Category: Philosophy

stream of consciousness, questions, diatribes, seeking, thinking,

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.

Teacher

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

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

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

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

 

Life: Feeling and Thinking

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

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

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

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

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

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

Insanity

What is insanity? The most familiar definition that comes to mind is from Einstein who said, “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” It is peculiar to think of insanity this way, particularly because it flies in the face of normalcy. Many believe that the socially responsible and acceptable thing to do is to adhere to certain norms and customs and traditions, and that these will allow you to adequately function in society. What normalcy doesn’t guarantee, however, is individuality, or originality. To be an individual, one must do things differently and expect different results. But what of a society that values doing things differently only to achieve the same results, such as participating in all the counter-cultural rituals to gain acceptance as an ‘individual’ ? Can it be said that such a person has achieved individuality?

‎”Insanity in individuals is something rare – but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.” -F.Nietzsche

Insanity. What I find insane is society. Civilization. Tradition. Custom. Ritual. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the utility of consistency. I understand the pragmatic element of predictability, from a linguistic standpoint as well as a logical and epistemological standpoint. After all, learning curves are greatly reduced by assimilating the knowledge past down by forbearer, no? And we can’t very well go about creating our own neologistic language and expect to be effective interpersonally, now can we?  But where do we draw the line between maintaining and gaining? Passing on and passing over? Subsisting and thriving? Progress requires change. Change requires adaptation. If we sell out to maintain the status quo, if we fail to commit to the efflorescent incarnations of possibility in favor of the denouement of equilibrium, we must embrace our death; for we have already died.

Society is insane. Look at the way they scuttle around in the rat race, trying to secure these temporal provisions; see how they frantically instill meaning and comfort into fabricated facticities. Observe the perduring populous that embodies repetition; always allied to the alacritous attachment of doing the same thing, over and over again, and always expecting different results. If you keep doing what you’re doing, you’ll keep getting what you’re getting. In the end everyone’s demise is the same. Society is a self-fulfilling prophecy; a reflexive perpetuation proselytizing more of the same. The social consciousness does not readily expand but rather, it promptly strengthens itself onto itself.

So what is insanity? A break from conventional norms, I suppose. So sanity, once again, is doing the same thing over and over again. The endorsement of cultural customs, e.g. materialism, hedonism, consumerism, aceticism, celebrityism, sciencism, etc. I suppose the great majority of people think they aren’t insane because they don’t expect different results. Predictability is offered as a sycophant of security.

That is the real tragedy. When people not only do the same thing over and over again, but they do not expect different results. They have been sedated or conditioned or desensitized to rudimentary routines and rituals. 9 to 5. Primary, secondary, tertiary schooling, followed by a stint of rebellious youth, cue the career, make room for marriage, corral some kids, restfully retire, and then comes the inevitable surprise of death.

Sanity: “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the same results.” This rationalist program will inevitably suffer the same stifling fate as freedom. Time waits for no man. If you are not progressing, you are regressing. Life is meant to flourish. Growth and evolution should be the cynosure of contemplation, the mark of progress. But not by any quantitative measure imposed by external authority. It should be an inward journey. Growth is not static.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — ‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’ — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”  -R.W. Emerson

Insanity is characterized by senseless or abnormal behavior by societal standards. But how amazing it is to look at societal standards! Especially through the perspective lens of time! How standards change!

So the question of insanity remains. Are you insane for following your desires? Even if your desires lead to your demise? Even if they cast you into chains? Even if they toss you into pain and hardship? Would you be willing to escape sanity and embrace the lucres of authentic freedom? At what price?

Men are never really willing to die except for the sake of freedom: therefore they do not believe in dying completely.
-A. Camus

 

Reliablilism

Reliabilism is a form of epistemic externalism that generally states that a belief is justified when it results from a reliable belief forming process that is either doxastically dependent or doxastically independent. That is, S knows that p iff p is true, SBp is true, and S has a reliable process for arriving at p.  In this way, SJp (att) iff (1) it is not in other epistemic evaluative terms, (2) explains how SJp is justified is a function of SBp’s genesis. This principle emphasizes the virtue of the belief forming mechanism and the veridical historicity of the belief over the truth value in order to account for the possibility of a false belief.

Suppose that I claim knowledge of my age, 24. I believe that my age of 24 is true. The process I possess to justify my age is to check my birth certificate. As a notarized document of the government, I believe the process of checking my birth date to its data yields reliable knowledge. I justify this belief forming process from the fact that everyone verifies their age in this way and it is most accurate and consistent. Additionally, I believe the government would not falsify this data as a notarized document. This is an exemplary example of reliabilism because my knowledge is based on the virtue of the belief forming process, naming checking the birth certificate, that is historically reliable and still allows for the possibility of falsity if say, my birth certificate was lost, or doctored, and I forgot my real birth date.

Pollock’s principle of objective epistemic justification

Pollock’s principle of objective epistemic justification, whereby objective epistemic justification entails justified true belief, states that:

S is objectively justified in believing P if and only if:
1. S is (subjectively) justified in believing P; and
2. there is a set of X truths such that, given any more inclusive set Y of truths, necessarily, if the truths in Y were added to S’s beliefs (and their negations removed in those cases in which S disbelieves them) and S believed P for the same reason then he would still be (subjectively) justified in believing P.

In an example similar to Pollock’s Tom Grabit case, it becomes evident that the structure of epistemic justification and the complexity of epistemic norms is the crux for objective epistemic justification:

Suppose I see a sign indicating that the home of particular neighbor Mr. Beech is for sale on my street. I am sure that I am familiar with this neighbor who is an economics professor at the local college and know he lives there. The following day I arrive at work and report that Mr. Beech’s home is for sale, on the account that I have met him and seen a for sale sign on my street. However, unbeknownst to me, my wife insists that Mr. Beech is not moving anywhere, on account that she spoke with him the day before and he made no indication of doing so.

However, my wife did not know that Mr. Beech was ashamedly the victim on a Ponzi scheme and lost all him money, and that he desperately wanted to move to save face and needed to sell his house to recoup money. In light of this evidence, it becomes apparent that I did know that Mr. Beech was moving.

This example supports Pollock’s principle of objective epistemic justification because S instantiated argument A that objectively justified P so that A prevailed undefeated in relation to the inclusive set of truths presented. In the example, S is objectively justified in believing P as a result of knowledge that was undefeated by true defeaters.

Self

“The self is a relation which relates itself to its own self, or it is that in the relation that the relation relates itself to its own self; the self is not the relation but that the relation relates itself to its own self.”
— Søren Kierkegaard

The notion of self. Self. What is self? What is consciousness?

I can’t just dive into it. I must rivet it out of me. The self is reflexive. It is an enactment, a verb, a being. The self is a struggle, a despairing misrelation between polarities, between infinite and finite, temporal and eternal, possibility and necessity. It is idealism and realism. It is the struggle that we cannot stand still within and move without.

How to consider what is and what will be. Induction and deduction. Static and flux.

Life stands out in all its sinewy gnarliness. The rudimentary lines drawn along the edges of contoured bodies, people and trees and other furniture filling the landscape of life. Self. There is no intermediary between the subject and object: there is only the self. We stand between ourselves. We are the demons that claw within, we are our own worst. The relation. The self-hood. This reflection.

I stare into the mirror and see a body. I move and this image moves correspondingly. An extension. A living breathing extension. I relate myself to this image that is myself. The dilating eyes. My dilating eyes. I cannot objectify this experience without losing hold of it. Thus we have the story of self.

The world is like a painted canvas. These objects are nothing but smearings of color that bleed in time and space and affect my sensitivities, prompting an involuntary response. I manage by distinguishing these smearings.

Distinctions. The whole is a comprised of parts, distinctions. Let us grapple the whole. Let us toss the parts. The whole is the self. We cannot construct a full self with handfuls of parts. Everything is a distinction. Dissolve distinction; then peel it back. Peel back the teguments and unveil the nature of experience, awaken your being.

Intention: Directedness that holds objects and content; point of view, reference, marked by aspectual shapes. We point and see the contours of experience.

The self is a continual realization of what was and what will. Faith places one in the now, somewhere in between.

Language as Human Activity & Impression Preservation

Regarding the social nature of man, a realistic or productive theory of language cannot be developed that doesn’t include human interaction. Any such theory rests on private language arguments where, even if a code were developed within the mind, it is by nature inaccessible to any other mind and therefore indecipherable.  With regards to memory, the reason language helps aid in recall is because of the iterability of signs. The continual convergence of passing theories gives rise to normative linguistic practices as a result of learned conditioning. The repeatability of a word allows for a reliability of an expected usage to emerge and a convention to persist that provides words with their semantic force during a conversation. The conditioning of language is no different than any other form of conditioning. By performing an action and monitoring a reaction we become conditioned to a predictable sense of the relationship between the two. It doesn’t seem that a private language would necessarily develop as a corollary.

In fact, I’d almost say that memories (the ability to recall past impressions that results from conditioning or habituation) can be just as harmful as they are helpful. If the repeatability of words is the conditioning force that anchors meaning into the memory, and if we think in words, then these words can seriously distort a clear perception of reality. If our operating system, our belief system behind our world view, is inured with meaning constructed from words and thoughts conditioned from the past, then we are left with a clouded perception of the present. We exist within a world representative of the distorted figments of past impressions that do not represent a lucid state of being possessed in the now. Our inner world manifests an illusory outer world through a bundle of habits perpetuating memories of fictional meaning that pull the mind into the oblivious past. The memories constructed from our language possess the pervading ideology that manifests as our identity through every psychological and physiological action.

Does Language Exist?

To say that there is no such thing as language would be to say there is no such thing as a theory of meaning. This equivocation becomes confusing when trying to establish semantic or foundational theories of meaning that rely on the use of propositional attitudes or cultural identities.

Davidson makes very compelling arguments for why the ordinary notion of language- “the ability to converge on a passing theory from time to time”- should be abandoned. While I am apt to agree with his conclusion, he fails to fully account for the role that socialization plays, what Wittgenstein refers to as enculturation and Bourdieu refers to as censoring, in shaping a learners beliefs and reducing indeterminacy to contextually determinate linguistic practices.

While Davidson rejects the building block theory, the seeming core of Wittgenstein’s language game theory, they both agree that human action is the starting point for any linguistic theory discussion. For Davidson, words are meaningless unless they occur within a sentence, just as sentences are meaningless unless they occur within a context of some purpose or aim: the semantic content is rendered radically indeterminate without a context. As a corollary, one sees that sentences are meaningless unless they communicate a set of propositional attitudes that harmonize with the interlocutor’s beliefs about the action or aim, beliefs tightly bound to purpose or aims unique to the community of the interlocutor. The purpose or aims directly reflect the social and environmental demands that the community works to resolve through cooperative human activity, as Wittgenstein illustrates with the enculturation of language games. Each ‘language’ contains the propositional attitudes associated with this human activity. The defining characteristic of a language then is the evolving social and environmental demands manifesting as a shared intentionality which take form as common propositional attitudes or beliefs that become embedded into the language and words.

Language[1] then can be defined as a manner of speech which functions as a device of exchange ‘to make common’. It can be concluded that Davidson’s passing theory, similar to Wittgenstein’s language game theory, is simply the origin of language formation as a result of converging on an aim or purpose through a shared intentionality which gives rise to propositional attitudes. Mastering the art of interpretation requires the ability to converge on a common aim or purpose by successfully cognizing the demands or shared intentions of the interlocutor.

Does language exist? So long as common demands exist among interlocutor, then a convergence of purpose or aims, as facilitated through Davidson’s principle of charity, can be achieved as shared intentionality. The result is a commonality among the interlocutors that provides ground for future cooperative exchanges. The repeatability of practices gives way to customary norms and standard conventions that provides communicative exchanges with a contextual determinacy that aid in facilitating the translation of intentionality and successfully addressing shared purpose or aims.

Many philosophers have presented objections directly against Davidson’s claim against the existence of language. One difference argues a fundamental difference between translation and understanding that stresses the divide between the hearer’s stance and the detached perspective of the observer. Social objections include Putnam’s linguistic division of labor between experts for articulating semantic domains, questions of national and cultural identity that possess certain linguistic struggles and linguistic rights, the social costs emphasized by Bourdieu for departing from linguistic norms, and the reality of unintended meanings occurring within social contexts.

On a linguistic level, language, dialect and idiolect reflect the nuanced conventions of a community specific to the human activity contained in each of their unique purposes and aims. The development of a distinct language is the manifestation of enculturated conventions on a macrocosmic scale according to the social and environmental demands, while a dialect mirrors a more narrow deviation from this enculturation corresponding to more regional variations in demands, and idiolect even narrower still.

To assert the importance of one linguistic level over another would effectively overlook the function of language as a medium for facilitating the cooperation of human activity toward shared purposes and aims. Each level elucidates a degree of enculturation that distinctly comprises the purposes and aims of a family, community, and/or nation. A system of linguistic practices always develops as a result of the convergence of shared intentions between two or more persons addressing a common purpose or aim interactionally. However, as the demands change, so to do the purposes and aims as individuals arrive at new shared intentions. As a result, conversational exchanges become chained together as preexisting linguistic practices are inherited through the traditional conventions and customary norms embedded and passed on through the language as residue of antiquated conventions and outdated practices of the past

The consequence for individuals born into a preexisting language systems are the subtle ideological influences within in the language that contain inconspicuous propositional attitudes that shape an individual’s ideology and identity. While individuals can develop new linguistic practices by identifying demands and form shared intentions, they are constrained, insofar as they have been enculturated by institutional practices and habituated by ideologies inherited from the language. In this way language solidarity is achieved that supports a homogeneity among a populous which affords a more singular consensus and more unified propositional attitudes. The result is an integrated linguistic community that allows for greater ease in communicating purposes among people with demands that would be typically varied within a widespread population. As Bourdieu argues, this integration of a linguistic community is a condition for the establishment of relations of linguistic domination.

However, so long as an individual fails to recognize the inherited practices and ideologies of their language, and fails to embrace their ability to identify personal demands and purposes, they are bound to the conceptual scheme inherent to the language, for better or worse, and blind to see beyond its capacity for addressing possibilities and coining new meaning outside the language.

I can only conclude then that the idiolect, the variety of language created and instantiated by an individual, is the most important linguistic level of communication. Only at the idiolect level does an individual possess a role in the creation of a language that is relevant and meaningful according to their personal purpose and aims.

Davidson’s analysis of language is conducted on a metaphysical level by investigating the origin of language formation from an idyllic perspective void from any influence of enculturation. His work did a great deal to elucidate how language can arise between individuals, but failed to make a significant contribution to the discussion of how socialization affects the development of language. For Davidson, insofar as language was neither systematic, containing definable properties and rules, nor shared, as an agreed method, language was non-existent. In his essay A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs he argued that any prior theory of language was weak and insufficient describing the interpretation of meaning and that passing theory could not be reduced to methods. He concluded that if language was “the ability to converge on a passing theory from time to time” as a result of wit, luck or wisdom and not because of any regularity, we have simply “erased the boundary between knowing a language and knowing our way around the world generally.” Language is an intersubjective pragmatic process that develops between two individuals.

Bourdieu focused on this intersubjective relationship and delineated the way in which symbols such as language shape ideologies and creates class stratifications within a society.  According to Bourdieu, language possesses a symbolic power that maintains value as linguistic capital which is exchanged within linguistic markets as well as among overlapping linguistic markets that are politically and socially defined by lifestyles. An individual’s language makes him apart of a normative group, whoever or whatever that represents; it is not a communal tool available and equal to all. The consolidation of linguistic communities into official language is a means of domination by reinforcing the authority of it’s authors. This consolidation is achieved through instituting social apparatuses such as formal education and the creation of dictionaries as a means of creating a standard tongue within the nation. These institutions infiltrate the ideological apparatuses and reinforce prescribed ideologies through conditioning the habitus, an embodied way of responding to symbols or language, which dispossesses an individuals of their natural language and facilitates the loss of identity through instructed censorship that eventually develops into internalized self-censorship. This unification creates homogenous economic and cultural values which allows for the greater ease of governing.

Much like Bourdieu, Anzaldua discusses the function of language in identity formation and discusses the dispossession that occurs during censorship. In her books Borderlands, Anzaldua describes living on the fringes between two languages and hybridization that occur between the two languages. Much like Bourdieu’s notion of a linguistic market and their ideology, the Chicana hybrid between overlapping linguistic communities that developed out of necessity for a distinct identity. This identity serves as a reflection of the unique community situated at the borders and obscured by two dominating languages. Davidson would agree that the formation of the Chicana language is a special kind of creativity borne out of the unique shared intentions of the people. Anzaldua argues “I am my language” and that language is inseparable from identity and that to citizen someone for being poor in language is to criticize their value as a human being.

The tensions and struggles between languages is really a struggle for power. As language is born out of the shared intentions of a people, it begs the question of what these intentions seek to accomplish and who they serve. Language is a reflection of a communities identity, a way of life embedded with beliefs and ideologies. A break in language can lead to a devastating divide in the ideology of a people and the destabilization of a nation and government.

When Nietzsche proclaimed “God is Dead,” he essentially prophesized the break from religion that emphasized the supreme authority of a singular text and the ideology it possessed. The break from religions authority on language destabilized the notions of a singular truth and an ultimate meaning which led to the proliferation of existential freedom that challenged antiquated norms and created new perspectives for examining what it means to be.

[1] ‘Language’ is derived from the L. lingua meaning ‘tongue’.‘Communication’ is derived from the L. communicare meaning ‘to share, divide out; impart, inform, joine, unite, participate in” from communis meaning “to make common”.

Social Mobility: Language, Influence, Power

You said it, my good knight! There ought to be laws to
protect the body of acquired knowledge.
Take one of our good pupils, for example: modest
and diligent, from his earliest grammar classes he’s
kept a little notebook full of phrases.
After hanging on the lips of his teachers for twenty
years, he’s managed to build up an intellectual stock in
trade; doesn’t it belong to him as if it were a house, or
money?
Paul Claudel, Le soulier de satin, Day III, Scene ii

 

Communication. I can’t stop thinking about communication. It’s everywhere. You can’t help it. You are conditioned to adopt certain norms and customs. The interpellation that causes identity formation through subjectification and submission to authority. Bear with me while I get this all out. It might get a little cerebral.

Pierre Bourdieu described the habitus of language. Habits form our character, our ideological world view, our identity as a subject. Using language makes you apart of a normative group whoever and whatever that might represent.

We are creatures of habits. The habituation of ideologies shapes our view of the world. Through habituation we come to embody certain symbols that mark out our ideology as a result of the environmental influences we were born and conditioned into. These habits elucidate the societal structures we find ourselves belonging to. Each societal structure contains distinct linguistic capital that defines a linguistic market or social group.  The linguistic capital we use has symbolic power or symbolic imposition. The greater linguistic capital a person possesses, the more mobile that person is within and between different linguistic markets. The accretion of habits that form linguistic capital are instrumental for the formation of identity.

The language and gestures that forms a person’s linguistic capital contains explicit or implicit symbolic power that are used to define the world.  The symbolic power of language takes the form of subliminal and non-verbal insinuations. Posture, eye contact, intonation, definitions, conventional phrases, and mannerisms all play a role in the insinuation of symbolic power.

The formation of a person’s identity arises from censorship. Ideological influences in society- family, religion, school- all facilitate this censorship. Eventually the external influences of censorship become internalized and act as self-censorship.

When we were young our parents molded our ideology by pruning our habits through assent or dissent. The process that habituates the internalization of censorship and forms the ideology that becomes our identity looks something like this:

As a child we may use the word ‘fat’ to describe someone who’s overweight, or ‘bitch’ to describe someone who’s mean. To show their disapproval of the ideology our parents initially rebuke us with a reproachful look and say “Michael, do not use that language.” In this was they are actively censoring the language that doesn’t fit into their conceptions of accepted ideology.  The next time we use that word our parents may need only say “Michael, language.” The next time only “Michael.” The next time only the reproachful look. The next time only their presence is needed to censor our language. Soon enough, as we become habituated and internalize this censorship as self-censorship,  nothing is needed to prompt our censorship.  A persons subjectivity is shaped first through language which gives rise to a subject or self.

This process habituates a complicit reaction to the symbolic domination taking place. The force of our language, the symbolic power within linguistic capital, imposes itself onto the world and others. It forms a persons identity through their subjectification. This subjectification is a result of the symbolic imposition characterizing the symbolic power of a linguistic capital.

The linguistic capital that composes a linguistic market is deemed a legitimate language. The formation of the legitimate language characterizing a linguistic market involves the consolidation of a language. This consolidation is the accumulation of distinct linguistic markers or signs that compromise the markets linguistic capital. The coalescing or consolidation of language into linguistic capital gives rise to a community. This community formation is the linguistic market in which the symbolic power and force of the linguistic capital is exchanged. In this way the community contributes to the process of forming particular individuals. This is the perpetuation of tradition, customs, trends, as a result of the communities ideological influence on the individual through censorship.

Censorship, in another name, is none other than the idea of ‘instruction’ or ‘discipline’. This occurs anytime an ideology is being imposed on an individual, be it a child, student, employee, citizen, and the like.

This emphasizes the subject-object relationship within ideologies.

It is interesting to look at the implication of this paradigm.

When someone uses a language, or employs linguistic capital, that falls outside our ideology or linguistic market, there is a misunderstanding or miscommunication, a conflict of ideologies.

The notion of ‘control’ characterizes the stability of our ‘identity’.  Our identity defines us, and we control our identity by endorsing ideologies that manifest through symbols (gestures, language, accessories that fill our life: clothes, house, and other tokens or bibelots). When someone interacts with us through a explicit, direct, conscious interpellation that conflicts with the ideology that forms our identity, there is a loss of control. This lack of control leaves one vulnerable.  These vulnerabilities are felt according to the past histories of an individual subject.

All this being said, I want to emphasize the importance of understanding this paradigm. It is life. You are shaped by your environment: family, society, education, peers. There is no way around it. You are born into a world with a space waiting for you. The moment there is knowledge that you wil be born you parents begin creating this space filled with expectations for the kind of person they wish you to be: boy or girl, smart, hardworking, handsome, polite. The extent that their ideology allows them to  understand exactly what these words or expectations mean is dictated by the linguistic capital within the linguistic market they are apart. Or, simply stated, the language they use is determined by the societal structure they willfully or unwillfully find themselves in. They censor you, discipline and instruct, according to the parameters of the symbolic force within the ideology of their language.

Leverage language. Leverage the symbolic power of linguistic capital, the semantic force of language. Leverage your identity in this way. Leverage your social mobility by being much more understanding of different ideologies and learning to adopt contrary or conflicting world views.

Do not let others impose their ideology on you. Seek to create an awareness of the influencing ideologies that shaped your current conception of self. Consider its limitations, its failures. Form a pure conception of self. While it is near impossible to escape the influences totally, you can be aware of an ideologies symbolic power and force that imposes itself on the world.

Do not be concerned with the ‘Things’ of the world. Be concerned with the ‘beliefs’ or ‘methods of interpellation’ that categorize and define the world. If you are concerned with the ‘things’ or the markers and symbols within the linguistic capital comprising your ideology, and not the underlying interpellation or beliefs, you run the risk of operating outside your ideology. This jeopardizes the control over your identity and leaves you vulnerable. This lack of control, or vulnerability, leaves one resistant to agree or engage.

When engaging with people, look at their beliefs and talk, not in terms of the right or wrongness of their language and terms and definitions, but in terms of the ideology that has formed their conceptions of that language. Look at why they use the language they use and where the symbolic force of their language lies. Adopt their language and talk as if you operated from their ideology.

It is not about being right or wrong, it is about understanding. Leaders leverage a diverse array and large quantity of linguistic capital. This allows for incredible adaptivity, influence, and social mobility within social structures and groups- linguistic markets. They are the weak ties that bind solitary communities together.

Language is capital. It is as good as gold. Actually, it is much more valuable than gold. If you possess the right language, you can do and be anything.

Language and Influence

I’ve found that affinity is the ruling thumb for relations. If one has an affinity for something, or someone, he is much more apt to practice the principle of charity, or the principle of rational accommodation. These principles, simply stated, constrain us towards maximal agreement of the truth or rationality of our interlocutors sayings. When we have an affinity towards our interlocutor, we extend them the same ratiocination we attribute to ourselves. Many times, depending on the content and context, we are willing to extend complete maximal agreement and suspend our rationality altogether in favor of the interlocuters reasoning. While we do not lose our ability to reason altogether, we allow our past experiences to lose the legitimate foothold they once had on our reasoning. This exchange of reasoning leads one to substitute a quasi-faith, backed by new justifications, as the topical foundation of thought.

This affinity hinges on a number of personal and societal attributions, specifically: perceived authority, perceived utility, and reciprocal value.

When we behold the words of a perceived authority figure, their words have much greater weight, and the principle of charity is extended far more maximally towards their truth and rationality. Some examples of spoken titles that confer this authority in the mind include: Professor, Mister, Doctor, Sir, Father (Priest), Mother (Nun), President, His Majesty, etc. Similarly, written titles serve in the same capacity: Phd, MD, JD, MHS, CEO, Pres, etc.  Notice that each title specifies, directly or indirectly, their area of authority. Some being more narrow, while others more encompassing. Their area of authority prompts our willingness to extend the principle of charity, and accept their reasoning as rational and true.

In many situations societal conventions fail to provide recognizable markers that identify and designate widespread belief in this authority. In these cases reputations do the work to legitimize a person’s authority.

The utility of adopting an others reasoning, or propositional attitudes, is borne out of the necessity for self preservation. One assimilates conventions, standards, and semantics according to the utility they serve one’s ends or aims. Unless these aims and ends create wholly new demands for others, they are usually left dictated by the community

The perceived reciprocal value relates to utility, but in a much more internal capacity. Human relations serve not only to aid in the maintenance of an extrinsic state, but a person’s intrinsic state. This internal state regulates all other activity in our life and deals with matters of self-esteem and emotional well being. Reciprocal value is a shared mutuality that supplements the core of relations, such as good will and trustworthiness. Reciprocity’s facilitation of trust acts as a principle support for the formation of community. This community is necessary for the feeling of place.

Jūdex

I believe in transparency; with yourself, with others. What have I to hide? Mistakes? An unworthy life? I am not ashamed of my past or present conclusions.  Do I contradict myself? Then I contradict myself. I am am a creature in continual flux. I change and grow, like any life. My moments speak for themselves.  However naive, my intention is pure. What matters the cares of the worlds? Can’t I maintain cares of mine own? Or the lack thereof?

Risk and reward are tantamount, otherwise everyone would get their fill of life. Living boldly means taking great risk. Be prepared to sacrifice your comforts and security. Pain will lurk close. Unknowns will abound. Adaptation means consistent action.

I will not apologize for my decision to live life boldly. The past is gone. It floats in a nonexistent oblivion. Memories prove too unreliable to cast just ratiocination on yourself or others. What matters but now? If you are there, who will attend to the here? What character will be under review? The character of him who is here, or the character of our memory?

Be open. If you hide yourself from the world, you are hiding yourself. We do not see things as they are; we see the world as we are. Only when we drag our full nature into the light of the world can we see the nature of its fullness.When we change the way we look at things, the things we look at change. This requires a confrontation with whatever issues or vices or insecurities that chronically shirk from exposure. Attack them head on. See yourself as whole, as flawed, as awesome, as existing here and now.

numinous.

I have a tendency to sound sententious. Forgive me.

My generation, and all those proceeding mine, have me embarrassed. I have been born into a time and place where people are no longer hungry to survive, nor are they hungry to thrive. The great majority of my peers are no longer hungry. What scintilla of hunger remains is reserved for idleness. They are pathetic, passive, consumers, hungry for leisure and ease.

Daily I delve into a commotion circulating society, void of zest, void of passion, void of purpose.

Advertising, academics , entertainment, all woo the willful intellect into a lullaby, a deep slumbering recant.

Our lives are not our own. We have lost ourselves, our traditions, our roots, our history and heritage, to the media, to the experts. We are no longer fit to brave life’s excursions without a guiding figure. Uncharted territories exist in a space beyond us and our imagination. We are not fit for such adventure. So we suspend the will to live, forfeit the alms for something greater. Where bridges would be, we spend our lives building walls and cling to our emaciated dreams.

There is no personal history, no family, no origin. We are nationals, Americans, raised by television, the Internet, our schools, our jobs. Starved of new light, our conscience shirks in the penumbra. We are drones.

How do you wake up a nation cultivating and perpetuating its own poison? How do you lay claim to an intellect defined: circumscribed and standardized. What is will? what is freedom? Notions lost to the strong and gifted, a chance missed by all but a few.

In a word, Emerson said ‘A man is what he thinks about all day long.’

Given this description, what state do we find ourselves?

I talk to young minds who have never developed the ability to question. They never ask whether they are on the right path, whether their beliefs are toxic delusions, whether their behaviors and habits will reap negative consequences, or consequences at all.

What becomes of a man who does the minimum in school to get by, who watches TV in his free time, who absorbs societies prescriptions for his health, wealth, future, happiness? Four hours of TV a day? Six hours of TV? Never mind the trash, the propaganda, celebrated on television as glorified miscreants who are impoverished in spirit. Hours of mindless internet surfing? Playing mindless video-games that envelope the consciousness, sucking its attention into a digital world of no consequence?

What will become of our future leaders? Who will follow them? The zombie fascination is a prescient of our future condition.

TV, Mass media, even the beloved science community, has led us to believe a lie. Everywhere we move but rarely do we progress. We adorn our external lives with material fixtures that fade with the fads. Never to do we exercise reflection to look within, to ratiocinate about the barren pallid walls of our world, home to the human spirit, private to us. Instead we chain ourselves to the flux of the masses, the appeal and approval, and overlook the function, the utility of our laboring aims.

Time has become an inconvenience, not because we have so little time, but because we have too much.

I despise the corpulence, the venery, the stolid and dull, all foibles born out of the American malaise.

We need to grow radical. We need to act now, but within. Our fight should exist internally and should be waged endlessly in the name of freedom and imagination, of humanity.

On Haunted By The Future

A Summary on Excerpts from David Wood’s "On Being Haunted By The Future"

The future beckons, and we answer. Thus is the call of men, lost in their baseless endearments, disoriented from the values in which they came, they are left wary of their ways and long for a return to the future. So onward they march, on the heels of time. In On Being Haunted By The Future, Professor Wood begins by deriving an illustration from Derrida that explains the future as a deferred experience containing the apprehension of messianic faith. This messianicity holds a “universal structure of experience” that provides justification and responsibility to the protention of experience. Protention, or perception of the next moment, functions as an incomplete and temporal phenomenon that lends itself to this “universal structure of experience” that confronts the future as a yearning apprehension.

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Husserl’s Spatiality

In his essay Foundational Investigations of the Phenomenological Origin of the Spatiality of Nature, Edmund Husserl explores the conception of motion in relation to bodies. While an exhaustive summary and examination could be undertaken on the essay as a whole, I would like to begin with examining an excerpt that characterizes the essay’s foundational theme that establishes the origin of the spatiality of nature. After all, as Husserl stressed, it is the implicit formations of such parts that give rise to the unity in which we perceive the whole.

“We must not forget the pregiveness and constitution belonging to the apodictic Ego or to me, to us, as the source of all actual and possible sense of being, of all possible broadening which can be further constructed in the already constituted world developing historically.”

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Economy of Thought

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As reflection occurs, there is an invitation for expansion of the mind. As noted elsewhere, consciousness arises from the syntheses of our response to environmental demands. The better we become at responding, or satisfying, these environmental demands, the more ‘material’ or ‘programs’ are available to synthesize for the creation of new thought. In the sense that there is a conditioned path in which a demand was satisfied and remembered, these responses are simply programs. Concerning this synthesis of creating, the more programs, or responses, that occur, the more possibilities exist. Just as the more land there is, the more crops can be grown and the more goods can be cooked or baked, leading to endless combinations. It is simply a matter of what seed is planted, much in the way that demands plant responses. For now on, the word thought will be used to describe the conditioned response programs.

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Decide to be.

Revolt! You are free to be! Now dream and pursue freedom with passion! Escape societies noisy clamour, throw off the chains that drag you downward. Create yourself! There is no path where you are meant to go! Blaze anew, for there are no limits to the wanderlust of dreams! Gather your gaze and seek yourself out! Pour out the paltry perceptions of pain and problem, for you are beyond the grasp of trouble!

Decide and create! There is no need for the reassurance of petty peddlers. You needn’t ask the world a thing. Demand it from yourself, and the world will respond in bounty! Brave the unknown, lay siege to the remote and mysterious- for possibility awaits! And where possibility abounds, so does life!

Freedom and choice.

What is Freedom?

The question of freedom poses itself when explaining why people convert to god. If a conversion towards god is a result of a lack of responsibility for accepting and exercising our freedom, we must define and determine the nature of freedom as it relates to sentient volition- or free will

The notion of free will supposes an inherent ability to choose. The choice lies in the decision to act or not to act, as well as to choose among alternative actions. Ideally, this choice is autonomously made. However, to what extent are we autonomous? Is there such a thing as freedom of choice? Or, are actions mere precipitations of mechanical chain reactions?

Answering these questions requires the exploration of the science or philosophy of mind.

 

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On Spirituality.

What is spirituality?

What does that mean? Pious and impious use the word to describe a transcendental mental attitude or world view.

Because I was indoctrinated at home from an early age, I didn’t convert to Christianity on my own volition, per se.  I do remember moments in my religious walk where I renewed commitments to God and reaffirmed my belief. This caused an awakening within me which inspired my efforts to bridge the gap between ‘God’ and myself.

The process of conversion requires the displacement of ego in exchange for ‘God’s Will’. The very idea of displacing the self is a powerful and transformative experience. In Christianity, you’ll often hear the ‘testimonies’ of people coming to Christ who  refer to the exchange of self for ‘God’s will’. I remember growing up hearing that we need to ‘die to self’ in order to lead a ‘God centered’ life.

 

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Freedom and Spirituality

Abstract
This essay explores the phenomenon of spirituality by delineating the rise of free will as a product of a reflective consciousness synthesized from conditioned responses resulting from external demands.

Contents

  1. Reflection as a starting point for analysis and reducibility
  1. Necessity of cause
  • Freedom
    1. Predictors of Demand
    2. Rise of Ideas
    3. Free will
    4. Reflection as Action
    5. Distance Defines Knowledge
  • Spirituality
    1. God’s Nature
    2. Conversions
  • The Rise of Spirituality

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    A Reflection: An Evolution of Responsibility

    The Evolution of the Responsibility to Self and Place:

    Looking back on the semester, I fastidiously inspect the various moments my mind was exposed to new insights. The philosophy class has been a period of incubation. Throughout the fall I have allowed my mind to freely explore the legitimacy of novel ideas and weighed their relevance to my life, unhindered by competing feelings of preservation. A burning passion kindles in my chest. I reflect on the philosophers and the discussions that struck deeply, that fanned that flame into a fiery blaze. My thoughts turn to a few readings and philosophers that reinforced and, at the same time, upended my antiquated belief system. In order to illuminate the timid shadows of self deception, I allowed these philosophies early on to serve as a spectacle for all further reflection.

    At the start of the year I was enveloped in a dense cloud of confusion. As we progressed in our readings and I accreted understanding, a series of themes began to emerge. The themes, strung individually throughout the weekly readings, later weaved themselves into a vivid tapestry as the semester culminated. They included the conception of self, the genealogy and history of society, the role of belief, and the function of nature as it relates to a sense of place. None of these themes stand alone, but borrow from each other. Of each, I will speak broadly and expound on each philosopher’s contribution to the construction of each theme as it appeared to me.

    I believe the core to understanding is primary experience. In an age of information, I believe its role in the modern life has been diminishing. With so many perspectives to read on a subject, who needs to waste time experiencing it for themselves? One can read of the countless errors and achievements and interpretations of each and come away feeling equally wise and judicial. The fault with this, however, is that we rob ourselves the task of exercising our own powers of reason and interpretation. Nevertheless, our lives are short and we cannot possibly indulge all our curiosities so, read we must. With this in mind, we are obligated to read judiciously, choosing texts carefully (preferably primary sources to ensure minimum distortion of interpretation) and reflecting with the intent to incorporate the new knowledge into the faculties of understanding. John Aubrey said, “He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men he should have known no more than other men.” Reading must involve contemplation. Thus is the duty of the philosopher.

    Continuation…

    Kant’s Deontological Ethics in Sum.

    I. Kant begins The Grounding of the Metaphysics of Morals by reducing the self to reason in order to understand the foundations of right thought. He concludes that at the base of one’s thoughts, there is an intention or will that is at the core of self.

    A good will is the only qualification for good action. Kant says: “A good will is good not because of what it effects or accomplishes, nor because of its fitness to attain some proposed end; it is good only though its willing, i.e., it is good in itself.” That is, a good will is good in itself, independent of any requirements that would make it good. Kant goes on to justify this by explaining that even if good will failed to achieve its end through action, it would still retain its value as good will because of its good intention.

    Continue reading “Kant’s Deontological Ethics in Sum.”

    Prehension.

    If only people were more concerned with learning the truth than being right. It is uncomfortable, dare I say painful, to navigate into unfamiliar waters. You bump and skid and fumble in the murky unknown, moving ever so slowly and grasping ever so gently for something to guide you. This is where understanding begins to blossom.

    I detest using language with sweeping generalities like ‘the majority of people’, but I’ll say it. The majority of people are more concerned with being right than being correct (correct in the sense that the focus of the intellect should be to reveal and expound upon truth, not defend pride). No ones senses are any better equipped at feeling out the world than another. Every human experience is valuable. Each person’s input contributes to the larger picture, the ethereal essence we swim through called life.

    It is terribly difficult to live along side people who are uncompromising, and incorrect. They would rather form gross prejudices and have the world cater to narrow belief systems them venture into uncomfortable compromise. Learning from someone, especially someone who’s background is quite contrary to yours, is not only disorienting, it is threatening. You open yourself up to vulnerabilities. You arsenal of knowledge is useless in this foreign land. You are at the mercy of time and humiliation (humility should be practiced anyway).

    Over time, after you’ve felt your way around the new sanctuary of perspicacity, you begin to make yourself at home. You begin to trust your senses and use the footings and tools previously overlooked. This is when understanding is garnered. Let others hurl insults from their fortified and familiar bunkers, filled with the stench of stale familiarity. They take no risks so they never breath the fresh zephyrs trailing after pursuit. Instead they become entrenched in their defenses, fastening themselves to the most hackneyed ground.

    Sad, sad, world. If we would only unhinge from our precious securities, cast off the trammels holding us down, we would see a world beyond our narrow apertures as we explore the vast wilderness of imagination.

    You must be willing to endure the humiliating pains of blindness before true insight is gained. anyway.

    Nietzsche: Morals

    “Here precisely is what has become a fatality for Europe—together with the fear of man we have also lost our love of him, our reverence for him, our hopes for him, even the will to him. The sight of man now makes us weary—what is nihilism today if it is not that?— We are weary of man.” (Genealogy of Morals, 11)

    Nietzsche here diagnoses a malady of mankind: nihilism. Nietzsche was writing in 1888. Does his description of nihilism resonate with you today? If so, how do you specifically experience the nihilism of contemporary culture? Are you weary of man?

    Or, perhaps, Nietzsche was just being an anti-democratic pig. Is he too harsh in his criticisms of the herd? Too elitist in his orientation? Can mass-culture be a stimulus to life?

    (Firstly, I thought these writings were pretty difficult to decipher.)
    Core to Nietsche’s writing so far is the idea of resentiment. Nietzsche has illustrated a dictomy between the slave morality and the master morality. The master morality, or noble valuation of things, is simple and indifferent and acts spontaneously (37). It exists in the present and gives little thought to the condition of the slave, other than a careless and impatient afterthought of contempt. The master morality is consumed with the happy and beautiful and noble self, only seeking invented and ‘falsified’ negative (‘bad’) contrasts (these contrasts are not rooted in reality) that would reinforce it more “gratefully and triumphantly” (37). Meanwhile, the slave morality is preoccupied with deep resentiment towards the master, a festering and poisoning passion that create an imaginary a world where “hatred grows to monstrous and uncanny proportions” (33 & 36). Slave morality rejects the hostile external world with a resounding no in a creative defiant act (37). It is in this covert imaginary world of unsatisfied hatred where the idea evil manifests itself, contrary to noble flighty idea of ‘bad’.

    This is the most basic summary of what Nietzsche has laid out here. At the end of GM, 11, Nietzsche asserts that Europe has slipped into a nihilistic state due to Europe losing their fear of man, which has caused it to lose its “love of him, reverence for him, our hopes for him, and even the will to him” (44). This fear of man is necessary for the master morality, because noble man needs enemies as his mark of distinction (39). Nietzsche begs for “something still capable of arousing fear” in order for man to justify man (44).

    I believe what Nietzsche is saying is that Europe has slipped into the slave morality because there is no fear and therefore no reason to grow greater (44). The slave morality is insidious and covert, residing not in the present, but in hope of the future. This removal from reality and the present is what dulls man and makes him weary and mediocre. Being “better” is simply man failing to grow by reducing the positive substance of inequality. The noble man needs a fear of the plebian man in order to justify his distinction.

    So, if any of that is correct, does this resonate with me? Well, Nietzsche is very disorienting.

    I believe that there are enough forces of fear at work in this culture that sustains mans self confidence and causes man to rise above and react and grow in their midst. Mass culture in itself a force that provides man a means to rise above and justify man.
    I also believe that our society has almost eliminated the need for fear, because we live in a (semi) functional democratic nation. This might cause man to slip into a weary nihilistic state. Specifically, because we live in a democratic nation, there is no notion of one presiding over another and therefore no fear of the plebian to base our noble valuations. This eliminates the master mentality, necessary for growth according to Nietzsche. By losing this fear we slip into a slave morality consumed with resentment towards… God? The government?

    Nietzsche makes some pretty bizarre connections. I need to think more on everything I’ve read to decide if he’s too elitist. I think he’s just challenging the traditional foundations and rocking the boat.

     

    South Park and Open Society: A Response

    An essay I recently wrote. Loved reading about Karl Popper, didn’t really like the essay.

    South Park and Open Society: A Response

                When examining a democratic society there should be ample evidence of open expression, where ideas can be examined and critiqued by the people as a whole. Professors David Curtis and Gerald Erion investigate this evidence in their essay South Park and the Open Society by presenting the controversial cartoon show South Park. South Park gained popularity in the nineties, and has since built the reputation of parading society’s most controversial topics for the public eye. Curtis and Erion provide examples of how the open examination found in South Park was intentionally designed to exercise and preserve the health of liberal democracy. To support their case and qualify the importance of an open society, the authors cite twentieth century political philosopher Karl Popper and his critique of totalitarianism, The Open Society and Its Enemies.

                In the opening paragraphs of their essay, Curtis and Erion reference media theorist Douglas Rushkoff’s position that many social criticisms are intentionally interwoven into seemingly harmless entertainment mediums and serve to illustrate the fundamental principles of democratic philosophy at work (para 1).  South Park, they instance, does this explicitly by portraying its characters as ‘overzealous political activists’. The show openly offers up caricatures of extremism on the right and left for ridicule and derision. Because South Park finds no person or subject taboo, it has been constantly targeted for censorship and cancelation. Curtis and Erion believe that the creator’s decision to allow open discussion of such extremism places them in a position safe from the extremists who threaten to shut down the show.

                While South Park may come off as a crass cartoon filled with crude humor and ‘tasteless’ jokes, authors Curtis and Erion create convincing parallels between serious social and political gestalts that allow for deeper considerations of South Parks methods of free expression. What has protected South Park from much of this ridicule is that by silencing the shows message, many people would effectively be silencing their own. What lends credibility to the show is that it rests on the ideals of open society that are needed for critique and criticisms. It is just as natural that the show is a critic that it is producing critics.

                Curtis and Erion cite South Park co–creators Trey Parkers and Matt Stone in a PBS interview as they remark on the importance of openly recognizing that people screaming on both sides of an issue are the same people, and that it is ‘OK’ to be in the middle and laugh at both of them (para 3). What is paramount here is that these extremists don’t stifle the message of one or the other. Curtis and Erion refer to Karl Poppers principle of intolerance for intolerance to support Parker and Stone’s position (para 14). This principle emphasizes what Popper saw as a necessity in a democratic society in order to ensure open discussion on all subjects that call for critique and lead to progress. While the creators may not intentionally have society’s best interest at heart, they are most definitely furthering the healthy process of examining controversial subjects so that progressive ideas can be exchanged.

                When looking at the heart of this type of free expression in action, twentieth century scientific and politic philosopher Karl Popper provides the best framework for examining the system. As a major proponent of liberal democracy, Popper championed the notion of open society while criticizing the controls of government and customary myths perpetuating closed societies.  

                In order to avoid being subject to criticism from one extremist group or another, the creators of South Park opt to bash all sides, playing it safe in the middle ground. Referring to the remarks of the co-creators about the importance of extremism being expressed, Curtis and Erion find evidence of Poppers open society framework in the countless characters of South Park who openly embody this extremism and portray stereotypes of all kinds. Each of the main caricatures of SouthPark, Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny, encapsulate characterized beliefs within our culture.

                Through the character Cartman, the obnoxious overweight authoritarian, the co-creators exhibit the abhorrent stereotypes associated with the right wing fanaticism (para 11). Curtis and Erion describe the qualities and character defects that Cartman poignantly displays in characterizing ‘un-democratic’ conservatives. He has no issue berating anyone with his foul mouth and fascist opinions and most often takes his anger out on Kenny, a character that best represents the poorer class.

                With his coat covering his mouth and inhibiting recognizable speech, Kenny’s role usually consists of random muffles here and there, followed by his eventual death in most episodes. His lack of speech is similar to the lack of voice and influence within the poorer class. His regular deaths, and the utter lack of concern his friends share when he dies, represents the constant struggle within the lower classes that is often overlooked or ignored as a whole.

                With just as much ease, Curtis and Erion reference the characters identified with the extreme political left. An episode with their teacher, Mr. Mackey, portrays the hypocrisy of the watered-down leftists as his attempts to get the students to stay away from drugs lead to his own addiction.

                For middle ground the creators introduce Stan to exemplify the every day American middle class Christian populist. Along with Kyle, they represent an open and diplomatic approach to problems which allows the audience to receive him easily. While similar to Stan, Kyle is Jewish and embodies the prejudices as a minority.       

                The friendship between these four not only illustrates the volatile dynamics within American culture as they interact, but creates a satirical stage as they encounter other residents and extremists within the show that demonstrate extreme beliefs and opinions. What makes the show so popular is how these characters encounter these extreme ideas and the scenarios they contain. As an audience we witness our own behaviors, biases and prejudices exhibited through the characters.

                Curtis and Erion present convincing evidence in their essay South Park and the Open Society that South Park creators Parker and Stone share Karl Poppers political philosophy of an open society. By actively identifying and discussing the extremism on all sides, they offer themselves up as an extreme, and legitimize an important stake in open discussions. If Popper were alive to witness South Park on the air, he would rest assure that the health of American Democracy is alive and well.

    Mind walk.

    This world is an illusion. Meaning is subjective.

    Imagination is everything. The ability to create and justify a reality that has yet to exist is salvation.

    ****

    I am becoming a skeptic, in the philosophical sense. Certainty has been suspended.

    I am a heap of matter. Matter programmed to process stimulating environmental energy. Within my brain resides the neural networks that comprise my mind and consciousness. I am a product of an environment.

    My growing skepticism is a result of a world competing to imbue its beliefs and convictions into individuals. It is a virus that pervades everything we do. I am a virus. We staunchly defend the fabricated reality we’ve constructed for ourselves. The thought of our experiences deceiving us is beyond most. We are certain. We digest stimulation, reference past experiences, and strive to make sense of it. The older we grow the more ingrained we become.

    Change our mind? Adopt a new philosophical gestalt? Feel differently towards this or that? How do we begin to rationalize our past? Was is for nought? We swear by these seemingly authentic experiences. Every seven years, every cell in our body will die and will successfully grow anew. We are not who we were seven years ago. Our mind is not the mind we were born and grew with. Our memories are not the experiences we judge by.

    We are constantly being impressed with codes of thought. They pass by our conscious and accept them unnoticed… until we wake and find ourselves somewhere we don’t want to be and someone we’re not. But who are you?

    Apathy allows one to become less and less impressionable. Action allows one to make sense of more stimulation.

    Those who sit back and watch life accept the few experiences they’ve encountered and never seek to change their perceptions and biases. They are accustomed to rote behaviors and mindless routine.
    Those who take charge and assume a role to make sense of as many experiences as possible imbue themselves with a stronger sense of self and maintain a broader sense of possibilities.

    ****

    Everything goes back to what you want. Its comforting to believe that these desires are our own. The reality is we are products. Our genetics have afforded us with unique processes, our environment unique stimulation. How can we fathom additional colors to the rainbow? We cannot escape our environment. We can only instill it with our interpretive meaning. We think our delusion is unique, but it is a delusion nonetheless.

    how to be happy.

    You may not understand the power or significance this had on me, but the the day I started moving forward and progressing with my life was the day I realized that I alone am responsible for everything and anything that happens to me. I am ultimately accountable for every thought, every feeling and every action. As far as I’m concerned, If something negative/bad/unfortunate/ undesirable happens to me, there is something I could have done to avoid it. It may not be directly my fault, but it is indirectly my fault. Life is a river… if you are not swimming forward, upstream towards desirable worthwhile goals and ideas and thoughts, you are drifting backwards- towards undesirable things. I was a victim my whole life until I realized this. No one is responsible for my success, happiness, fulfillment other than me- and If I’m capable of making a single decision, I am capable of living a fulfilling life. When I realized life was about choices, I realized that I was going to make the best. So I surrounded myself those who’ve made only the best choices, and cut myself off from people who make poor choices. I read books by people who’ve made good choices and realized success. I saturated my brain and mind with ways to become better than I am– and I never give up. There is no failure until you give up. Every time you do not succeed is a chance to do it again- only better. I realized anytime I thought I was a failure in life is when I gave up. Now I never give up and I always get better and I always succeed given enough time. I also realized that I need to have a worthwhile dream/ goal in order to succeed. I never had a goals or purpose with my life and I never achieved. How was I suppose to arrive/achieve if I didn’t know where I was going? When I decided that only I can know where I will eventually end up was the day I made decisions about my direction/ goals/ dreams. I have one life to live. Every day I am not happy is a day I’ll never get back. Every day I’m ok with being unhappy is a day I rob myself. Another huge thing I realized that that we are what we repeatedly do. If we choose to think thoughts over and over again, we will eventually get in the habit of thinking those thoughts. If I choose to act or do things over and over again, I’ll get into those habits- and habit are hard to break. Its up to me to choose the very best thoughts and actions for habits. Also- thoughts are used to describe life and thoughts make you feel. If you think and believe in positive thoughts- you will feel good. If you think negative thoughts- you will feel bad. If you are in the habit of thinking negative thoughts- and you want to think positive, you probably won’t feel too positive in the beginning- habits are hard to break and so are states of mind. I hit bottom so bad for so long that I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. I made the decision to give life a big fuck you and be the best person I can be. I wanted and desired it so bad that I wouldn’t let anything get in the way. If you don’t want something bad enough, chances are, you will not achieve it. Also- who we are is the person you are being right now. We are not our past. We can make the decision to change our actions and thoughts whenever we want. The longer i succeed, the more I succeed at, the more confidence I will have to continue to succeed. Initially I thought I was faking it.. that being successful and happy was not who I was. Then I thought… who cares! I want to be happy and successful. So I acted as if I was happy and successful- fake it until you make it. Eventually I looked back, and people came to know me as happy and successful- not the person I was 6 months or a year or 5 years ago. No one tells me who I am. I decide every moment. And I choose to be the best I know how.

    Epic Blurb

    I love swimming. Becoming totally engulfed in an essence. I love swimming in the ethereal feelings and thoughts kindled in my glowing imagination. I want to live fully. What do I think?

    I cannot keep putting off responsibilities. Responsibilities like… homework, studying, keeping in touch with people, being happy. I have a responsibility to be happy ya know. No one else is responsible for my happiness. Its unique to me.

    Is it good to avoid criticism? Should one look for it?

    ***

    I visited cousin at Amherst College this weekend. Watched the football game. Beautiful campus. Small population of students but spacious none the least. Hung out with the football gang. All seemingly intelligent people. It’s odd to visit a wet campus. Alcohol prevails in every dorm and every hall. The smell of stale beer leads you to the next party. Filled with juvenile adolescents indulging in self destruction- pounding away at another helping of hoppy watered-down ethanol or some other distilled liquid pleasure. These people. Freedom is such a new quality. I remember the days when I was overwhelmed with freedom. It’s where the irresponsibility started and accountability faded away as I justified my actions with those of my peers. Sad really. My individualism was lost amongst the crowd. And for what? Acceptance is too cliche for an answer. I stripped and tossed my convictions without hesitating a moment. No contemplation. We don’t think that far ahead in our youth. We live in the now. We rarely take time to see into the distance future. If we did, we would see how our accumulated actions would be disserving and adjust accordingly.

    Maybe its alright to pander to some of our fleeting youthful satisfactions. Its a slippery slope. The miligram experiment by social psychologist stanley milgram perfectly illustrates what happens when we undermine our convictions. We continue this trend until there are no limits to what we do. The line has been crossed, we are confused, we lose sight of right and wrong as we justify out previous slip.

    Amherst was fun. I’m through with the binge atmosphere. I want social glee. I want to be surrounded with quality people who enjoy the finer things in life. Who rise above mindless impulses and short-lived thrills.

    Education will not solve the worlds problems. The worlds problems are more than the tangible pressures we face. We face trials of the heart. When the man is right, his world will be right. How can education cause men to be more introspective with their intentions? Just because a man is sincere doesn’t mean he can’t be sincerely wrong. Is man the measure of all things? How far does this measure extend?

    *****

    I often wonder what would happen if I forfeit all the wisdom I’ve believed to have accumulated? What would happen to my world is I tossed my convictions and standards into the wind and remained wild, totally free from reason. Ha. As I say this I just think of how most post-modern liberals behave. I’m sure my behavior wouldn’t be that different.

    *****

    I need to write a paper. A LONG paper. A case study. On a company with a woman who’s got no work ethic. Who started a business strictly because she does not work well with authority. Who stated that shes alright with her businesses minimal growth because she reaps tax benefits and money from subsidies to small businesses. She is stealing our tax money becuase she refuses to work hard to earn more money for herself. Wow. This women is nice. She’s got some good ideas. She is clueless when it comes to investing herself into a vision and seeing that vision come alive. She instead settles for mediocrity. A business that’s providing barely enough to get by. She comes to work late. She fired every employee shes hired because of ‘personality conflicts’ but stated that she prefers an employee because that makes me come to work on time. People. I swear. How the hell do I even approach this study. I outlined a business plan proposal. When I write the paper I obviously want to write like this is going to a valuable company with vested stakeholders- instead, I think about how this women won’t heed a damn word and although my analysis of her basic production methods is legitimate- I find that all she needs is a good lesson on working hard and the principles of success. Being an economics paper I can’t very well write a philosophy discourse of strategies for success, but I’m EXTREMELY tempted. If there wasn’t a hefty grade attached I would write such a paper and throw it in her face. I’d also rattle off a few rants on why any social distribution of wealth is inherently flawed due to free loaders like her.

    My God! People must misunderstand me all the time! When I talk of success- this doesn’t translate into financial gain! People probably think I’m so egocentric and highfalutin because they totally misinterpret success. Actually- they are totally ignorant to success in general so they are stigmatized to the notion!

    SUCCESS!!!! What it means!!! Progressively realizing a worthy ideal!— And working towards it with every molecule and vibration in your being! Being excellent and exploring the unknown wellsprings of untapped potential! BEING THE BEST AT WHAT YOU DO! If you decide to do something- put your all into it! Enough???? “Aren’t I doing enough” you ask? Enough is only your best! Do not lie or deceive yourself. There is no such thing as failure. There is no such thing as try! There is Do. or Do not. Live. or live not. You choose.

    I believe that all psychological illnesses stem from people not realizing their full potential. They sabotage themselves and what they think they can or cannot do! They become entrenched in limiting thoughts and habits and live their lives, like Thoreau said, ‘in quiet desperation’.

    ****

    Some people feel that they lack motivation or intelligence or desire or skills. HA! HAHAH! I pity these people. I do. Continually focusing on what they lack instead of what they have at their disposal! How can one gain more by spending his time counting everything he hasn’t! All man needs to succeed he already possesses. The most valuable tool in his arsenal of achievement? Will. What is will? The ability to apply oneself to a decision. We all possess the ability to make a decision. Focus on that decision- never mind the details for they’ll take care of themselves- and you will watch live spring to life. Will! The more you exercise will the more you empower yourself! Have Dreams! Have vision! “Vision without action is a dream. Action without vision is simply passing the time. Action with Vision is making a positive difference.” (Joel Barker)

    *****

    I want to help other people find their potential. They may ask- what is potential??? What does that mean??? It is everything you are not and you want to be.
    I often get caught up thinking that I need to possess the answer in order to plant inspiration within people. How childish! How can I possess all the answers for each individual? Can I make up their mind? Can I pretend to know the depths of their soul and the curiosity of their spirit? No. What I must possess is hope and vision. All I need within myself is the ability to question. To challenge. To encourage people. People have the answers within themselves. They need to look. All I need to to ask the questions that cause people to look within themselves. There they will find the burning flame that starves for more to breath. When this flame catches a breath it will burn brighter and more passionately then they’ve ever known. It will illuminate them from within and their eyes will shine with wonder and awe. They will yearn for more and more and their enthusiasms will cause others to combust in a dazzling display of human achievement.

    ****

    It’s odd. As I often do, I find myself caught in a paradox of conflicting ideology. On one hand- I hold people to the highest most exalted esteem, adorned and lauded for their precious nature. On the other? I find people utterly reviling, evil and carnal in nature. Lost and complacent with consuming the empty tales of hope. Listening fervently with open ears to the flowery but empty rhetoric that evil spews forth. Lies- deception and deceit. It pulls at the strings of their heart and beckons them to follow but leads no where. Are they sheep? They are defiant sheep. I cannot hate the ignorant. I myself am just as ignorant. I do- however- hate the lies. Those that lead others astray have gained my utmost contempt. Their words are like honey to the lips that poisons and incapacitates. These men lead nowhere.

    ****

    I love life. I wish I would think less and act more. At the end of the day all that matters is what was actually accomplished. When my life is over- I won’t be able to celebrate the hours of cathartic reflection and quiet contemplation. I will have to show what my life produced. When the harvest is ready- one cannot make excuses for anything less than his best. This life we sow our best, till and prune and water and tend. When this life is over only the fruits of our labor will reveal our success.

    ***
    I have to work. I have much to do. I have much to write about. No holding back.

    ****

    Meaningless Existence

    Do the laws of the universe create life? Do the forces that act on all matter inevitably lead to reactions causing organization that begets more organization? And begets organization to the point where the molecules begin to question themselves and their intent? Organized states of matter drawing from the universe around them that produce something out of nothing? Ideas? Truth? Philosophical concepts and laws to live and govern by? I would rather say we are gods. If we are not, we are made in God likeness. A consciousness exists within us that is more than the resulting whole we’re composed of. If we were solely matter, we would be no more relevant in the scheme of time than dust in the wind. Our experiences would be lies. Lies would be lies. There would be no right or wrong. The evolutionary reaction would persist until it fizzles out. All of these thoughts, however personal we make them, attached with sentimental penchants to make it worth understanding, are nothing. Do not convince yourself they are more than the reality you accept them to be. You swallow lies if you think you are worth more than the ashes that construct and guide these inclinations. If there is no real meaning to life, and everything is meaningless- aside from the lie you’re convinced it to be- than knowing this is meaningless. Getting to the bottom of anything, the truth about something, knowing everything- is pointless. You will not be any better off.

    I suppose people, once they’re convinced that there is no origin, no God or purpose or real plan, they can begin to make life whatever they want it to be. They are masters of their fate. The opportunity chance has given them allows them to be a god for a brief moment in time. They infuse their decisions with the illusion of meaning, deciding and believing in a fabricated existence. They declare their own laws and morals and philosophies to be paramount to anyone around them. Even if they’re tolerant, they’ve arrived at the conclusion that everyone can believe whatever they want because there is no meaning, and they are right because they believe it to be so. This is called existentialism. This is the current state mankind has found for itself. Because there is no truth, and all is relative, everything is debatable. True meaning is vapid.

    Is there a God? If he is, why are we separated from him? If all that is can be measured and calculated before our eyes, where is this God? What is love? What is faith? What is honesty? What is truth? What is compassion? What is empathy? What is kindness? What is a will? Are they mere reactions? behaviors? patterns? How can these things be measured? Is right and wrong measurable by a definite scale? If not, why do be place faith in such things as hope?

    If God is real, why would he allow people to suffer? Is it his will we suffer or, like a father’s love for his child, does his heart break to see us struggle? Does he pain and weep when he sees us scrape by in life, accepting pathetic answers for help instead of looking to him? Does he want to know us? Does he even care? Did he make us for the insignificant novelty of it all? Little beings hurting, hurting others, suffering to survive, questioning life and existing, crawling through life on their hands and knees to spread themselves over as much material or immaterial gains as possible, only to find themselves on their deathbed with the cold reality that it was all for nothing. The suffering, the joy, the relationships, were for nothing, and they slip into oblivion. Or do they find themselves in other place, confronted with answers to the questions? Are they blinded by the radiating perfection of a just God who they’ve reserved as an afterthought? Does this God accept them to a place they never wished to seek? Does a door open to those who don’t knock? Is there a place where a relationship with a perfect God exists? A God who you never desired to look for or know? Where would a perfect justice place the blame? On God or us?

    Is Life Really What They Say It Is? Life or Bleak Beginnings.

    Ebbing and flowing. I stare off, too encumbered to think anymore than necessary. I don’t need to question why, although I spend all day thinking about the answer.

    Do I have to lie to myself to get by each day? Is life really what they say it is? Meaningless and void. My personality, my will, all a product of evolution. I am not me, I do not have free will, I am the result of unbelievable chance. Matter in the universe totally coincidentally organized to a place that is now my current condition. My thoughts are not mine. I am merely matter that has evolved. I am the result of chance reactions. I can lie to myself to instill meaning behind my actions that lead to my circumstances and the current circumstances that man has faced throughout history… but it’s a lie. Me thinking it’s a lie is meaningless. Knowing anything is meaningless. Why do I say this? If this life is how they say it is, a freak evolution in the course of time, defying all odds- but maybe not- or anything that would cause matter to stray in disarray, what is the point? Who I am? What I am doing here? Is it enough to accept that by chance we arrived to a point where we dissect the very fragments of space and time we’re composed of? We turn and pry and poke at matter and energy and calculate predictions with Godlike accuracy. If we are just matter… where is it in the laws of nature or the evolutionary scope of man that he questions what he is? Does a rock question its origins? Do we, composed of trillions of seemingly innate molecules, as more organized states of matter, have any greater place in space and time? If my thoughts are motivated by mere molecules simply happening by chance, programmed to respond from a long line of genetic codes that have been constantly victimized and molded by chance circumstances and mutations, am I void of a will? Do I even have a choice?

    Recently I’ve been trying to entertain the idea that there is no God. This concept is so foreign to my inner being that when I look for reasons to do something, apart from knowing there is a purpose and a plan and perfection behind it, everything is for nothing. Lies? What is reality? Who can prove it to me, or themselves, any more than what they are willing to accept? I cannot run from the reality I swim in every day that needs answers.

    Why does man create? It’s not for survival. You don’t need to create to survive. You need to do whatever you can, but you certainly don’t need to create. Why paint? Why build monuments? Why is man so hungry for power?

    I look around and I see meaningless. I see people who are sick of the lies they swallowed. Everyone thinks they’re going somewhere. That they have it figured out. They need to in order to move on. But is anyone any closer to substantial understanding? People accept delusions, deceive themselves by settling for cheap answers, and continue delve into this world of matter and molecules that we create as a playground for itself. We are the molecules organizing molecules. For what purpose? There is none. We are a bubbling, frothing, chance reaction of minuscule matter in the universe that’s miraculously persisted to churn on. Somehow the random and unorganized matter managed to find a way to organize, and produce more organization, and even predict patterns of organization and devise ways to see into itself and ask about the origins of itself, only to arrive at the conclusion it was all a random chance. The fact that order exists at all amazes me. Laws?

    Do the laws of the universe create life? Do the forces that act on all matter inevitably lead to reactions causing organization that begets more organization? And begets organization to the point where the molecules begin to question themselves and their intent? Organized states of matter drawing from the universe around them that produce something out of nothing?

    Do I have a soul? Is that what resides within me?

    Do the laws of the universe create life? Do the forces that act on all matter inevitably lead to reactions causing organization that begets more organization? And begets organization to the point where the molecules begin to question themselves and their intent? Organized states of matter drawing from the universe around them that produce something out of nothing? Ideas? Truth? Philosophical concepts and laws to live and govern by? I would rather say we are gods. If we are not, we are made in God likeness. A consciousness exists within us that is more than the resulting whole we’re composed of. If we were solely matter, we would be no more relevant in the scheme of time than dust in the wind. Our experiences would be lies. Lies would be lies. There would be no right or wrong. The evolutionary reaction would persist until it fizzles out. All of these thoughts, however personal we make them, attached with sentimental penchants to make it worth understanding, are nothing. Do not convince yourself they are more than the reality you accept them to be. You swallow lies if you think you are worth more than the ashes that construct and guide these inclinations. If there is no real meaning to life, and everything is meaningless- aside from the lie you’re convinced it to be- than knowing this is meaningless. Getting to the bottom of anything, the truth about something, knowing everything- is pointless. You will not be any better off.

    I suppose people, once they’re convinced that there is no origin, no God or purpose or real plan, they can begin to make life whatever they want it to be. They are masters of their fate. The opportunity chance has given them allows them to be a god for a brief moment in time. They infuse their decisions with the illusion of meaning, deciding and believing in a fabricated existence. They declare their own laws and morals and philosophies to be paramount to anyone around them. Even if they’re tolerant, they’ve arrived at the conclusion that everyone can believe whatever they want because there is no meaning, and they are right because they believe it to be so. This is called existentialism. This is the current state mankind has found for itself. Because there is no truth, and all is relative, everything is debatable. True meaning is vapid.

    Is there a God? If he is, why are we separated from him? If all that is can be measured and calculated before our eyes, where is this God? What is love? What is faith? What is honesty? What is truth? What is compassion? What is empathy? What is kindness? What is a will? Are they mere reactions? behaviors? patterns? How can these things be measured? Is right and wrong measurable by a definite scale? If not, why do be place faith in such things as hope?

    If God is real, why would he allow people to suffer? Is it his will we suffer or, like a father’s love for his child, does his heart break to see us struggle? Does he pain and weep when he sees us scrape by in life, accepting pathetic answers for help instead of looking to him? Does he want to know us? Does he even care? Did he make us for the insignificant novelty of it all? Little beings hurting, hurting others, suffering to survive, questioning life and existing, crawling through life on their hands and knees to spread themselves over as much material or immaterial gains as possible, only to find themselves on their deathbed with the cold reality that it was all for nothing. The suffering, the joy, the relationships, were for nothing, and they slip into oblivion. Or do they find themselves in other place, confronted with answers to the questions? Are they blinded by the radiating perfection of a just God who they’ve reserved as an afterthought? Does this God accept them to a place they never wished to seek? Does a door open to those who don’t knock? Is there a place where a relationship with a perfect God exists? A God who you never desired to look for or know? Where would a perfect justice place the blame? On God or us?