary Economics: Organic Analysis of Economic Growth

Abstract: This essay explores whether it is possible or desirable for present-day economic theory to incorporate biological or evolutionary insights of the type suggested by Alfred Marshall but not fully embraced by him.

If the study of economics is to function as a progressive system that guides and explains the behaviors of men as free and creative agents, it is necessary to examine the study in an open and dynamic way that emphasizes the growth of knowledge and qualitative factors as the prevailing force of change and progress.  Early on Marshall (2009) discovered the inherent error with rational mechanistic economic systems when he said “economics, like biology, deals with matter, of which the inner nature and constitution, as well as the outer form, are constantly changing” (p. 637). Whether Marshall knew it or not, the problem between statical and biological theories is fundamentally a philosophical one. This essay will explore this problem, delineate its philosophical roots, and build a case in favor of evolutionary economics.

The central thesis of this essay argues that neoclassical economic models operate in the outdated modernist paradigm that utilize rational closed systems which are, as a result, authoritarian and unsustainable with respects to free market innovation and evolution. The argument presented here is that economic models need to shift away from quantitative measures emphasizing ideal equilibrium states and towards a post-modern conception that accounts for freedom and change. In this way economics will reflect nature accurately, i.e. men are individual and free agents acting interdependently within an evolving economic landscape. This will provide holistic and sustainable model for interpreting progress by individuating agents according to inevitable qualitative changes within an economic system.

Continue reading “Evolutionary Economics: Organic Analysis of Economic Growth”

Advance Confidently in the Direction of Your Dreams

“I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favour in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”
-Henry David Thoreau

ADHD

“For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure.”
-Emerson

ADHD is the greatest gift and the heaviest burden this life has bestowed me.

A billion miles per hour. In every direction. Undulations, oscillations, attentive and inattentive, accelerating and breaking, simultaneous stretching.

When you read, your mind absorbs, unrestrained. Information flows and floods. My mind, quite literally, cannot hold all the thoughts. They burst at the margins of my mind. They desperately want to escape. Onto paper, into discourse, through my hands. They need to be expressed and organized outside of me.

What is it like to have ADHD? Consider what it is like to be in a perpetual car wreck. You are out of control, hurling toward objects, objects hurling towards you, debris flying everywhere.

The ability to turn it off and on is more a matter of chance than control. When it is on, it runs, for hours, with no stopping. It keeps on going until there is nothing left, or until it gets derailed with a less stimulating distraction.

The mind just goes. There is no censoring. Content careens into the cranial cavity.

But just as it can go on for endless hours, the mind can be slow to start. If it isn’t warmed up, or properly stimulated, it is dysfunctional. Simple problems and answers flutter and fly from the mind no sooner than they land.  Thoughts seem to evaporate without a trace. Complete lines of thought blur over as quickly as they were drawn. Is it frustrating? Absolutely. It is paralyzing. The lack of control is choatic. It leaves an anxious residue dripping in the back of my mind, all day every day. The driveling drip echoes like a dilatory daydream.

Class leaves me feeling contemptuous, confined. I resent the cold hard framework. The formality. The rigidity. There is no creation. Only analytics. Repeat. Regurgitate.

They give students questions and answers. If students are lucky, they’ll have an opportunity to come up with their own answers. But what of the questions? Do teachers want students to cognize their own questions? To frame problems? Is that even encouraged? I gotta say, on the whole, no.

I recently read an article on ADHD, creativity, the classroom, and the like. I found it fascinating, and illuminating:

“A new study led by researchers at the University of Memphis and the University of Michigan extends this theme. The scientists measured the success of 60 undergraduates in various fields, from the visual arts to science. They asked the students if they’d ever won a prize at a juried art show or been honored at a science fair. In every domain, students who had been diagnosed with attention-deficit disorder achieved more: Their inability to focus turned out to be a creative advantage.”

“Those undergrads who had a tougher time ignoring unrelated stuff were also seven times more likely to be rated as “eminent creative achievers” based on their previous accomplishments. (The association was particularly strong among distractible students with high IQs.)”

“According to the scientists, the inability to focus helps ensure a richer mixture of thoughts in consciousness. Because these people struggled to filter the world, they ended up letting everything in. They couldn’t help but be open-minded.”

“Such lapses in attention turn out to be a crucial creative skill. When we’re faced with a difficult problem, the most obvious solution—that first idea we focus on—is probably wrong. At such moments, it often helps to consider far-fetched possibilities, to approach the task from an unconventional perspective. And this is why distraction is helpful: People unable to focus are more likely to consider information that might seem irrelevant but will later inspire the breakthrough. When we don’t know where to look, we need to look everywhere.”

“Psychologists at Union College surveyed several dozen elementary school teachers in 1995. While every teacher said they wanted creative kids in their classroom, they were mistaken. In fact, when the teachers were asked to rate their students on a variety of personality measures – the list included everything from “individualistic” to “risk-seeking” to “accepting of authority” – the traits mostly closely aligned with creative thinking were also closely associated with their “least favorite” students. As the researchers note, “Judgments for the favorite student were negatively correlated with creativity; judgments for the least favorite student were positively correlated with creativity.” -Jonah Lehrer, Against Attention, Wired.com

For the pdf article: Creativity: Asset or Burden in the Classroom?

How right you were Emerson.

Pensive Persuasion

By the time you realize you care, it’s too late. She’s moved on. She’s waited long enough.

He plays the game. Every move is coolly calculated, symmetrical with her every move. Nothing escapes. No feeling is beyond him. He is boldly aware. But before he knows it, it’s over.

Somewhere along the way he decided that he won, that his efforts sufficiently spun the wheels of affection so that they continue spinning freely. How wrong he is. Every time too.

“It is not a game.”
“Oh?” says I “Than why do you play by the rules?”
“What rules?”
His response is as dead as it is rhetorical. I reply, “The cat and mouse, the hesitations, the calculated caroms, the mysterious reticence, the pervasive premeditation moderating every move? Why don’t you shed and share all, unmask your motives, lay down your cards?”
“Ha! I can’t do that!”
“Oh?”
“Well, I suppose you could, but where’s the fun in that? There’s no excitement. The glories of love need to be delayed!”

Usually he waits with reserve. His only recompense is the razbliuto left by fond memories of feral fantasies.

 

Writer

I bought several books on writing.

“Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases”, by Greenville Kleiser. I will master.

Literary and rhetorical devices. I will master.

Story development: character, plot, climax, conclusion. I will master.

How will I master? With discipline, focus, firm resolve and dedication.

Teacher

The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.”
—William Arthur Ward

Keep this in mind when you communicate: you cannot escape the reward of your action. Consider that each time you communicate with someone you are revealing something about who you are and what you know.

“Every man I meet is my superior in some way. In that, I learn of him.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

We learn from every man, and every man learns from us. In this way we are teachers. Instruct the prying eyes with inspiration. Let it seep from your intention and into your action. Do not waste time living mechanically or methodically. These are the grossest representations of transcendent man. Instead, become imbued with exuberant ecstasy, let your revelatory enthusiasms erupt with escalatory elation! Be a great teacher. Inspire with greatness.

 

Life: Feeling and Thinking

Since when did you hear a man say “I think alive!” Never! No one thinks themselves to be alive. Life is left for feeling! “I feel alive!” says the man. There is nothing rational about life!

I like to entertain that, whereas the happy man feels, the sad man thinks. On a whole it seems that there are much less rational optimists than there are rational skeptics. More often than not, it seems, the happy are the irrational. The sad men are the skeptical, the realistic, the rational evaluators.

However, no one thinks himself into a fulfilling life overflowing with goodness. This is left for feeling. Rich, ripe feeling.

You cannot rationalize feeling. You can only move yourself into feeling. We are moved by our senses, by the sensuous stimuli composing experience. Life is meant for feeling. After all, we do not think senses cognitively; we feel senses intuitively. Likewise it is that we feel alive.

“I think myself to be happy” one might say. This would suggest that there are reasons for feeling. Does one need a reason to be happy? And what if there are no reasons? Is that good reason to feel any differently? Certainly not! We may give ourselves reasons to be sad, but we certainly don’t need these anymore than we need reason to be happy!

Let feelings stand alone, justified singly by the resolute rapture of existence!

Rando

I resent anything that chooses me. Anything that forces to identify with me, that I do not freely or willfully accept as a true reflection of my intention or choice, is like a disease and is resented like a disease, with disdain and contempt.

Let me exercise freedom with choice, with conscious choice. People who make choices for me are like a cancer and I strive to cut them out of life as quickly as possible. Let me choose my habits, my thoughts, my desires, my relationships.

Students are rewarded for their method, not the ideas. Ideas should be valued above method. You are graded if you follow the rules. How drab. How limiting. How boring.

School teaches us that you will succeed if you follow the rules, if you meet expectations, if you show me how to reproduce. The ideas themselves, if there are any left, are pushed aside as if they are an inferior priority. Since when did it become advantageous to encourage the ability to take apart and unpack, rather than put together and create?

Soft Summer Songs

There is nothing so satisfying as an opulent ocean of redolent rays gleaming across the sublime summer sky.

Relationships: these interesting symbiotic syntheses of feelings and minds and circumstance. Two people, pulled by fate, like magnetic force, yield their defenses long enough for a daring gesture of interest to find its way into their intimate chambers, where their egos reside with the risible recantations of a wry world.

Two men exchange their thoughts, like young twins speaking their own tongue, referencing their experiences, in blissful agreement: “Yes, yes” and “yea”, “but of course” and “oh right!” These affirmations of love, spoken in frank response.

Write with freedom, with unrequited passion; the world will never return the favor with the same fervor. Never mind it. You are a model, a leader. As a writer, your words do more than etch new thoughts and moods among men. They reverberate through time. Their roots wrap and coil around future gardens of growth.

I need to journal more. What do I mean by journal? I mean, feel more deliberately. Writers experience life twice. Why would I want to deprive myself the experience of living life with any less feeling the second time? Full and fabulous.

I want to be a writer. I want to capture the human condition, to communicate existence with humanity, as a comfort, a beacon, that life is not a lone journey, but a universal struggle. The journeys are all different, but the struggle is all the same. The phenomenon of each journey may be irreconcilable with another’s, but the limitations are universal, uniform, consistent.

Writers are sensitive, acutely aware of details, of the incantations strewn by the senses throughout the consciousness.

When I write, I feel. I never write without feeling. The best thing one could do for oneself is be transparent with their thoughts and feelings. Thoughts should reflect feelings, so that when you feel intensely, thoughts follow with equal force and vigor.

When I write, I write through my states, through the moods moderating my memories and mind. Like a performer, my heart commands and my fingers obey, with precise form and clarity of expression. There is nothing wanting. The audience is a lone traveler, hungry and thirsty, searching for anything to quench their parched and pallid imagination. The routine of this journey weighs, and each step adds another circular chain to their load. Starving eyes, so eager to capture the faculties of imagination so they might dispel their locking illusions. They long to shed the weight. The writer offers this salvation.

Relationships. These are a peculiar breed of experiences. The man longs to be free, the woman longs to be secure. Each seek to liberate or enslave the other. In this way each relationship seems over before it has even begun. But this is precisely the bond that brings them together.

Everything persists by demand, and it is through this demand we experience a command, a resounding order abounding from the passions. To disobey is mutiny: a self sabotage.

There cannot be freedom without activity. To utilize humanity one must act. But activity must be chosen every moment. Routines develop into chains as circular habituations take hold of choice. We must attend our freedom like a fire, gently stoking its embers and fueling its flame. The inattentive watchman risks losing the fire, the light of his soul; or it bellows beyond control, consuming everything until there is nothing left to ravage. Either way the man is lost: losing his way or losing his life.

Passivity is slavery. Unreflective choice is slavery. Impulsive choice is slavery. Any thought or action that is not chosen via volition is inauthentic. Passivity encrusts the consciousness, it clouds and clutters and confuses. There is no I without action, no subjective perspective without freedom and action.

TV, advertisements, anything generated from a capitalist society that engenders humanity as a static condition of a whole, is an assault on freedom, on authentic living. Man cannot manifest his freedom by doing nothing. He cannot create ethics or values or tastes or preferences that reflect an original genesis of choice unless he acts through himself, for himself, as himself. Men should not be whipped with their past. Advertisements: propaganda that illuminates man as a predictable creature, as a rational creation, with no faculty of imagination, objectifies man and indoctrinates him with alien laws and limitations.

Dialectical Thinking

We are never presented with fixed options. This kind of thinking always leads to more of the same. So long as we are free agents with an imagination and desires, we can coin any option we want. And what if the option doesn’t fit with the system? What if the option, the aim and goal and desire, isn’t compatible with the existing framework, the current context? Change the system. If we don’t it will continue perpetuating more of the same, the same options, the same outcomes, the same predictable behaviors. The illusion that people unknowingly carry on is that one can escape the system by working it harder, by being the best. This is a lie because when one buys into a system, one buys into the rules, the conventions, the practices that characterize the system. Working harder, or achieving within the system, will only bring about more of the same. More input equals more output, not different output. Hard work will produce quantitative differences, not qualitative differences. That is, it produces changes in the amount of values, rather than changes in the values themselves.

So if a system isn’t producing, consider discarding it. Ask yourself if the system was established with your best ends and aims in mind, if it complements your natural inclinations or strengths. If it doesn’t, if it isn’t conducive, create a new system. That’s right: create. Synthesize patterns and behaviors that work for you into something wholly novel and practical according to your pursuits.

Diary of Sapien

Dearest Sapien,

Why am I so god damn sensitive? I am so sensitive, that I hide my vulnerability. I master a callous veneer that deflects most, if not all, attention thrown my way. My heart aches with every stupid dig. It doesn’t matter who it comes from. It doesn’t matter if I think it’s true, if they think it’s true. Being sensitive means it hurts. And I hate it. It means you react before the insult even lands.

You are acutely aware— the bumbling bee, the radiant rose, the felicitous smile, the downcast eyes: nothing escapes your attention. Intonation resounds like thunder, the slightest misinflection cracks at the window of your awareness. Sensitivity causes a convulsion, an empathetic rescue to remedy the reaction.

I just close my eyes and imagine the various pins and needles penetrating my affections.

A rioting panic wells up in my eyes.

As quickly as the wind changes its course, my mood, my self esteem, just about every confident conviction I hold so close, turns against me. My mind turns inward on itself and begins to ravage all the inadequencies lurking in safe shadows. It seeks them out, festering and plucking and picking at old wounds, and hurls fresh insults. I have to convince myself that I am above it. That the rapacious pillaging of self loathing doesn’t weaken me. It requires work and energy. Far too often I think about killing myself. There. I said it. When times get tough, and my self esteem plummets towards dark depths, my escape is fantasy. But not just any fantasy. Fantasies of death. Death and nothingness. Neutrality. These types of thoughts are typically associated with the psychotic. With the mentally unwell. I have to agree most of the time. But I seem to think it’s perfectly normal to want to kill yourself. You will die anyway. But my death, by any unnatural way (whatever that means), will be presented as an attack on those closest to me, and I resent that. What that means is that I should take time to disengage before I kill myself so that no one will hurt as bad. The abrupt is too cold, too merciless.

I exist in various states.

If you go on living, chances are you won’t be remembered. The tragic is remembered. The world loves to wallow in bliss or tragedy, not in the purgatory in between. That god awful gray area where the mediocre reside. Who could live in such a place? Most people. But they don’t want to know about it. There is nothing there they want to be reminded of.

So they obsess over the other corners of experience. Tradgedy or bliss. My role is to fulfill the tragedy that is their lives. I will kill myself, one day, as an act of definance, of absolute revolt. The idea is more appealing than the actual process, but I assure you, there is a methodology to my madness, to the sick recompense I seek to serve my fellow man. Your aberrations have turned to adulations, and I want to defecate on all the bad deemed good. On lifeless lives.

Yours Truly,

Sapien

 

Thoughts on Evolutionary Economics: Organic Models of Economic Growth

‘Progress’ or ‘evolution,’ industrial and social, is not mere increase and decrease. It is organic growth, chastened and confined and occasionally reversed by decay of innumerable factors, each of which influences and is influenced by those around it; and every such mutual influence varies with the stages which the respective factors have already reached in their growth. In this vital respect all sciences of life are akin to one another, and are unlike physical sciences. And therefore in the later stages of economics, when we are approaching nearly to the conditions of life, biological analogies are to be preferred to mechanical, other things being equal. (Alfred Marshall 1898: 42-3)

Examine the Thesis: Economic models must not be closed. Rational models are not reflective of nature as a function of change and therefore time. The creative and adaptive enterprises of men cause rational economic models to become outdated in the long run. Rational economic models are suitable for short run analysis but can not make accurate long run predictions.

Alfred Marshall and the Growth of Wealth: A Short Microeconomic Analysis of Wealth Accumulation

Alfred Marshall was a pioneer in economics, even by today’s standards. In 1890 he published Principles of Economics which, compiled from years of study and contemplation, proved to be his magnum opus on economic thought. The work was so fastidiously compiled that it served as a standard in which all economic thought over the next century would respectfully consider. This essay will delve into the concept and history of the growth in wealth. A brief outline of Marshall’s descriptive analysis of wealth accumulation will provide a basic framework that can be used for comparing Marshall’s thoughts to that of other economists.

Continue reading “Alfred Marshall and the Growth of Wealth: A Short Microeconomic Analysis of Wealth Accumulation”

Zeit

How you spend your time defines who you are.

Who are you?

When I want to judge someone’s character, I don’t let appearances do the work. Experience renders character. Where do they garner their experience? Examine how they spend their time. A man is what he thinks about all day long. Whatever task is at hand will dominate your thoughts. Your mind manifests its intention through action, through activity. Do you sit for hours online and mull about the mindless material circulating ad infinitum on the web? Do you seek out the novel? Do you spend time with quality people? Do you read quality books? Or read at all for that matter?

Many people like to think they are someone. Everyone likes to think they’ve achieved a degree of individuality. I will tell you: how you spend your time defines who you are. Ask yourself if your routine is any different from the millions of other rats trapped in this menacing maze. The habituations trap the mind into apathetic unoriginality.

I suffer these delusions. I ask myself how I individuate my experience from all other experience. If I watch all the same shit, if I desire and strive and celebrate all the typical glories that hail from mainstream adulation, I am a copy. I am a duplicate. My experience may as well be the same. How you spend your time defines who you are.

Experience renders the material of thought. It provides sense datum which feeds the flickering flame of the soul. Like the flick of a match we were born into this world and throughout our lives we burn. The brighter we burn is dependent on the kindling and fodder fed by way of experience. Experience is the filament of human existence. It allows us to burn brightly. The more original experience, the more brilliant our flame, our life, will shine.

Individuate yourself. Individuate your experience. Do we realize how asinine and inimical it is to scour the ranks of top sellers and most popular lists? Why do we fawn more of the same?

There must be something to wanting a shared experience. “Happiness is only real when it’s shared.” Perhaps that’s why people rush to accumulate all the same experiences as everyone else. While there’s nothing original in going to all the same amusement parks, in reading all the NYT best sellers, in watching all the hit reality TV shows, in buying all the latest gadgets and gigs, I see the utility in it. Yes, the utility is glaring. It creates a unity of experience. Some experience so we can feel apart of this greater whole, this greater truth. Or it fills some hole, some void thrust upon us when we were bestowed with the burden of freedom. Perhaps they are one in the same. The responsibility of freedom- those god awful chains of choice- weigh equally on every man. I understand the exhaustion. I understand the willingness to shed a link or two and indulge in ‘truth’, or popular convention.

I seem to be stuck with these bitter sentiments. What did routine do to me? Ah. I remember: lull me into lecherous lethargy.

I want to get positive. Live life with enthusiasm and passion and excitement and energy. I say that most of my time I exert the full force of my being to the moment. I long to shine through. Sometimes I question. These questions rear their head like a hydra and I find myself lost in a continual battle . Pollyanna, or skepticism. Such is life.

Pragmatic Science Studies: Thoughts

All things are subject to interpretation; whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.
-Friedrich Nietzsche

Examine the thesis: Science serves as a social utility that facilitates the economic and political power over a community.

Elucidate the utility of science from an individual and national level. Show how science and economy are reflexively compatible and serve as complimentary forms of power.

What are the pros of accepting science as truth? What are the cons? Can one accept external truths and retain freedom? Internal?

Continue reading “Pragmatic Science Studies: Thoughts”