Author: William

Strang/le

I feel the weight of death.
That’s all you need to know about me.
Unfortunately,
the significance of that burden is never fully appreciated.

Childhood exists as a series of poems.
Fragmented
words,
feelings,
senses.
A confetti of experience tossed here and there.

Our civilization barely breathes anymore.
We are slowly strangling ourselves;
and we love it.

The weight of my conscience makes my bones ache.

Possessed and pregnant with thoughts.
Some thoughts manage to explode,
spewing their guts on these pages.
Other thoughts quietly implode,
sucking my life and everything in me with them.
The beam of consciousness strikes,
and all thoughts shine,
for a moment.

Floating thoughts,
suspended in time,
glittering like gold,
only to find an edge of darkness
and pass quietly into oblivion.

I want to follow my thoughts there,
to the event horizon
where the weight of the universe lies,
where thoughts disentangle,
and oblivion pulls.

Talk of material goods,
possessions
and luxuries.
Talk of little lives
and big things.

She held out a smile, Continue reading “Strang/le”

Intellectualism vs Scientism

This is my ranting response to the article Timothy Ferris: The World of the Intellectual vs. The World of the Engineer.

The author fails to see the reciprocal relationship between intellectualism and engineering- what I would respectively equate to abstract and applied thought (The false dichotomy he seems to be presenting is between intellectualism and scientism). He over and under generalizes the utility of both. His arguments for their failure and success are also weak. For as many failed intellectual theories there are just as many failed scientific theories (Think Fleischmann and Pons’s Cold Fusion, Einstein’s Static Universe, Phrenology, Blank State Theory, Luminiferous Aether, Phlogiston Theory, Ptolemaic Solar System, and the list goes on.) Progress is piecemeal, accreting and tossing out new and old information as we continue to test our understanding in an ever evolving world.

The author states, but fails to appreciate, that intellectualism is about the generation of ideas, whereas science is the testing of these ideas. Intellectualism is concerned with asking the right questions; science is concerned with giving the right answers. Both require each other. Both require trial and error in order to explore their limits. Insofar as these ideas continually stand up to the rigor of the scientific method, they become facts. But facts- being derived from experience- are probabilistic and not true. Facts treated as truths lead to dogmatism, intellectual blindness and stagnation. Intellectualism aim’s to continually challenges facts to render more pragmatic solutions for persistent problems. They challenge the ideologies and methodologies that produce the facts.

He says that Freud did nothing, made no contributions? What of his discovery of the nature and functioning of the unconscious mind? And Marx theories were a complete failure? His theories contributed to what we now call sociology. In addition he contributed to the gender neutral workforce labor theories associated with feminism, formulated labor theories of value by investigating the production and circulation processes of industrial capitalism, developed economic Materialism, expanded on economic theories of the state, and many more. One of Einstein’s favorite authors and greatest influences was philosopher Immanuel Kant, particular his book The Critique of Pure Reason, whose metaphysics would later play on a role in Einstein’s famous re-conceptualization of time and space. But even Einstein’s genius is a temporary artifact on the road to progress (It seems recent evidence at the LHC will likely disprove Einstein’s mass equivalence theory.)

The author seems to think that science and engineering are devoid of ideologies of their own. This is completely wrong. They operate within their own ideologies and paradigms. Chances are, if history has taught us anything, their current paradigms are flawed and may be restricting their ability to see solutions. Read Philosopher’s of Science Thomas Kuhn and Imre Lakatos for more on how ideologies are an inescapable aspect of our subjective psychology.

I have more to say, but I’m done ranting. I’m sure I’ve left a lot out. I guess I don’t know what the author’s point is. What is intellectualism, really? Thinking abstractly? I guess we disagree on the utility of abstract thinking. Science and intellectualism are indispensable to one another’s success. I’ll leave you with this:

Epistemology without contact with science becomes an empty scheme. Science without epistemology is—insofar as it is thinkable at all—primitive and muddled. However, no sooner has the epistemologist, who is seeking a clear system, fought his way through to such a system, than he is inclined to interpret the thought-content of science in the sense of his system and to reject whatever does not fit into his system. The scientist, however, cannot afford to carry his striving for epistemological systematic that far. He accepts gratefully the epistemological conceptual analysis; but the external conditions, which are set for him by the facts of experience, do not permit him to let himself be too much restricted in the construction of his conceptual world by the adherence to an epistemological system. He therefore must appear to the systematic epistemologist as a type of unscrupulous opportunist: he appears as realist insofar as he seeks to describe a world independent of the acts of perception; as idealist insofar as he looks upon the concepts and theories as free inventions of the human spirit (not logically derivable from what is empirically given); as positivist insofar as he considers his concepts and theories justified only to the extent to which they furnish a logical representation of relations among sensory experiences. He may even appear asPlatonist or Pythagorean insofar as he considers the viewpoint of logical simplicity as an indispensable and effective tool of his research. (Einstein 1949, 683–684)

Random Weekend Updates

This past weekend was fall break. I traveled to Hilton Head Island, SC with my room mate and  a mutual friend for the weekend. We had studying and work to do and initially planned to stay on campus but ultimately decided that doing work at the beach is infinitely better than continuing the daily monotony of Nashville. It was an interesting weekend. We took a day to trip to explore the historic district of Savannah, GA and even went to some local Hilton Head dive bars. For whatever reason I decided to be on the prowl when we went to the bars, something I typically shy away from. I figured “screw it”, I was on vacation, and my friends needed a wing man.

What is a wing man? A friend who accompanies you when he’s trying to hit on or pick up women. Having another person with you diverts some of the attention and relieves some of the pressure when approaching a girl or groups of girls. A wing man ultimately makes you look good by talking you up, referencing your awesomeness and offering plenty of admiration. They act as moral support. They help to distract the girl’s other friends so that her attention is on you and you alone. Anyway.

Even though I had every intention of being a wing man this weekend, it didn’t end up totally working out that way. I have a tough time turning down a good looking girl. Especially one who eye fuck’s me from across the lounge. Especially one that stands sensually by herself and makes no obvious effort to seek the company of friends or other guys. What girl stands by herself in the middle of hoppin bar, lookin all seductive and pretty, just ’cause? No girl. Unless, of course, she has motives. And this one definitely did.

So I’m a sucker for the slender, fragile looking ones with delicate features and voluptuous curves that radiate with the purity of youth. What can I say? Something inside me takes control and justifies why I must make her apart of my life, if only for a moment.

Anyway. I don’t feel like going into details about the various women I picked up this weekend. All I’ll say is it was fun and refreshing.  And women are funny.

When I woke on Sunday I found myself still resting in the comforting embrace of yesternight’s dream. I recalled that I was a reknown intellectual whom everyone revered and respected as a polyglot and world traveler. What stood out what my ability to speak so many languages. People automatically attributed a deep respect for the culture they perceived me to possess.  The dream left me impassioned with a residual glow that lingered behind my thoughts as I gathered myself for the day.  I found myself reliving the dream throughout the morning- relishing in the adulation, the respect and admiration- over and over again until suddenly I had the desire to do something about it.

I decided that I wanted to learn another language. Sure, I know a bit of Spanish, but the years of crappy education and listless enthusiasm for the study has left me mired with disaffection.  But what language? There are two languages that immediately stand out due to my cultural and academic interests. These two are French and German. The most prolific and influential thinkers and philosophers of the past several hundred years have originated in these two nations. I would love nothing more than to explore the roots of their worldview by learning their language. In the end I decided to teach myself French because of my previous background in Latin languages, and because French just sounds so damn sexy.

And I decided to learn a language for myself. Not because of anyone else. I’ve learned that the best teacher is often yourself, and anytime I’ve wanted to learn something badly enough I didn’t wait around for a teacher or risk my education with their crappy instruction. I just teach myself.

So I jumped on google and did research for the best books on learning French grammar, vocab, and conversation. I also found some excellent books written in French. I jumped on Amazon and began  filling my basket when, to my displeasure, I realized I had thirty some books already in my basket that were waiting to be purchased.

My problem is I love books. More specifically, I love learning and knowledge and tend to think that books are the second best way to learn, second only to direct experience. So I have the habit of saving relevant, important, and recommended books until I’ve read my current stack or I have the extra income to spend fifty to several hundred dollars on buying more.  The issue arises when the list of  books I want to read exceeds my ability to reasonably read and pay for them. The result from this issue is that I have over seven hundred books marked “saved for later” in my Amazon account basket. Anyway.

Seeing as how I was finished with my current reading, and seeing as how I had a little extra cushion in my bank account, I decided to blow a hundo to buy a dime stack’s worth of books. The result was several books on French, Whitehead and Russell’s Principia Mathematica, a book on Godel’s incompleteness theorem, books on the philosophy of science, works by both Paul Feyerabend and Imre Lakatos, including lectures and correspondence between the two, books on linguistics, language and culture by Noam Chomsky, and book titled the Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style.

That being said, I want to learn to speak conversational French within a year. Over the past several years I have had the pleasure of witnessing several of my close friends make the decision to learn a language- Japanese, Spanish, Chinese- and succeed. I watch them pick away at it little by little until, over the course of a year or two, they possess an entirely new language. I want that.  At least thirty minutes a day, every day? So doable.

My strategy is to learn sentences first. I figured the best way to learn a language is to just learn how to say exactly what you want to say. This way I learn usage of both proper grammar and vocabulary, as well as conjugations. When I learn enough sentences that allow me to communicate what I want to say, I feel like I’ll be able to intuitively mold and shape the component parts comprising these functional sentences to construct new sentences. I get the impression that this is how children learn language anyway. They don’t learn grammar. They don’t learn vocab. They just know that they have a desire to communicate something and then find the appropriate ‘noise-language’ to say it. Soon they learn to identify which word and part of speech functions to do what, and slowly, after a period of trial and error and self correcting, they become proficient in the language.

I know this is a simplistic rendition of how the learning process will actually end up looking, but its how I imagine it most effectively working. Anyway.

Thoughts

My favorite activities, in serial order, consist of: ‘Increasing my value as a person’, through meaningful work or study, and engaging in relationships. I do not enjoy relationships if I do not believe I have any value to bring to them. My relationships are most enjoyable when I believe I am positively contributing some of my own value to them. I am most fulfilled when I am studying, accreting new experiences, or achieving some worthwhile purpose or aim.

These are random thoughts- know that I’m a humanists, not a male chauvinist, and that I believe in equal rights and conceptions between men and women:
In The Republic Plato wrote that literature is feminizing and that combat is masculinizing. I’ve wrote about this before, but I think that education, on a certain level, is feminizing because it requires the passive consumption of information. This is why, I think, there are more women in school and, on average, they do better than their male counterparts. Men as not passive, on a whole, but more active. They challenge and are not as receptive to authority.  In this way men are creative and more apt to spread their influence and dominate through their own authority. Even though there are more women in the education system and even though they do better than males on average, it is not often that they contribute to higher knowledge in a profound and paradigm shattering way. If you look at Nobel Prize winners, the vast majority are men. This may be because we live in a gender biased world. However, it seems that men are more apt to create and dominate and challenge accepted views and authority more often then women. This may be attributed to the common notion that men are, on a general whole, not passive consumers but active creators. More later.

Excellent Living

The topic of discussion last night was whether or not you have volitional control to permanently change your mind. More exactly, can you simply choose to be happy?

The debate raced through a whole load of topics of all sorts of different natures. I don’t like to dichotomize people or ideas, but the debate shifted between two opposing perspectives that can be boiled down to optimists and cynics; or, in other words, idealists and skeptics. One position was that you could see the world however you’d like, choosing and creating the perspectives that best suit your aims or desires. The other was the cynic who held a fairly deterministic, mechanical worldview where being realistic about what is is tantamount to choosing a wholly favorable perspective.

The optimists position was a world view governed by faith and creativity and independent of the influence of unfavorable or negative externalities.  The corollary of this view is an under-appreciation of all the details comprising life, a failure to account for relevant information, which causes a certain naivety and willful ignorance. In this view the hero is the ego. The ego shapes the world we see. They believe that it influences the perceptions and therefore by changing what the ego wants, one can change perception and therefore knowledge. This renders knowledge as relative to each subject. What is unfavorable is simply the result of a flawed perception rather than anything inherently unfavorable existing in a thing or circumstance or effect. There is no essence. Bad and good change according to what ends you hold highest. The optimist personality is creative.

The cynic position views the world as an absurd place with no inherent meaning and obvious goodness. In this world every perspective counts, however favorable and unfavorable, and a person’s duty is to account for all those details if he wants to remain objective. The corollary of this view is an over emphasis on externalities, and an under emphasis on the individual’s perception and attitude to shape and determine certain externalities. The result is a certain nihilism and helplessness. In this view there is no hero. The ego counts for next to nothing. What is important are the facts which the external world often hands us through direct experimentation or by receiving knowledge through other people via dialogue where we inherit knowledge as it is passed on from one person to the next. On a certain level, the cynic assumes objective perception is attainable. This causes him to hold fast to knowledge as atomistic and almost irreducible. Relativity is simply ignorance. The cynic personality is analytic.

For sport I adopted the optimistic position, arguing that our world is dictated by our perceptions, and that if we change out perceptions, the world as we see it literally changes. Of course, I do not believe simply believing we will fly changes the limiting facts of physics, but it allows us to take certain measures and partake in certain activities where flying becomes a possibility, such as devising flight technology. What changed was how we thought about our limitations, not the limitations themselves.

What is essential to understand is that we are not simply reflective creatures. We are reflexive creatures. As both an observer and a participant, how we choose to participate changes what we will observe.

The conversation essentially revolved around how one can change their perceptions. We talked about the role of thought, habits, and actions, and, given the plasticity of the brain, the role in changing mental states, mind and perceptions. A person cannot literally change his entire brain after years of habituated thoughts and actions. Especially after establishing a life, or world around you, that attributes and reacts to you according to those thoughts, seeing you as unchangeable rather than evolving. No, the mind changes all the time, in the present. Changing a single thought will not change the mind. Think “How you spend your time defines who you are.” It literally dictates who you are, what you are. If you spend all day doing math, you will cultivate a brain that is oriented for math, you will think math, act on behalf of these math thoughts, and people will (although not always) contextualize you according to your propensity for math.

Thinking thoughts over and over again changes the mind. It reinforces neural pathways, reorients entire neural networks. Once a thought settles in the mind it has permanence, but its influence does not. To increase the influence of thoughts requires their repetition. We are creatures of habit. In this way a conscious thought becomes ingrained in the mind, internalized into the subconscious, so that it becomes apart of our character and influences us even when it is not consciously acknowledged.

But can you simply will yourself to be happy? Not in a single moment, just like you can’t will yourself to lift 400lbs on a whim. It requires that you act and live the thought or activity you desire to emulate on a frequent basis. You must anchor it through repetition, through practice.  But practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect. You must practice excellence, repeat excellence, every time. There is no good days and bad days. Every day you must desire and hit the mark dead on. The best only have the habit of doing the best day in and day out.

You are a product of your environment, no doubt. You have years of habits that are most likely less than excellent. Overcoming them requires overwriting them. It requires forgetting everything you knew about the past and adopting and doing what you best desire right now. You cannot stand within and move without. You must step out of the past and any conceptions and experiences that do not support your current aim. You must redefine yourself every moment with perfect thought and action, consistently, day in and day out, until you become your aim.

To do this you must be your aim and goal from the start, and nothing less than your aim and goal. You will not become the best by trying or doing. Only by being. In this way you do not do in order to have in order to be. No. You must be in order to do in order to have.

 

More later.

Good Company and Discourse

At the start of the semester I told myself that I will no longer be preoccupied with parerga and meandering thoughts of no immediate consequence, but focus solely on what’s most important, namely school and career hunting. I’ve been diligent with this commitment and it’s left me feeling significantly less tormented by my thoughts. On the flip side, I feel fairly superficial and empty, like I’m gliding and skimming along only the surface of life. I understand that now isn’t the place to get deep about existential questions. I’m not a professional social critic. I’m not a paid philosopher. I’m a student looking for a job, and that should be my priority.

But, as a human, it sucks not thinking. Reflection makes life vastly more interesting and curious. As much as it’s tormenting to continually swat at every biting thought, it’s an activity that keeps your keenly aware and awake.

I haven’t been writing. Writing. Writing. Writing. What is it about writing? this act of making thoughts visible and known to yourself and the world? It’s fascinating.

I had a late night last night. After I was through studying at a local cafe, my room mate and I visited a close friend of ours to indulge in red wine and friendly discourse, my two favorite postprandial activities. Nothing is better than open discussion with fellow oenophiles whom you love and love you. There’s never animosity or resentment or pride or fear to keep you from opening up and sharing yourself; just a plenum of mirth saturated with mutually authentic appreciation for courageous and novel thought.

It is in these moments and minutes and hours where you can really get to know yourself, sometimes even more than you get to know about your interlocutors.  These friendly games of discourse allow you to bask in the luminosity of unexplored streams of understanding, streams flowing with ideas long incubating, just waiting to hatch in the calescent glow of the right company. This is why a close coterie of friends is so vital, for they act as midwives who aid in the birth of fledgling ideas which we then pry and coax to fly with open discussion.

A good cadre provides an invitation for exploration, a warming refuge where the teguments of belief can be peeled back and catechized.  Discussion properly exorcises the most nascent conceptions and undeveloped beliefs, pulling them to the surface as it were, so they are rendered bare and vulnerable for inspection. Anyway.

Wittgenstein said “A new word is like a fresh seed sown on the ground of the discussion.” How wonderfully pleasant is that? It invokes fresh imagery that flowers like spring. Introducing new words into a discussion that has tossed around the same for long enough livens the debate and renews the flame that lights understanding. New words are like new keys which open new rooms, or new seeds that add blooming colors to variegate the garden of discourse.

Ranbo Ramdom

I feel compelled to write. About what? God. Anything really. I’m drinking, surfing the net, wasting my life. I have a monumental exam on Friday that I have yet to begin studying for. Tomorrow’s a busy day too.

There’s nothing quite like being walked on. The feel of leather soles, pointy heels, and rubber tread running over you night and day. Sure it feels great after a long night stretching out under the steady draft of cold corridors. The initial pitter-patter on the back is a comforting reminder that I’m important, that I’m helping people along their way, easing their stride. But come noon the pitters and the patters begin to pound and pulsate, incessantly, with echoing reverberation that I just can’t ignore. But waxes are nice.  What is it… it is…

Stream of thought:
This world is mad, my friend.
People crying over stolen computers
missing cats
damaged mix tapes
poor grades
while we lose ourselves Continue reading “Ranbo Ramdom”

The Philosophy of Parmenides

          The fragments of Parmenides provide the earliest formulations of the laws of thought[1] that Aristotle later most famously formalized. (p. 58, 2.B2) His philosophy runs in direct contrast to that of Heraclitus who sought to create a philosophy that could accommodate the flux of the universe with the simultaneous paradoxes arising from change. Most likely influenced by the Pythagoreans and their conceptions of the capacity to reason, Parmenides sought to rely on understanding (capacity to reason) as a means of discerning the truth of what-is. This essay will begin by summarizing Parmenides’ account of what-is and what-is-not before exploring the question of why we cannot investigate what-is-not. It will conclude by discussing whether it is possible to learn about what doesn’t exist and delve into the potential implications of such a possibility. Continue reading “The Philosophy of Parmenides”

Clubbing to Death

Troves of two legged animals roamed the street, in all sorts of colors and shapes. We came into view of the bar and took our position among the other patrons patiently waiting for entry. Women waltzed through the corridors of open sidewalks and streets as if they were at a cattle drive. They wore their Saturday nights best, exposing as much of their bare bodies as their conscience would allow. Their heels offered them up like a stage, elevated as they walked, so onlookers could appraise their worth with sensually seasoned eyes. My thoughts muted as I observed the frenzy all around me.

We arrived at the front of the long line and the doorman did his usual inspection of fake ID’s. Our posse of girls passed the oral exam, where they were from, how old, height, weight, and we continued to the cash register where entry cover was collected. As it often happens, the girls didn’t bring cash. Convenient. Against my usual judgments, I decided to pay for them, whipping out some bills and motioning to the cashier that they were with me. They smiled for a moment, as if that was the appropriate response for such a favor, and ran inside. I got my hand stamped and followed their invisible trail.

The room was sultry and thick with moisture. The lights were pulsating, the music was heavy, pounding. I surveyed the crowd. The glistening corpus appeared soaking in sweat; their dermis drenched as their dithering bodies danced and gyrated. I felt an aversion, a maladjustment as my retina retained the wallowing waves of sybaritic splendor. I shouldered my way between the squirming masses of moist flesh. I observed females on all fours thrusting their asses into protruding pelvises. The men gripped these wantons at the waist and together they massaged their genitals back and forth, in rhythmic trance, with predictable pendulous motion. I felt hands grab my ass, women threw their arms around my neck and smiled salaciously, bearing their teeth in apelike submission, tugging for me to join in the contorted carousal. In the corner a midget stood slaking an over sized malt forty as he bobbed to the beat.

I felt removed. I couldn’t get into it. This ball of flesh. Soaking. Pure carnal desire, effete fantasies, reveling with a group of strangers, their soulless eyes emptied the room of any warmth.

Don’t think, I told myself. This is not the time to get cerebral, to make value judgments about the state of your fellow man. My thoughts traveled backward in time with celerity, recalling the events of the night, roaming over memories of weeks past and years beyond at light speed, until my perceptions unhinged from their consciousness, and that familiar nausea began bleeding into my awareness. That sickness, that strange friend, was freedom. And I asked myself how the culmination of my life’s choices led me to this moment. And suddenly I felt responsible. And the warmth returned.

 

Working Dreams

I’m looking forward to entering the workforce. Living by myself in a one bedroom apartment in some new city, working for a company who sets my goals and pays my bills, was exactly the dream I’ve been working so hard for. That’s a lie, actually. I haven’t actually been working that hard, and that was definitely never a dream of mine. Life’s easy when you believe in what you’re doing. What’s hard is doing what you don’t believe in. That’s the position I’m finding myself in now.

As a child I always wanted to be a ‘businessman’, the one with the sharp suit, slick tie, shiny shoes and silver watch.  I wanted to hold the leather briefcase, wear the million dollar smile, eyes gleaming with confidence, and walk into work knowing that my decisions that day would change the world. Of course, you don’t consider the years in between, the entry level positions, running yourself to the bone for someone else’s promotion. Nor do you imagine the lonesome tired nights spent standing at your apartment window, staring over the suburbs and city, searching memories for the last time you’ve shared an intimate experience outside the workplace. I didn’t exactly dream of the dinners by myself, the long commutes, the coworkers that I affectionately love and hate, because while I chose the job, I didn’t choose them. I didn’t think to conceive what it would be like starting over again in a new place, time and time again, and how it would feel to cultivate new friendships, new conversations and tastes, new social networks in alien cities with every new promotion and transfer. I didn’t choose them, and I didn’t choose my loneliness. I chose success, the harder work and longer hours, the lack of leisurely weekends.

So nice to see you! I pull my cheeks upwards and release a smile. We talk about their new job, about the company they’re so excited to work for, about their entry level position that they didn’t see themselves in, but now they love it. Now they love it, because the dreams they once had didn’t consider the dull reality that was waiting for them. Disappointment is hard to swallow.

We were told that our education, our hard work, makes us special, gives us a life of opportunity. Sometimes I believe it.

Existential Freedom: Simon de Beauvoir

Beauvoir presents an existential account of freedom by continuing with Sartre’s thinking of man as free, but emphasizing the ambiguity man faces by simultaneously existing in freedom and facticity, as a free being in a concrete world (7).  Man escapes from his natural condition, she says, through the freedom of rationality and the pure internality. Men have “striven to reduce mind to matter, or to reabsorb matter into mind, or to merge them within a single substance.” (7) What arises is the inherent paradox of man.

Beauvoir does not want to escape the ambiguity, like so many philosophers and thinkers have done in the past, but to accept the ambiguity and live within it, that is, “accept the task of realizing it” (13). She calls the tendency to deny, or negate, or escape the ambiguity of existence cowardice, saying that this method doesn’t pay. (8)

The existential conversion, Beauvoir says, “does not suppress my instincts, desires, plans, and passions, it merely prevents any possibility of failure by refusing to set up absolutes the ends toward which my transcendence thrusts itself, and by considering them in their connection with the freedom which projects them.” (14) This passage addresses the incarnation of subjective ends through subjective freedom. In this way she says that the world is a place willed by man which “expresses his genuine reality” (17). She emphasizes the “plurality of concrete, particular men projecting themselves toward their ends on the basis of situations whose particularity is as radical and as irreducible as subjectivity itself” (18).  This raises the question of how unique and separate men can live in ethical harmony. Her answer is that “an ethics of ambiguity will be one which will reduce to deny a priori that separate existents can, at the same time,  be bound to each other, that their individual freedoms can forge laws valid for all” (18).

To be free, then, requires the conscious spontaneous choice of projects undertaken moment by moment. These projects must be positively assumed, says Beauvoir, and the weight of the concrete consequences of these choices of the will must be accepted as a result of our fundamental freedom (24, 32). Meaning “surges up only by the disclosure which a free subject effects in his project.” (20) Thus, the principles of ethical action will be discovered as inextricable from choices and freedom (23). In the same way, the will to be moral and the will to be free are one in the same. (24) But a tension arises nonetheless from the disclosure of being. While the justification of life requires the realization of particular concrete ends, it also requires itself universally (24).  As a result, the relationship of a being with others is integral the Beauvoir’s existential thought.

Beauvoir emphasizes the failure of man as a central component to freedom, citing philosophers who wrestle with this failure as absurdity or anguish, the otherwise overall lack of answers. Beauvoir states that “nothing is decided in advance, and it is because man has something to lose and because he can lose that he can also win.” (34) In this way life is marked by activity and ambiguity enmeshed in the situated affairs of other men, all of which objectify the others.

Beauvoir describes the complex situation that free man finds himself in by illustrating the condition as men born into the world like children. A child comes into the world that is determined for them. They act according to the rules and structures pre-established. So long as a man continues acting according to this world, and never for himself, he is kept in a state of servitude and servile. (37) There is no exercise of freedom and the world is seen as a serious place. (38) Eventually the infantile world gives way to adolescence as questions are asked and discovery of subjectivity arises. (39) Not so with slaves. Even women, Beauvoir says, at least have a choice as to whether to choose or consent to the world imposed on them (38). The child is unique in that, whereas man draws upon the character of his past to make choices, the child has no character to draw from and must set it up “little by little” (40).

Beauvoir sets up several categories describing how humans seek to escape their responsibility and freedom by delineating the nature of the “sub-man”, the “serious man”, as well as the “nihilist” and the “adventurer”. The sub-man is a manifestation of bad faith and apathy by constraining activity through the denial of their freedom (44).  The sub-man is barely man at all, living in constant boredom and sloth. This sub-man is often manipulated by the serious man as an object. The serious man is an attitude that seeks freedom of objective standards and values which in turn denies freedom (47). The serious man does not act authentically because the action is not willed from freedom, its goals are not established with freedom as a goal, but rather as instruments revered in various ways as useful or right or good for some end (48-9). As soon as these objective external ends are removed from the serious man, his life loses all meaning (51).

The nihilist is a failed serious man, essentially “conscious of being unable to be anything, man then decided to be nothing” (52). The assertion of nothingness is not a result of freedom, but a result of denial found as a disappointed seriousness which “turns back upon itself”.  The nihilist is right in thinking that the world possesses no justification, but forgets that it is up to him to justify the world and instantiate himself (57).

The last is the adventurer who rejects the attitudes of the serious man and the nihilist (60). He accepts his freedom and projects, but he forgets the role of the others and thus exists in pure egoism and selfishness (61). He is therefore apt to treat others are mere instruments and sacrifice others for the attainment of personal power. In this way the adventurer is the ultimate tyrant, seeking independence and submitting to no other master but his own ends, no other master than the supreme master he makes himself (62). In this way the adventurer maintains a subjective positivity that is not extended toward others. Thus he exists in a false independence that falsely believes one can act for oneself without acting for all. (63)

Works Cited

de Beauvoir, Simone. The Ethics of Ambiguity. New York: Citadel Press, 1948.

Existential Freedom: Jean-Paul Sartre

Sartre wrote Existentialism and the Human Emotions in response to the critics who viewed the corollary of his existential philosophy to be solipsism or quietism. Whether existentialists are religious or secular, Sartre states that it is impossible for man to transcend human subjectivity. Thus, subjectivity is the necessary starting point, for “Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.” (15)

Sartre says that man is conscious of imagining himself as being in the future and consequently is what he has planned himself to be.  Man is a plan which is aware of itself, where nothing exists prior to this plan. (16) This runs contrary to the Cartesian paradigm stemming from “I think, therefore I am” where essence precedes existence, where concepts are the genesis of operating processes (13). In this view man is dictated by and in bondage to a priori ideas and concepts as a way of existing. However, man’s existence precedes preexisting determinations. In this way existence precedes his very essence, rendering man totally free.

Freedom is the predetermined nature that establishes a commonality of human nature. Existence is a universal human predicament, a condition that precedes consciousness, a situation man finds himself in. (14) Man’s commodity is his necessity to determine, his freedom in choosing to be. With this freedom, Sartre says, comes a responsibility for determining what he is. Every act contributes to the creation of man’s image so that every choice establishes an essence of man. (17) Man is always responsible for his choice to choose what he is to be and how he is to live: he is always in the making, continually projecting himself into the world and materializing his freedom through action, through deciding. (50)

Sartre emphasizes the responsibility man has to this freedom. A dishonest man is one who believes in passion and other deterministic excuses. Man is responsible for his passions. There is no conception prior to what man has expressed through his actions. (23) Man fashions himself through his actions, by expressing himself through a series of undertakings, through an ensemble of choices, in which he is the sum of the organization and relationships contained therein. (33) This image of man forms a constitution that is continually manifested through his total involvement on the basis of the repeated acts he forms. (34) In this way, man is a destiny unto himself in which his actions enable him to live. (35)

This freedom extends not only to the individual, but to others. Because there is no a priori conception of man, what he is and should and can be, every choice and action contributes to what we believe the image of man ought to be. (17) By allowing for the understanding of self and others, intersubjectivity establishes a universality among men that is a comprehensible human condition. Sartre says his choices to pass beyond or recede from limits or deny or adapt, represent a configuration of man in a set of circumstances. (33) This configuration is perpetually made through choosing or building an understanding of other’s configuration. (39) Thus, since the creation and invention of man’s image occurs our freedom comes with a responsibility to all mankind.

Sartre says that the fundamental project of human reality is the desire to be God since God “represents the permanent limit in terms of which man makes known to himself what he is”. (63) Freedom is the choice to create itself its own possibilities. Consequently, freedom is a lack of being. By being something concrete, one is not free. Therefore, the annihilation of being is freedom. (65) Man’s project, Sartre says, is to manifest freedom through a lack of being by making itself the desire of being, that is, making “the project-for-itself of being in-itself-for-itself”. (66)

Works Cited

Sartre, Jean-Paul. Existentialism and Human Emotions. New York: Citadel Press, 1987.

Existential Freedom: Albert Camus

Camus wrote the Myth of Sisyphus as an essay on the relationship between individual thought and suicide as a solution to the absurd (6). Camus used the Greek myth of Sisyphus as a metaphor for life and the seeming absurdity of living. Understanding Camus conception of absurdity is necessary for grasping the role of freedom in human existence.

According to Camus, absurdity can be found to occur anywhere, on street corners or in revolving doors. (12) It strikes in moments throughout a man’s life when the uniformity and routine of existence—the habituations of thought and regularities of action—are broken and man seeks to reconnect and repair them again (12). Camus says that “before encountering the absurd, every man lives with aims, a concern for the future or for justification (with regard to whom or what is not the question).” (57)

Absurdity arises when the inference of reason reveals itself to be wholly dependent on cognitive activity alone, the sole work of consciousness. In this event inference ceases to follow from the nauseating compulsion of objective necessities and the world readjusts itself as a relative, subjective condition of man. Camus says that “A man’s failures imply judgment, not of circumstances, but of himself.” (69) Inference positions itself as alien to the world from which we attribute it (21). When man posits the question ‘why?’ and weariness sets it, he reveals the lack of inference in his mechanical routines, and elucidates an impulse of consciousness. (13) This consciousness either dissipates as man falls back into his life’s motifs, or he realizes, through an awakening, that inference is a device imparted to the mind, rather than a process inherent to the world. Camus says man comes to terms with this awakening by embracing suicide or recovery. (13)

Camus holds that life is indeed meaningless, full of contradictions and confusion, and has no inherent values other than those that we create. He entreats, however, asking “In the face of such contradictions and obscurities must we conclude that there is no relationship between the opinion one has about life and the act one commits to leave it?” (7,8) Certainly not. Rather accepting the futility of our world as an excuse for suicide, and rather than accepting the leap of faith that religion calls for, Camus proposes that we consciously accept the futility moment by moment by revolting with freedom and passion (64). In this way living is keeping the absurd alive, retaining the possibility of happiness and meaning in moments in between, whereas suicide would negate the very absurdity and possibility that established it. (6, 54) According to Camus, revolt as “the constant confrontation between man and his own obscurity” is one of the few acceptable philosophical positions. It means we must “challenge the world at every second” (54). This revolt is defiance, an exercise of freedom, which intensifies life’s value maximally in a way that no other ideological thinking can guarantee (55).

Camus paints three extreme portraits of absurd lifestyles given the form of the lover, the actors, and the conqueror (90). While there is nothing exclusive about these lifestyles they provide a caricature of the absurdity as a joy of living creatively. Inasmuch as life is absurd, life is creation (94). “To think is first of all to create a world” Camus says. Through creation man manifests ends and aims and realities so that just as an artist “commits himself and becomes himself in his work”, a creative being commits himself and becomes himself in the tasks he lovingly chooses for himself (97). Intelligence must refuse to reason the concrete, concluding that “expression begins where thought ends” (99).  According to Camus, gratuitousness is a hallmark of the absurd life and a life with hope: with no revolt or divorce from illusions, there is no gratuitousness. What is necessary then is this constant passionate detachment (102).

Works Cited

Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus. New York: Vintage International, 1991.

Existential Freedom: Viktor Frankl

Viktor Frankl’s conception of the freedom of human existence spawned from his trials and observations in WWII concentration camps. Throughout his duration in camps he identified certain attitudes and behaviors that his fellow inmates exhibited when faced with death and meaninglessness. These experiences would later form his logotherapy approach. For Frankl, man’s search for meaning is the primary driving force in life. (99) The search for meaning is uniquely fulfilled by the subjective interests and responsibilities of each individual. Frankl’s logotherapy revolves around the “will to meaning” as the driving force propelling man to achieve fulfillment.  Psychiatric problems arise out of an ‘existential frustration’ when the will to meaning is obstructed. According to Frankl, values and defense mechanisms are constructs fabricated by man as a result of his desire for a meaning. (100)

This search for meaning is fulfilled in three sources. These sources of meaning are love, work and suffering. Frankl describes love as the saving ‘why’ that facilitates the ‘how’ contained in work. The final source of meaning is contained in suffering. Frankl quotes Nietzsche and says that “He who has a why can bear most any how.” He cites two reasons for why suffering is good, namely that it creates inner freedom or spiritual freedom, and that man can choose to see suffering as a task in which he can suffer proudly. Again he quotes Nietzsche saying “There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.” In this way suffering becomes an achievement which ‘transforms a personal tragedy into a triumph.”

Frankl stresses the importance of attitude toward life. Taking responsibility for life meant seeing life as tasks to complete with right action and right conduct (77).  Man always has choice in his action. He is responsible for his life. This responsibility is an essential response to the will for meaning. Man desires a fulfilling life; he desires meaning and worthwhile achievement. It is important to note that Frankl isn’t concerned with what man wants out of life. He is concerned with what life wants out of man. The demands of life present tasks. Man undertakes these tasks by exercising the freedom of inner life and choosing his attitude and how he aims to respond to these tasks.

Works Cited

Frankl, Viktor. Man’s Search for Meaning. Boston: Beacon, 2006.

City Specialization: The Growth of Nashville’s Health Care Industry

Economic Report on Nashville’s Health Care Industry

I. Introduction
What is this report about?
This report will summarize the growing importance of the health care industry at large as well as within the Davidson County- Nashville area. We will begin by providing an overview of the health care industry by examining broad cultural trends and detailing recent US political and economic events that have contributed to health care industry growth. We will then focus in on the health care industry specific to Nashville, discussing its current scope and trends, and highlighting its particular importance to the city. Continue reading “City Specialization: The Growth of Nashville’s Health Care Industry”

Living here

Yes, life. It’s curious really, that most people are not really living. What’s that suppose to mean, you ask. What makes you so sure and proud of yourself to make such a claim? Living begins with the now, not with some other time. It doesn’t matter where you start, so long as it’s the now, not the there or then or when.

Let your subconscious do the work. Your consciousness should direct your senses only to the topic on hand, it should will your senses so that they harmonize with fabulous congruency, grabbing and guiding the flow of information, the stream of sense data, the column of your awareness that occupies your task, your goal, your purpose.

Do not live in your head. Live outside your head. Do not interrupt your ability to feel with superfluous thoughts ruminating on the past or itching about the future. Your mind should be empty and clear.

Program your subconscious when you are alone, in solitude, with yourself. Reflect on those things of the utmost importance, assign priorities, goals. Once they have been identified, internalize them, meditate until they are one with your passions, so that the thought of any one purpose, task or goal causes a cascade of emotions, of whirling passions, that bring you nearly to the brink of joyful tears. Then go about your day. Pay no heed to loose wonderings of imagination, to the floating distractions that prick your attention. They are nothing more than holograms, misplaced illusions occupying your space as they bump along into oblivion. Do not chase them there. Do not invite them into your consciousness where they can corrupt your convictions and mislead the sacred desires that you’ve spent so much time cultivating. No, look past them, look through them as they are: empty hollow reflections, possessing no substance, that glisten momentarily on the mind .

Live outside your head. Live among nature, among people, among song and sweet surroundings. Let these things pass through you long enough to resonate, but briefly enough so they have no chance to take root and occupy your precocious passions , robbing you of your sacred self. Life is the moment, live there.

There it is: awareness: the ability to clear the mind, the consciousness, of all meandering musings.

Devote time to yourself, by yourself. Then, stay true to yourself. Do not try defining yourself in the company of others. Do not spend your solitude wishing you were in someone else’s company.  Possess yourself. Do not let yourself be possessed.

 

opprimere

Lots of unrefined, undeveloped rambling:

I believe that oppression is man’s greatest asset. I believe that when man is not oppressed, he has no need to adapt, no need to grow and acheive and strive and thrive. I would say that oppression is the ultimate good. Since I can think of nothing pleasing about actively undergoing oppression, I would say that it is tantamount to suffering. But like suffering, oppression presents an opportunity to tap into previously unknown potentials in order to endure and survive.

What is oppression? More or less, it is “the exercise of authority or power in a burdensome, cruel, or unjust manner”, or “the feeling of being heavily burdened, mentally or physically, by troubles, adverse conditions, anxiety, etc.” If man is to live as a truly free and autonomous being, one can argue that there is no such thing as just authority and that all authority is a burden.

The etymology of oppression? Coined mid-14c., as “cruel or unjust use of power or authority,” from Fr. oppression (12c.), from L. oppressionem, noun of action from pp. stem of opprimere. Meaning “action of weighing on someone’s mind or spirits” is from late 14c.

Oppression is nothing more than demands. Demands are the effect of some initial cause. Demands instantiate voids to be filled, or requirements to be satisfied, with a response such as thought or action. Humans respond to these voids by exercising human ingenuity, innovation and invention. These responses exist as conceptualizations, systems, meanings, or structures where they inhabit the mind and manifest as through our action.

I believe that our efforts to escape from oppression, from physical or mental demands and the duress they may cause, provide us with the ultimate salvation by rescuing us from our previously cramped conceptions of human possibility and forcing us to expand our horizons of what it means to be fully human. When we commit to escaping oppression we commit to adapting, we commit to conceding outdated paradigms and belief systems for a novel, alternative perspective.

Where does oppression take place? It can occur to the mind and the body. I believe civilization has capitalized on the venture of oppressing the mind. Nature imposes its own form of oppression. Natural, or environmental, oppression, was much more of an issue in the past due to our failure to capture the nature of cause and effect as well as our frail ability to leverage physical laws to alter or overpower the course of physical phenomena. Throughout our evolution, however, we’ve managed to innovate and invent ways of overcoming the oppression of natural physical constraints.

Body and mind are inextricable, so that what oppresses the mind manifests simultaneously in the body, and what oppresses the body manifests simultanesouly in the mind. In this way, as man alleviates physical oppression, he simultaneously frees his mind. But where does that leave the mind?

All life wishes to not only survive, but thrive. Existence depends on ensuring a continuity. Life does not want equilibrium. Life wants the power to create its own equilibrium, to impose its own balance, its own demands, on the world.

The oppression that occurs in the mind originates from abstractions generated and perpetuated by culture, from power relations vying for authority and dominant influence.  What are these abstractions? They are belief systems, language, meaning, conceptions like truth and law, etc. What are these power relations? The forces generated by competition between opposing ideologies. These forces present themselves as the will, or the emotional driver reinforcing every form of action.

Culture is a conglomeration of these abstractions and power relations. Culture shapes and programs individuals with the systems of abstractions and relations necessary for navigating, acting and reacting, within the culture.

Culture produces individuals and these individuals produce new physical boundaries that expand or contract oppression.

Was man ever a blank slate? There was never a garden of eden. The first oppression was natural environmental oppression. Out of human’s adaptation arose social relations and ultimately oppression.

Does scarcity drive oppression? When there is plentitude, is man oppressed? Only when social oppression continues to persist.

Oppression forces you to make a choice between fighting to anhiliate and overpower the oppression or acquiescing the mind and body under its force. One is active, the other is passive.

Education is oppressive. This oppression, when actively overcome, is positive. When this oppression overcomes, it is negative.

What is value? What determines value? Does all value maintain an equivalent price? Is value determined by emotional attachment? Utility? One can say that anything that is useful possesses an emotional attachment, since our emotional reflexes arise from deep primal impulses to survive.

What is value? Clearly utility has something to do with it, but then again, hardly anything at all. One can agree that just about anything can be useful to someone at sometime, but not someone at just anytime or all the time. So value has something to do with utility. Is art valuable? It produces an emotional response that aids in your well being. Love is valuable because, in some other degree, it does the same.

Because we cannot use every useful thing all the time, we must consider how we use our time. In this way we establish a hierarchy of values that serve us according to the proportional time we spend in any given activity.

Some abstract, qualifiable values are information, experience, feelings, thoughts, and I’m sure the list goes on, but these seem to be the most basic.

Experiencing and Remembering

What is the difference between the experiencing self and the remembering self?

Would we choose different experiences if we could not remember? Would we choose fictious memories if we could not experience? Do each of these selves produce their own conceptions or standards of fulfillment?

Right mind is creative and free flowing. Left mind is analytic and structured.  By oppressing the creative mind the perception of possibilities is robbed. By oppressing the analytic mind the structuralization of substance is dissolved.

Losing Dissonance

Late last night while I was lying in bed losing myself to anxious reveries, I had an experience. It’s not the first time I’ve had this type of experience, but the first time in a long time.

My eyes were closed and my thoughts were bouncing back and forth in conflict regarding a certain event happening the next day. My mind shifted from imagining one course of action, then to another, then back again, as if role playing the scenarios to see which would yield the best outcome. As it was, none of my imaginings seemed to leave me feeling any more secure with what was going to happen; nor did they have me feeling any more satisfied with whether my conjectured courses of action was the most acceptable and appropriate. I continued laying there, absorbed in the tumultuous tension teetering back and forth in my mind, and I began to slowly drift, not from consciousness, but from my thoughts. They began falling away, growing distant and less forceful, until they were nothing but a mere hue at the periphery of my awareness. Now, I certainly didn’t forget they were there, but my heart seemed to claim less ownership over them.

As this silent drift slowly unfolded I began to wake up,  that is, my consciousness began to rise, and I don’t mean from sleep because I was wide awake. I found myself totally renewed, totally rebirthed, and my thoughts consisted of nothing more than a pacified blanket of awareness. I noticed my emotions were no longer bound to thoughts that, just moments ago, had consumed my being. Instead my mind was subsumed in profound cleanliness, a clarity, and my feelings were fluid and flexible, as if they were standing at attention ready to flow at my will.

I remembered having this experience before, many times before, and I became pregnant with nostalgia as I recounted the days when I would actively seek this comforting solace. Years ago, when I was bent on mastering my thoughts, I would practice holding a single ideal thought before my mind. As it often is with things that are necessary and good, these idealizations would appear totally alien to my being. The foreign intrusion would result in a cognitive dissonance that would swell within me and create a flurry of confusion and tension that threatened to cripple my capacity to assimilate and carry out the idea.

I poignantly remember grasping these ideas firmly between my adroit mental fingers so that all other thoughts could exuviate and slide into nothingness. The tension, the dissonance and disharmony, would slowly evaporate into a cool cerulean sublimity and all that was left was my idea, unimpeded my competing memories and conflicting convictions. I would meditate like this- supposing this is meditation- for hours at various times throughout the day until I had constructed myself a consummate, coherent belief system, untangled from contesting emotions, that remained utterly harmonious and synchronic.

Update

Classes have begun. I drove down the coast last weekend, stopping through NJ, MD, VA and finally made it to Nashville after 1400 grueling miles. Thank god for the iphone. I don’t condone surfing the internet while driving, but I would lose my mind if I couldn’t read on ten hour long car drives.

My room is situated and, for the most part, furnished and clean. I still need to unpack a few more boxes of books and organize my three books shelves. Our living room is empty, save a TV. Our dining room hosts three fold-able chairs and a fold-able table. Classy. My room mates are all clean, enjoy health and fitness, school, reading and learning. It’s an amazing combination. We all play guitar, we all do outdoor activities, we all philosophize. Couldn’t be happier really. The job search has begun *dun, dun, dun*. I dropped my metaphysics class in favor of a more realistic classload so I could focus on interviews and job searching. Besides, speculating about the problem of why there is so much evil in the world isn’t on my list of priorities, especially because I don’t really believe in evil. So, I’m in the process of updating my five page resume to a single page; something that seems like a daunting feat. Five classes, VP of the fraternity, and minimal other obligations. So far so good. I’m in the process of securing an internship at a local healthcare clinic so I can gain experience that will prove valuable during job interviews for healthcare IT companies such as Huron Consulting, HCA, EPIC Systems and Sage Intergy. I’d like to get a job on the sales and implementation side of things. Its a burgeoning market and I figure I need to jump on the wave before it closes out.

Our apartment complex is pretty amazing. Multiple pools, grills with free propane, workout gyms, a business center with free copying, among other things. The apartments themselves are pretty chic with wood fire places and a decent deck. I have the master bedroom, complete with a mega bathroom, walk-in closet, and a ridiculous amount of extra space despite my queensize bed, bookshelves, and desk.

So. I’m gonna resume writing. About? Not sure. I’ll resume with my crazy thoughts. Log about my days. Log about material I’m learning in class.

 

A little story, for fun

Went to the bar tonight. Met some chick who was thoroughly interested in me. This was a funny situation. She showed genuine interest, made the bold move of coming up to me and engaging in conversation, and continued showing interest even when I didn’t have much of a care to. She was cute. I was attracted to her. I decided to reciprocate and show her some interest. Talked. Talked. Talked. She excused herself. Some other chick began talking to me. I saw this girl pass as unobviously but obviously in search of me as possible. Almost out the door before I excused myself and asked where she was going. No matter. Continued talking. Probably slipped a little when I said I was waiting for her and the only reason I was still around was to see her. Hah. No matter. Gushing flirtation is bearable so long as it happens once and only once, and she was still engaged, so I was safe. So we talked. Talked more. At this point it was getting late, our joyful flirtations were beginning to grow relatively stale, for my taste anyway, and I was thinking about going to bed, with her. But I waffled and asked myself if she was worth it, if I really wanted to have sex with her, to continue our little banter out the bar, into my car, and into my bed. I asked myself if she was worth talking to tomorrow morning when I woke up and she needed a ride back to campus. In spite of these reservations we continued talking in the hopes that my man muscle would over power my reason. Then one of my friends came up to me in the midst of it all and mentioned she was hooking up with one of our mutual friends. Hooking up? Does that mean sex? I asked. No. So fair game. I thought it was humorous when I heard the name of who it was, but everyone has their tastes and I’m not one to judge. So among our extended conversations I noticed the guy was standing directly behind me. For whatever god forsaken reason I decided to be a little douch’ie and point out he was there. Hey look who it is, I motioned, it’s your boy. It was half joking, and I quite honestly expected her to get embarrassed and reject or ignore him. What turned out happening was pretty much what I expected, minus the rejection part. It got weird. He made a successful effort to make it awkward, which I happily acknowledged as awkward. He made some jokes and pretending to be retarded. Yea. I was totally lost as to what he was trying to do. Some retarded skit of his where he literally acts retarded and tells jokes, sorta like Jimmy south park style. Then he excused himself momentarily. The chick was pretty flustered. I asked if she was okay, and what the hell that was. She responded with a typical go-to, I’m so drunk I’m not sure what’s happening. So then I asked, are you a classy girl? she laughed and asked what classy was. I responded with, classy is having good taste. She laughed, I laughed, then, I think, she got my insinuation and excused herself. Good riddance. The next I saw her she had retreated to his presence. I find the whole thing laughable really.

So I decided to dip out at that point. No need for petty hook ups with desperate girls slooting it around. I drove home and, upon entering the gated community, I began tailgating this white mercedes. The only reason I was tailgating, in gods honest truth, was because there are typically zero parking spots at that time of night and I hoped to snake one from this car. From my car I see three blonde heads and a set of blue beady eyes lasering in on me from the back seat. We maneuvered throughout the parking lot, slowly, cause they rode their brakes in an effort to aggravate me and stall my persistent inclination to tailgate. No matter. It didn’t deter me and I rode practically on top of them. Fortunately, or unfortunately, we ended up parking right next to eachother. Some blonde girl gets out of the car and quickly approaches me as I get out, asking, do you always have the nerve to tailgate in a parking lot? I laughably responded with, only when I’m drunk and really wanna get a parking spot before you. That ameliorated the tension for a moment, then I noticed two other striking blondes step out of the car. I subconsciously asked myself if I had died and gone to heaven on the way home. False. No matter, it was a close second.

I continued talking with these girls in a playful manner as they hassled me for tailgating. Their initial aggression quickly evaporated as I laughed and smiled sheepishly while I explained that I was really trying to steal a spot from them. We continued our conversation as I walked towards my building, then they hassled me about following them. I responded that they were stalking me and probably knew were I lived and were waiting to follow me inside. It was all fun. Their names? Emily, Virginia, Chelsea… I think. The last one, Chelsea, was by far the most attractive, and it’s funny cause I spent the least time looking or acknowledging her, and I wish I hadn’t. Again, and I need to reiterate, the last one was by far the most stunning, with sharp delicate features, a petite and slender figure, and pleasant almond eyes with plush flowing blonde hair. The other two had recently graduated from ole miss. The third, Chelsea, although I’m almost certain that isn’t her name, had graduated from the ‘state’, or Mississippi state after I reflected a moment on what the hell that meant. They lived in my building. When we departed we said farewell and I voiced that I was hoping to see them again. Despite their coy reluctance to embrace my good humor and genuine nature, they were definitely fond of me and I could see they were fighting to stop the smiles that enveloped their faces as I approached and introduced myself to all of them.
Is it weird that I’m recounting all this info? Ha. Nah.

So, moral of the story. Women are predictably unpredictable. So, nothing new learned today. But classes are good.

Job search… commenced. Good money, I hope. Let’s see if I can secure a healthcare consulting job within the next month. Cause frankly, that’s when they stop offering their job offers. ha.

Oh. And I’m trying to get mega jacked and in shape. I’ll continue updating my progress. I weigh 187. Ridiculously unsat. I need to convert that to 100% muscle stat. Gimme three weeks and I’ll be down 10 pounds of fat and a pound of two of mucscle. Woot. Love genetics. Cheers.

Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding: Hume’s Empiricism, Skepticism, and Naturalism

The whole premise of Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding was to delineate the limits of human understanding and put a rest to metaphysical speculation by grounding philosophical reasoning in experience rather than pure reason. From the outset Hume’s preferred method of inquiry is scientific, based on observation and experimentation, rather than purely abstract reasoning. He posits that any fruitful beliefs about the world must be rooted in experience rather than wholly reflective theorizing.

I will begin by briefly summarizing Hume’s primary claims regarding his empiricism, skepticism, and naturalism and illustrate his emphasis on each of these in an effort to show that his philosophy is consistent and equally supports all three. I will ultimately conclude that his account of naturalism is the least developed of the three. This paper will then examine the methods and their accuracy that he employs in developing each of these. Continue reading “Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding: Hume’s Empiricism, Skepticism, and Naturalism”

Thoughts on Rorty's Neo-pragmatism

Rorty lays out a compelling case for his rendition of pragmatism. Ultimately his claim produces the same effect as the sentence “This sentence has no significance.” By throwing out the ideas of essential truths and knowledge as simply products of social convention, he adopts a pseudo-relativistic view of the world where truth and knowledge are contingent upon the starting points afforded to us by our language. However, he maintains that conversational inquiry has a purpose and maintains a utility, despite where its conclusions may lead. As the aforementioned sentence demonstrates, despite its conclusion or message, we are engaged in an activity that, while futile, allows us to converge in understanding. In the event if we decide to evade the contingency of our starting points and continue the pursuit of higher essences, we do so not as a means of establishing something essential, but to satisfy some “Metaphysical Comfort”.  Continue reading “Thoughts on Rorty's Neo-pragmatism”

Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding: Hume's Empiricism, Skepticism, and Naturalism

The whole premise of Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding was to delineate the limits of human understanding and put a rest to metaphysical speculation by grounding philosophical reasoning in experience rather than pure reason. From the outset Hume’s preferred method of inquiry is scientific, based on observation and experimentation, rather than purely abstract reasoning. He posits that any fruitful beliefs about the world must be rooted in experience rather than wholly reflective theorizing.

I will begin by briefly summarizing Hume’s primary claims regarding his empiricism, skepticism, and naturalism and illustrate his emphasis on each of these in an effort to show that his philosophy is consistent and equally supports all three. I will ultimately conclude that his account of naturalism is the least developed of the three. This paper will then examine the methods and their accuracy that he employs in developing each of these. Continue reading “Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding: Hume's Empiricism, Skepticism, and Naturalism”

Thoughts on Rorty’s Neo-pragmatism

Rorty lays out a compelling case for his rendition of pragmatism. Ultimately his claim produces the same effect as the sentence “This sentence has no significance.” By throwing out the ideas of essential truths and knowledge as simply products of social convention, he adopts a pseudo-relativistic view of the world where truth and knowledge are contingent upon the starting points afforded to us by our language. However, he maintains that conversational inquiry has a purpose and maintains a utility, despite where its conclusions may lead. As the aforementioned sentence demonstrates, despite its futile conclusion or message, we are engaged in an activity that allows us to converge in understanding. In the event if we decide to evade the contingency of our starting points and continue the pursuit of higher essences, we do so not as a means of establishing something essential, but to satisfy some “Metaphysical Comfort”.  Continue reading “Thoughts on Rorty’s Neo-pragmatism”

Manu

So I mostly try to maneuver my way into whatever conception a person wants to be me in, so long as it allows me to retain a certain control. I hate not having control. I love being able to manipulate responses. I exist in various states. I’m not one person. I am many people. I do my best to be whoever I can to whoever someone wants me to be. I am sensitive to peoples needs and I make sure I can superficially satisfy them with the right responses and behaviors.

I picked up the phone, but my heart sunk and my fingers trembled at the thought of what I was going to say. It didn’t exactly matter, but to me it did. To me it mattered a whole lot.

What should I write about? Being hollow. I hate harping on being hollow. Blah. I dream of an ideal life and it begins to bud and blossom, lifting a veil as though the gray began to evaporate into brilliant blue. I can see myself, full of passion, or diliberation, or something intentional rather than half ass and half meaningful.

I want to be hurting. I want pain. I do not want equilibirum. I don’t know how to impose equilibirum, but when it’s imposed on me I become pacified and passive, utterly facile and fatuous. My life’s meaning suddenly exfoliates and falls to the ground and I’m left looking at an empty shell of reasons and motives.

What story? I need story. NEED. These words. They designate some necessity, some compulsive demand. But there is none. It is all percieved. Content, like the stoics, I brush off the ‘need’ for this or that and instead I chose these vices, addictions, and the like as a matter of taste rather than necessity. It becomes silly and trivial.

How to transcend your mind? Get out of this shell? I wonder? Meditation. Drugs? Perhaps. Perhaps it’s throwing myself into the unknown, the unfamiliar. But god.. it’s all familiar. Then it dawns on me… the nausea. It begins to creep again. Meaning evaporates under its heavy wings, and coolness chills my world to the bitter bone. I begin to gnaw at this bone, in anxious compromise, in negligent care of my self worth. How to speak worthwhile? How to choose?

Why do I feel like I’m swimming in a generation of utterly retarded everything? BAEofheaihc

Random

I’m currently reading Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, quite possibly one of the best books I’ve ever read. Although the fictional story is about a black boy coming to age in the north and south, I feel that I can somehow identify with his struggle, his feelings, his sentiments regarding naivety and injustice.

No, no, no. I am a fighter. I fight against the stream, against the locomotion of habit. I have no country, no people. I have this frail fragile ego that I neglect as best I can, cause feeding him only starves me, only detracts from the fight. God knows I need to fight more than I need to feed that obscene ego of mine.

The pendulum of her hips left my thoughts utterly suspended, drifting somewhere in that evil world your parents try hiding you from during adolescence when they cover your eyes or muffle your ears. It’s unfortunate that everyone eventually succumbs to these evil exposures, that piety cannot be preserved. However severe the exposure turns out, it seems that innocence will forever plague a parents priorities. The white soulful innocence being thrown to the mud, to the baneful slaughter of swine, is much too painful for a mother concerned with the health and hygiene of her heredity.

Inconsequential. That’s what I think of life. Unless you do something radical. And what is radical? Irrevocable. Unconventional. Something so drastic that it tears people from the white walls of their placidity with a desecrating splatter of shock and awe. Words used to matter. They move the minds of those who have practiced the art of fine-tuning, of finding rhythm amongst the discord, harmony amongst the harrowing howl. But even that’s a stretch. Who know’s why we admire the decrepit preachers of past paramount.

Fear is a response. Nothing is in the world. All is a representation of some prior perception. These perceptions carve out a narrow sliver in reality, dub over this fabricated facticity called time, and ascribe names and symbols for preserving past observations.

I’d love to be an individualist, but I must pay tribute to the society that raised and reared me. I would love to be a socialist, but I may pay tribute to the individuality that contemptuously forces its way onto the world.  These anarchistic thoughts arose out of the philosophical contemplation of the irreconcilability of authority and autonomy. There is no legitimate authority if I am to be an autonomous man. Then again, we may say that I am not autonomous: what then becomes of the conundrum?