William

Beliefs: Religion & War

If you can sell a religion, you can sell a war.

Conflict (war/disagreement) is a product of uncompromising beliefs and the drive for self preservation. People maintain beliefs that serve as a utility for self preservation (however they define it). Problem is, most beliefs are inherited unquestionably. Religion is just one belief system that masquerades as being immutably true (One may say Science is another). So long as people see things as being absolutely true and false rather than contextually contingent on social norms and subjective interests, we’re gonna have trouble avoiding conflict and arriving at agreements that jive with our experience. There is no transcendent ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. There’s only what’s best for ‘me’ or ‘us’. It all serves some interest. It just depends on whose. That’s why dialog is so important.

Thoughts: Perspective

“Does the sun rise?” This question seems intuitive. It’d be hard to imagine too many people who’d argue the matter of fact. “Of course the sun rises! Just wake up at dawn and watch it yourself!” they might exclaim. But is this a matter of fact? Suppose we juxtapose this question with “Does the earth revolve around its axis?” When seen in this light the matter of perspective begins to emerge. We can accept that the sun doesn’t rise, rather it is the earth that rotates. But does this challenge the matter of fact? It is all perspective and experience.

Truth is much like this.

Heads

When people are taken out of their depths they lose their heads, no matter how charming a bluff they may put up.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald

Derby

Today I went to the Kentucky Derby. My friends convinced me last night around four in the morning that the Kentucky Derby would be the best thing I could spend forty dollars on that Saturday. Granted, I didn’t exactly have forty dollars. With rent due last monday, and my rent check waiting to be cashed, I wasn’t exactly in the position to be throwing around forty dollars to get completely inebriated for what turned out to be two actual hours in the center field, completely wasted.

I’m watching law and order right now with my room mate.

So this afternoon. The three other guys in the vehicle slept while I was huddled in the back seat reading Harpers magazine, enjoying short pieces on the fading architecture of the gilded age and Emerson’s literary career as an eighteenth century transcendental essayist and journalist. When we arrived in Louisville we trolled around for a parking lot within walking distance. We decided to post up in a dilapidated parking lot full of graffiti and gravel. There were cars swarming around with signs taped to their windows that read “Shuttle”. It was comical really. Cracked out Kentucky folk trying to give drunk people rides less than a mile away. I’m sure they make a penny or two.

We brought mint juleps with us, picked up beer at the gas station, and had packets upon packets of liqueur for sneaking into the center field. We drank until we were belligerent, jolly, and jocular. Laughing, joking, debating. Eventually we walked to the derby, which by the way, was an absolute shit show. The roads were blocked off, vendors were lined up along the street. It was madness. It was amazing.

We lined our pockets with bud lights, stuffing them in every pocket we could comfortably manage, then walked. My friend left his phone in his jacket which later posed a severe problem for communication. So we rolled up to the event, and like every good event, street evangelists were trying to lead us to heaven. We talked to them for about thirty or forty five minutes until we realized that it wasn’t so fun, and all my philosophy, logic, and logical fallicies did little more than to make them silent, rather than admit that it’s all a crock that could be stipulated. Faith is stipulation. I do it. You do it. Let’s all agree that no one’s stipulation is better than anyone else’s. Anyway. We ended up buying tickets and walking in and the mayhem continued. I could barely see straight, but the smile on my face was gaping with amusement. The ostentatious hats and polo’s of variegating colors blinded me with enthusiasm.

I lost most of my friends but I stuck with one. We walked around, completely trashed, talking to people, bumming cigarettes, cheering as the horses racing down the dirt tracks. Eventually we found a good looking girl who was interested. She was tall, sorta amazonian looking, and she was wearing an afro wig with a pair of large glasses that looked insectual. And by insectual, I mean sexual, because despite her enlarged features, she was pretty attractive. But, she wasn’t giving me the attention I was looking for, and quite honestly, I wanted to hang out with my bros, so I slowly detached myself. My friend on the other hand, being completely and utterly wasted out of his mind, was particularly smitten by this feline. He had his sights set on this girl and despite my best efforts to sway him in other directions, we kept finding ourselves in her presence. She led us around hand in hand. I wasn’t exactly feeling the situation so I made myself lost amongst the crowd. Not exactly a good idea because my friend didn’t have his phone. That began the search.

I called the boys repeatedly but couldn’t find them. Eventually I find a bro sitting on a retaining wall. We sat there, eventually finding another of our lost friends, and later another. After about two hours later we gave up waiting for our friend to come to us and walked around looking for him. That was an unsuccessful search mission.

When the masses dissipated and the crowds were done piling out we decided to expand the search beyond our designated stoop. We walked around aimlessly, screaming his name, telling officers that our friend may be dead, and that if he’s lying in a ditch, not to worry because his name is Crad. The infield was a ravaged mess. I did happen to reacquaint myself with a girl I met earlier that night. Her name was “Lyric” and she was from Daytona. We bonded over Florida. Briefly. I kept telling her how beautiful she was, becuase honestly, she was a gorgeous looking girl. She had her eyes set on me and walked up to me and was showing attention, so I returned the favor and coninued flirting. Eventually I asked for her number and secured that. Lyric Fernandez she said. Beautiful, South American. She worked as a managerial representative contracted by companies to do promotional events. Model? I said. No. I have brains. I was like, oh hey. Sassy.

This is what I know about girls. They love persistence. They can say no all they want, but the bottom line is, if you’re smiling, and if they secretly find themselves attracted to you, what they say means nothing. They want you to give them attention. They fawn for attention. True story. I mean, I can’t blame them either. Earlier in the night I was borderline acosting her asking for free cigarettes. About an hour later I got my wish. And fifteen minutes later, her number.

Let It All Go.

A Stream of Poetry:

So this is how it feels to to not give a shit. To let it all go. To throw a semester’s worth of work to the wind. This is a peculiar feeling, not exactly uplifting, but liberating. The anxiety is still there, and I don’t know if that’s something that will ever leave, fail or not. It perpetually manifests: success is holding it together, failure is watching it fall apart. Either way it eats at your consciousness. I’m so sleep deprived now. So so sleep deprived. What’s it been, three days? Four days? I’m so tired that I missed my final today. Of the only two exams I had, I switched their times around completely so that I didn’t even realize the mistake until I was standing in the middle of the empty room asking myself why none of my exams that day were in the rooms they were assigned to. It struck me eerily, like a foreboding prehension that I hardly wanted to accept. I nevertheless returned to the room I stood in earlier that day asking the same question to see if the prehension was correct, and it was. There were my little fellow philosophy peers amongst the filed rows of chairs, splattered around the room in no coherent fashion, waiting eagerly and anxiously for the exam to begin so they could be done with it.

So this is what it feels like to fail, to look your professor in the eye and explain that your all around lack of presence, in assignments and in the classroom, is a result of ‘mental problems’, and trying to live with yourself after it escapes your mouth. The pathetic words that echo back ‘excuses, excuses!’ and ‘how weak, how pathetic!’ and all the other jeering onslaughts of self abuse. So I finished one exam. I deserve a badge of effort, effort for not killing myself. So I slurp my beer, trying to drown the incessant thoughts rapping, rapping, rapping at the back of my eyes, those damn images. They never leave. No. The festering thoughts linger like the mucous in your mouth, always present and never a problem until there’s too much or too little. Either way, there’s entirely too much now, so I need to wash’em away, wash’em away with booze. Good’ol booze. The body killer, the liver lacerator, the mind melter: booze. The shit that makes you dull and happy and careless all at the same time. It makes you feel alright, makes you feel damn good. And damn good means feeling damn less, especially when you’re battling mental fatigue and those little insults begin worming into the cavities of self esteem. That’s when you know you’re in big trouble. When your esteem is in jeopardy.

So I recline in my bed, head and torso propped up with a few pillows, laptop on the stomach, sprawled out in boxers, pounding beer. And writing. Writing. Let that god damn itch work its way onto paper, into words. Get it out. Let it escape god damnit. I want nothing of it. Take my body, it’s nothing. Have it in its half naked drunken state. Its too tired and useless for me. So take it.

The therapist. Oh that man. That egomaniac man who’s as jolly as he is self absorbed.
Tell me about my problems, dear sir. I said I was feeling depressed. He said this was a result of narcissism. I said the anxiety was bubbling over. He said I was justifying my state through circumstances, a typical move he hears all the time. I say I don’t need drugs. He says I should get on them cause whatever I’m doing isn’t working. I say I need to change my environment. He says… See: narcissism.

Pabst Blue Ribbon. It’s supposedly a hipster beer, whatever that means. It’s a god damn good beer. Best cheap beer you can buy. 6% alcohol content. American (not that I give a shit). And it doesn’t taste like absolute shit. I actually enjoy drinking it, and would almost prefer it to any beer. Except, not really. I’m waiting for the sedation to kick in. The god damn ethonol, it’s pumping through my veins, through my cerebrum. I can feel it. It’s mind numbing. It’s euphoric, like a dose of ecstasy in a spat of dew, I like it and it rejuvenates, but only briefly before it begins working its anesthetic magic on my mind. God damnit its nice. Alcohol, my illustrious lover of long lappings. Lappings that span many a night. Me and her. The alcohol and my brain. Fucking and sucking until they’re exhausted and elated and dumb and happy all at the same time.

I haven’t gotten this much rawness out in a long time. Maybe it’s the fatigue, the sheer exhaustion that raped my inhibitions into a timid, meek, pathetic excuse for a censor. Either way. It’s nice. fuck you.

So upon leaving the exam I drove directly to the closest beer store and picked up a twelve pack. Minutes later I stripped my clothes off and began drinking, in my bed, with massive gulps, like the alcohol contained oxygen for my soul.

To my fellow zombies peering into web space: Stare at those images, yea, stare at them for hours, obsess over them, tell yourself you aren’t pretty enough, you aren’t good enough, then throw up, throw up the nausea that plagues your past time, your internet past time that thrusts and throbs itself over these images of warped wonder. The perfection doesn’t exist, but that doesn’t keep us from imagining it does.

Love it

For breakfast. All day every day baby. Love it. Today I slept all day long. I dreamt powerful dreams, dreams about old lovers. Agonizing dreams about losing them, trying to get them back, wishing there was a way we could work it out.

The dream was funny. It involved a variety of social media devices. Like Facebook and MySpace and what not. I talked to my ex girl friends mom on the phone. She told me to contact her, to ask how she’s doing, to show that I care. I also consulted one of my best high school friends. His advice was relieving. He told me that I should get in touch with her, but if she doesn’t respond, not to worry because in a few months, or as soon as I find another girl, she’ll be nothing to me. It just doesn’t matter. I explained how my feelings get involved quickly. We could relate to each other.

In my dream, I was constantly looking heartbroken, constantly checking various locations and social media to monitor her life apart from mine. It was pathetic really, but it felt good. Sickly good.

No matter. Even now I’m resentful. Why did she break up with me? Why hasn’t she showed any interest in me? Why one day was she crying, telling me how much she loved me, how afraid she was that I’d break my heart, and the next day she’s completely emotionally dead to me. No interest in my life. No interest or remorse or regret. No text or phone calls.

I remember at one point in our relationship she was concerned when I met up with her for a formal dinner with her sorority. I was emotionally distant, not feeling exactly up to the challenge of being Mr. Right to her, and she panicked. She thought my feelings would change and that I was done with her. That wasn’t case, of course, but it struck me as odd. Why would she think that I’d be capable of losing all my feelings for her in a single day? Over night? Has someone done that to her? It turns out someone has done that to her. No matter. I always think that our opinion about other people is less indicative of other people’s character than it is about our character.

One day, all about me, the next, nothing. What did I do? What the hell happened? I need to stop thinking of it to be honest.

The past two weeks have been atrocious. There are four of my six classes that I have Incomplete grades in. I missed one final. I haven’t written three 10 page essays. It’s messy. It’s sad. I’m sitting here and my friend Conrad got all A’s and one A-, meanwhile I failed one class, and all the other classes I have Incomplete grades in. I need to write these essays in the next three weeks. I’ve been sleeping all day every day, my work habits, my overall responsibility as a person has been at an all time low. Any who.

I haven’t even completed my work application for this summer. I need to do that. I attribute that to the stress of school, of deadlines, of feeling like a piece of shit because my girlfriend, whom I pretty much lost interest in anyway, completely rejected me before I could even blink. I mean, I tried the whole emotional routine, crying and getting choked up, and it worked, but not really. She was moved of course, but not swayed. She left that night, we kissed one last kiss, and she drove off. I told her to leave whenever she wanted because I wasn’t going to be the one telling her to leave. She was the one breaking it off with me. Anyway. It’s not exactly the most uplifting memory. I think she’s an insensitive little cunt, but whatever. I actually thought she was a good girl, and she probably is in all her boring unhygienic ways. Yes. I’m getting a little messy. A little cruel. She’s unhygienic. Messy. Not exactly clean. That was the number one turn off since the beginning, but I told myself to overlook it, that I just wanted a girl to be intimate with, to fuck. Fuck.

There are two reasons to get a girl friend. One is emotional needs. The other is physiological needs, or sexual needs. Lets not shit our selves; it’s possible to separate these needs. Some people get them mixed up and confused, like you really can’t separate the emotional intimacy from sex. But I call bullshit, and if you have sex with enough women, it comes as second nature. You’re friends can fill the intimate needs. Women, well they’re good for the sexual, and that’s about it, because relying on them for any other need is a fucking risk. They’re flaky and emotionally unpredictable.

I got to remember to remind myself that familiarity breeds contempt. I will never, ever tell a girl about my past ever again. I realize that it is entirely unnecessary.

Cinco

Today. Today today. Finals are over. Thank god. I’m feelin free. Free to get wasted.

What to think. Today is cinco de Mayo. I find it funny to think that people need these holidays as an excuse to drink. No body really celebrates this holiday. For christ sake, half the american population is racist as hell, yet when it comes to drinking we’re hand in hand, united as one. What a day to drown our differences.

My room mates are blubbering idiots. One is a juvenile infant. Actually they both are. Only, one is emotionally retarded, while the other is mentally retarded. So he’s got this website he’s working on. His dad has money. He drives two cars around. Ones a bmw five series, the other’s a renovated range rover. He graduated a semester behind his class because he was too caught up in fraternity scene to notice he was fifteen credits behind. So he stayed an extra semester, still in the frat, to continue with his partying. The past semester he’s had a part time job at TVA, the tennessee power company. He claims he doesn’t do shit all day. He goes out drinking into the night, comes home at 3 in the morning, wakes up at 10, goes to work until three or four-ish, watches TV for a few hours, or surfs the net on his ipad, then he goes out drinking. I forgot to mention, mostly cause it’s hardly worth mentioning, but it’s funny so I’ll say it: he’s got his heart set on being on entrepreneur. While it’s an admirable goal, the guy hasn’t a clue about responsibility, hard work, discipline. Maybe he’s got home ingenuity, but most of that is ripped off other people he finds on the web for inspiration. So this website he wants to make is gonna make him millions, he says. That way, all those girls that he’s never hooked up with will ‘want his balls’ when they see all his money. He’s approached investors who’ve told him that he’s an idiot, to show a product first, or some kind of progress. That they won’t invest the 50 million he wants until there’s something to look at. Did I mention he hasn’t a clue how to program? So his website is called “plan jar”. He’s told some young computer geeks that he would make them rich, this way he can capitalize on their talent while they build him a site. Anyway. I suppose I might be a little hard on the guy. Either way, he’s a child. An emotionally retarded child. Always talking about these girls he met, and they wanted his dick so bad, but the stories are always predictable. they didn’t go home with him, and he didn’t get laid, and he’s alright with that. It’s comical really.

As for my other roommate. He’s a swell guy. Pretty sure he’s full blown autistic. Can barely hold a conversation with him. Actually, he doesn’t talk really, except to bash our muslim president, or regurgitate some other unoriginal racial slurs. He’s a die hard catholic, a republican, a true american. His daddy’s in the commercial real estate business, so he’s got some money, and he’s always ready to tell people, especially those who don’t have it. Know what I hate, he says. I hate poor people. Poor people are pathetic. I just think to myself… really? Really you dumb piece of shit? What did you ever work for that wasn’t handed to you? What opportunities did you jump on that were actually your ideas? Anyway. He’s got a smokin’ penchant for cocaine, another opinion he’s apt to proclaim. Not the sharpest tool.

Today is cinco de mayo. I know the routine, all too familiar. Drink margarita’s, corona, teqilla shots, or any other alcohol the mexicans export over here. Take over a tex mex bar. Get decently shit faced, and when i say decently, i mean shit you pants shit faced. Find a female who’s equally inebriated, do your best to reach a mutual decision to have irresponsible sex, wake up mid afternoon, tell her to leave. Actually, that’s not how I do it. Everything up until there is halfway accurate until telling her to leave. I just ask her, politely, if she has anyone that can pick her up, or if she’d like me to drive.

Ah, yes. The college life. I’m not sure if I’m done with it yet or not. Being irresponsible, that is. At what point in my life did I forget that I can’t fuck up anymore? That I’ve done it all before, had all the sex, indulged all the irreproachable things in life that are fun, for a night. Especially when you want to forget about the monotony of life’s routine.

Draft: Science as a Pragmatic Social Utility: Implications on Freedom

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

Continue reading “Draft: Science as a Pragmatic Social Utility: Implications on Freedom”

bin Laden

(Overhearing someone say that Osama’s death will save the lives of innocent people): Last time I checked his death and these wars had nothing to do with preventing innocent deaths, otherwise we’d be doing things a little differently.

What it does have to with is preserving American ideals, such as freedom. And as far as America is concerned, innocent or not, there is no limit to the lives we’ll sacrifice for those ideals.

We should reflect on whether the American ideals we’re preserving are universal enough to extend to other people of the world; if they are, what would we be doing differently? if they aren’t, well, I think we’re doing everything accordingly.

But I have to ask myself if the inequality bred by this double standard jeopardizes the legitimacy of the very ideals we’re trying to preserve?

Additionally, Osama’s death is more symbolic than practical. His death has no affect on the insidious tentacles of Al Queda’s vast network; cutting a head off a hydra is no immediate cause for celebration. If anything, we just made him a martyr, and fueled their enthusiasm and hate. hm..

Diverge

Random thoughts:

Convergent and divergent thinking.

Convergent thinking is analytical thinking. It is the ability to converge on a correct answer. It operates according to preestablished parameters. It is categorical, definitional, and classificatory. When a question is asked, convergent thinking knows the appropriate answer. This type of thinking is found in standardized tests.

Divergent thinking is creative thinking. It is the ability to generate novel ideas by exploring many possible solutions. Divergent thinking is spontaneous and free-flowing, generating a multitude of ideas through an emergent cognitive fashion.

A metaphor:
The world gives you a room. Using convergent thinking, people accept this room and it’s contents as the summation of life. They live their lives within this room, spending their time manipulating the contents within the room, and never think of a world beyond it’s walls. The people who accept the room given to them never wonder of another room.

Divergent thinkers know that there are multiple rooms. They know that not only are there other rooms, but we create these rooms. They know that any given room not only contains a door in which we can leave the room, but that this door is unlocked as long as we have the courage to approach it and venture beyond the familiar walls. The creative people are courageous and curious. They venture into the unknown world beyond a room and are able to see a room among many rooms. They are no longer concerned with manipulating the contents of a given room as much as they are concerned with comparing different rooms amongst each other or creating entirely new rooms.

To escape a room, to utilize creativity and divergent thinking, one must utilize the traits of nonconformity, curiosity, willingness to take risks, and persistence.

The room is a metaphor for any ideology, conceptual understanding, framework or world-view. These are not representational facsimiles of reality, but a lens that allows us to organize and capture experience in a productive way according to specific ends and purposes.

Brief Thoughts: Happiness

To those who say, “I’m on the pursuit of happiness.” I ruefully reply, “Happiness is never found; it is created, within you.”

I don’t even think it’s found within a person. It is always there. Happiness, like any feeling, is a choice. Some choices may be alien or uncomfortable, but we always have a choice, especially with something as fundamental as our thoughts.

I like to think of our thoughts as fodder and kindling. Some thoughts add to the flame within us, causing it to grow hotter and burn brighter. Other thoughts stifle this flame, causing it to whither and grow cold. Certain thoughts warm our insides, and the longer they burn, the longer we feel their warmth. Even in the face of life’s most brutal elements, where the coldest and harshest moments of life reside, we have all the necessary kindling within us to weather the storm. As humans, we generate life, feelings, entire worlds with our minds. Looking for and pursuing such things as happiness, as if they are not already in our possession, will only leave the flame within us unattended. We can’t rely on the chance of circumstance to animate our flame.

We bring happiness to the world. It is not something to be mined from the world. The world is nothing without an eye to perceive it, just as a home is nothing without inhabitants or a gift is nothing without someone to receive it. We bring our mind to the world, our eye to nature, and give it life. We rouse and rally and wake the world with a perceiving eye as much as the world rouses and rallies and wakes the perceiving mind. Anyway.

Hamartia

Writing is like breathing: I exhale so that I may inhale. When I do not write I find that I am not fully living. The concoctions of thought, the skeletal remains of lurid fantasies, need to be exhumed. Conversing is good and all, but at the end of a long conversation, I find no evidence that these spirits have been properly exorcised. It’s not like I can see the conversation and know for certain how I felt when I said the words and had the feelings. I may be a bit happier, maybe more relaxed or passionate or enthusiastic, but there’s no reason why that’s the case. The fact is: I need to write. I just need to think through my fingers, through my body. I need to feel the velleity of inspiration coursing through my veins, through my mind. Art is nice, but writing takes the abstract and makes it concrete and comprehensible. I feel like very little is lost in translation, whereas in art, it’s about as interpretive as you can get. Who knows, maybe writing is just as hermeneutic. Maybe art is a purer, more universal language that transcends the idiomatic nuances of the written word. Or maybe not. I like to think that the poignancy of ideas is best captured through writing. So…

Anyway. I began writing another novel. I decided that I’ll try a third person narrative. I’ve never written an extended story in the third person, and I realized that 99% of the stories and essays I’ve ever penned have been in the first person. The majority of philosophy essays are first person. I journal in the first person. Whenever I express my thoughts it’s done subjectively. It’s not like I’ve really had to write in the third person. I figure I should give it a try and wield the power of an omniscient narrator. It might be liberating.

The past two day’s I’ve been writing up a plot and developing the characters, writing close to three thousand words. The novel will be about love, essentially. Loving others and loving yourself. I know, it’s sappy, maybe overused, but I don’t care. I’m not tryin to publish a number one best seller. I’m just trying to write. I’ve written pretty much every day for the past eleven or twelve years, whether it’s in a hand written paper journal or a blog entry, so I decided that, since I’m writing, may as well start writing stories. At least that way I can hone my story telling abilities. And, I’m not sure writing for my sake will do much good unless other people read it, and people generally don’t really read thoughts and journals unless you’re someone with a notable reputation, or saying something of significant importance. So write I shall, and stories they shall be.

So anyway, the plot. The plot is different, but I decided to write about something relevant in our culture today. Specifically, on the theme of homosexuality and fitting in. There’s been a lot of news regarding the bullying and suicides of kids that have identified themselves as homosexual. While I don’t have that much background in that world, I figure at the very least it’d be a learning experience and provide me an additional perspective.

To give the briefest plot ever: “A do-good boy meets his free spirited best friend and falls in love with a girl who seems to have life figured out. He gets rejected by the girl and copes through rebellion which, through a radical summer of experimentation, leads him to discover his true self and sexuality. Initially free and inspired by these revelations, he finds himself feeling trapped and ashamed upon returning to school. As a result he turns inward toward his new inner life and begins writing about these new feelings. Upon finishing his masterpiece he finds that his life has fallen into ruins and he decides to kill himself, but moments before he goes through with it, he has a life changing experience.” Still working out the turns and other details, but that’s essentially it. We’ll see. Woot.

Need to write about thirty pages in two days. Gotta love finals.

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.

Seek and Find

You will find only what you are looking for.

As it often happens, though, what you think you are looking for is not always what you will find.

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

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.

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.

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.

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”

Purlieus of the heart

“And was it his destined part
Only one moment in his life
To be close to your heart?
Or was he fated from the start
to live for just one fleeting instant,
within the purlieus of your heart.”
-Ivan Turgenev

Continue reading “Purlieus of the heart”

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.

Author: William

Remember