Uncategorized – Page 26

Pharmaceuticals, Illicit-Drug Use, Incarceration Rates

Could it be that the War on Drugs has contributed to the rise of prescription drug use? Has it contributed to a decrease in illicit drug use? Is it a racial war?
Continue reading “Pharmaceuticals, Illicit-Drug Use, Incarceration Rates”

Part I: Commentary on “Adam Carolla explains the OWS Generation”

My motivation for this post arose out of the hoopla I perceived concerning the wisdom attributed to Adam Corolla’s unreflective rant regarding the OWS movement. For the sake of open discussion, I’m going to disagree with some of his premise. I’ll summarize and reply to the two primary premises underlying his arguments in two separate posts.

You can view his rant here.

Argument 1: The 1% own 50% of the wealth. The 99% expect the 1% to pay for them. Carolla believes that the 1% deservedly earn 50% of the wealth because they have worked harder than the 99%. Because the 1% pay 50% of the taxes, the 99% are lazy and ungrateful, leech off the wealthy tax dollars, and should work harder to increase their share.

My response to argument 1:
The 1% have not earned their 50% of the wealth, so to speak. Possessing wealth does not mean that it was earned “morally”, in the sense that you can earn wealth by exploiting people, which I maintain to be the case, or you can inherit it, in which case it is not earned at all. Furthermore, if the 99% had more of the wealth, they would be paying a greater percentage in taxes. It is not as though the 1% are charitably paying taxes. They pay the portion of taxes they due because of the current graduated tax structure which requires people with greater income to pay more taxes, which I should mention has decreased significantly in recent years.

Continue reading “Part I: Commentary on “Adam Carolla explains the OWS Generation””

Part II: Commentary on “Adam Carolla explains the OWS Generation”

You can view his rant here.

Argument 2:
The OWS movement typifies a society that is self-entitled and narcissistic which has caused envy and shame when they compare themselves to the 1%. Corolla believes this self-entitlement is a result of a society that glorifies being average and treats every individual as special despite their work-ethic and achievements.

Response to Argument 2:
Disregarding the economic reality of potential inequalities, I believe that the denigrating qualities typifying society which Corolla has attributed to the OWS movement are the natural corollary of what happens when the 1% dominates and possesses so much of the power as incarnated in accumulated capital and influence. In this light the 1% is directly responsible for the values– attitudes and expectations– directing and justifying their behaviors.

Continue reading “Part II: Commentary on “Adam Carolla explains the OWS Generation””

Honest

You know what this world needs more of? Honesty. No one wants to talk about reality, about the way things are or the way they feel. They’d much rather accept the first thing they hear, dismiss what doesn’t appeal to them, etc.

Honesty. We live in a sick generation. We’re over medicated, self-obsessed, unreflective, overly neurotic. The poor are looked at as scum, as a plauge to society, like they don’t pay enough, like they free ride. The fact is, they can’t afford to be poor and live. Society as robbed them of their ability to make due on their own. You disagree? They can’t grow their own food, they can’t make their own goods, they need to fuck it. I don’t know what i feel anymore

My eyes are closed.

I have a sleeping problem. No, it isn’t that I can’t fall asleep. It’s that i don’t want to go to sleep. or rather, i have no desire to sleep, no desire to stop the stimulation, to end that fantastical readings or musing or conversations

Continue reading “My eyes are closed.”

Cultivating Successful Paradigms: Typological v. Population Thinking

Today I read an article in Business Week titled Why China Doesn’t Have Its Own Steve Jobs. The second paragraph struck me:

Former vice-president of Google global and president of Google China Kai-fu Lee explained on his weibo that it was because Chinese education puts too much emphasis on reciting and memorizing stuff instead of fostering critical thinking.

As the article further mentions, China’s collectivist culture or “herd mentality” wouldn’t permit the kind of narcissistic egoism that characterizes Job’s genius, and I think that’s a darn shame.

Innovative entrepreneurialism/ executive leadership requires a degree of egoism– that is, fierce self-reliance, self-confidence, non-conformity/individualism and narcissism. These qualities allow individuals to take more risks, bet on themselves more often, think more creatively and retain more faith in their individual vision, especially in the face of adverse circumstance/ opinion. I doubt don’t these people can be difficult to deal with, but their vision is inspiring and contagious.

China needs to place more emphasis on creativity, novel thinking, and the individual value of a person, their ideas and experience. America could do a better job retaining their share in these areas as well– instead we’re busy standardizing students and their thinking like China, like somehow that’s the answer to our problems. It’s a matter of typological thinking v population thinking: one emphasizes Platonic-ideals and abstracted averages, the other emphasizes evolutionary-variation and unique individuals.

The difference between Typological thinking and Population Thinking goes back to the classic distinction between a priori knowledge and a posteriori knowledge: knowing by way of axiomatic definitions, and knowing by way of experiential intuitions. This distinction manifests as deductive reasoning and inductive reasoning, relations of ideas and matters of fact, analytic statements and synthetic statements, contingent and necessary propositions, quantitative and qualitative properties, and the like.

Typological thinking is deductive and categorical in nature. Its roots go back to Plato whose philosophy codified this form of thinking by maintaining that the physical world adheres to ideas or eidos. Characterized by ‘forms’ such as the Equal and the Good and other such values and virtues, Platonism holds that there are a limited number of fixed, unchangeable ideas that underlie observable variation. The gradation and discontinuities observed in nature were explained simply as ‘gaps’ between natural ‘ideas’ (types). As a result, gradual evolution by variation was a logical impossibility for the typologist and evolution at all could only occur in steps, from one ‘form’ or type to another. Modernism of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries utilized the idealism of Platonic philosophy (Think Kant)

In contrast, Population thinking is inductive and qualificational in nature. Darwin posited this type of thinking when he introduced his theory of evolution. It maintains the uniqueness of everything in the organic world, that all animals or humans or plants possess qualities distinct to themselves alone, and that even individuals continue to change throughout the duration of their life. Each organism possesses unique features that can be described only through inductive methods such as statistic reasoning to produce terms appropriate for the average. However, statistical terms are merely abstractions and not indicative of the individuals that actually compose reality.

Ultimately, the typologist is an idealist who hold that only type (eidos) is real and that variation is an illusion, while the populationist hold that type (average) is merely an abstraction and that only variation is real.

You may be asking yourself why this is important. One word: change. Life is characterized by change, and change is absolutely necessary for the variation that facilitates evolutionary adaptation. Typological thinking treats the world idealistically, giving everything a proper place and name. But this is not reflective of reality, or the observable world. It is only reflective of our symbolic mind where ideas can persist without variation (the concept of tree does not change in my mind).

We need to encourage variation, encourage change, novelty, and creativity if we have any desire to flourish and succeed. Simply adhering to prescribed notions of ideal states and ideas will guarantee eventual failure. And in my mind, believing we have it all figured out, that we’ve got the basics down and we’re doing it all right, is a dangerous form of hubris. Success– adaptive variation–requires valuing individuals, their ideas and experience, rather than some abstracted average dictated to us from above. Statistics and science are helpful, but not with regards to possibility. In this area they fail more often than not.

Also, typological thinking creates biases and stereotypes by prescribing labels and abstracted terms to everything. Population thinking is more open and tolerant because it is reflective and observant of all variation and experience, recognizing that there is always more than meets the mind. But this comes down to man’s propensity for control, his desire for the will to power and to dominate, which has pros and cons and is situationally contingent. Because typological thinking is assertive by nature, it is good for positing and leading and commanding, but it is poor for learning and observing and reflecting. William James said:

“There can be a tendency to label something in order to negate its impact. It is easier to brush off or control what is perceived as solid instead of fluid.”

Perhaps this is why man has the tendency to label everything at first glance instead of experiencing things as idiosyncratic and unique phenomena.

What typological thinking allows for is control. When we label and abstract and standardize we delude ourselves that we’re in control, that our ratiocinations are reflective of what is. Now, it is true that this type of thinking is useful, but its shortcomings apply when forecasting into the future. This is because the physical world is in flux and ever changing. Formalized logic applied to matter is most useful within the time and context it originally created and diminishes in utility/ value as time progresses and change becomes more evident. Eventually the logical structure can no longer hold together as the premised facts of matter change so drastically they can no longer be said to be true.

(This may be a bit abstract so I’d suggest reading Axioms (pdf) as a nice little introductory piece, or if you are so inclined, check out Kant’s Prolegomena for any Future Metaphysics and Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding)

The point I want to make is that as a nation we need to relinquish the tendency to think typologically in favor of the more evolutionary population thinking. Specifically, we should do away with standardized methods of schooling that quantify instead of qualify: This means focusing on quality rather than quantity. We need to develop a system for encouraging quality teachers, not by necessarily measuring their efficiency or effectiveness. All that does is emphasis fulfilling whatever criteria we lay out. Same goes for students. I would argue that the quality of student and their thinking has declined significantly since the advent of standardized tests which resulted in teaching material and learning facts that are minimally necessary for passing or getting by.

We should value diversity. Diversity of methods, opinions, ideas, etc. Value individuals. What criteria would I require for delivering quality teachers and students? Output. Productivity. Activity. Experience. Something that indicates they are actively producing. This will indirectly indicate the aptitude and ability of the individual, as well as indicate their motivation and passions. I wouldn’t give grades, per say. I would let their work, their results, do the speaking.

However, there’s a hitch: cultivating leaders requires diversity, but their success dictates uniformity: its paradoxical.

Additional references:

Elliott Sober (1994). Conceptual issues in evolutionary biology . MIT Press: Bradford Book.^

Marjorie Grene (1990). Evolution, “Typology” and “Population Thinking” American Philosophical Quarterly, 27(3), 237-244.^

Collected Thoughts and Aphorisms

I carry around a book that I use for jotting down snippets of notes and ideas that occur to me throughout the day. In an effort to organize them I decided to digitize some of the shorter, more random thoughts. These were taken from a weeks worth of entries. And here they are:

Embrace suffering: it is the impetus of growth

Continue reading “Collected Thoughts and Aphorisms”

Etry

cars buzz.
birds chirp.
my blinds let in a forray of light.
it emanates into a warm glow.
I cannot sleep.
allergies have seized my immune system.
I have much to do.
career info sessions.

angels row their glass bottom boats above

Running Thoughts

Sometimes I feel shy about talking, about writing, about confessing my feelings or thoughts on certain matters, such as death or love or fashionable opinions. Sometimes I feel alone, with myself. Sometimes I pretend that being alone is more meritous than being in the midst of the crowd. I like to think that those people, suspended in the midst of others, inundated by their opinion, are quite alone. I know so many lonely people. I think I’m drawn to these types. They commiserate with themselves and so they get creative. They manufacture all sorts of hooks and lines to grab the attention of others.

Sometimes I enjoy being all alpha male, objectifying women and looking at their curves and sensuality like its something to be had. Other times I want to be the voice of all the women who can’t say it for themselves, the voice that’s strong and tells people who they are rather than what they are. Sometimes I like to imagine that I’m that voice for women. I talk about their social oppression, about the inequalities portrayed in our culture. Then I think how much bullshit that is. How they do better than males on average in school. Then I think how women are masqueraded as sex objects in every form. How demeaning. Eventually I wind up facing the physiological reality, accepting the crawling instincts that move men to react to the opposite sex, and it all makes sense. No use trying to overturn biological roots. Or no?

My greatest luxury is knowing how to forget. Forgetting is one of the great pleasures that allow me to remain intact, whole, more person than sheer weight. Its raining out today. Today I drive home, through the rain, for thirteen hours as I travel to florida.

It’s funny to think about ex’s/ Usually I don’t, but when I do, it moves me. I wonder if they ever think of me. I wonder if they ever miss me. I wonder if I really miss hem. I have a visceral reaction whenever I think of them, of holding them, of looking into their eyes, but I’m not sure I’ve ever wanted to be back with them again. OR is that just a way to protect myself? I reactive mechanism that pushes them away and disengages my feelings. Could it be that every girl I went out with I secretly still want to be with? And why would that ever be the case? Why on eaarth would I want something I’ve had, something that I chose to give up, most of the time anyway, at one point or another? I feel like it may have something to do with my self-esteem. Perhaps I don’t feel as good about myself as I need to, perhaps letting girls go is a way to keep me from hurting, so I push them away, and don’t put any work in. Or maybe these little questions and conclusions are artifices that I’m creating to understand the unknowable?

Gray day.

Cultsense

So many people try so hard. In a culture that’s built on sensation and feeling, rather than thought, one must leverage all he can to appeal to the sensations of others: looking right, acting right, talking right- appealing to all the right sensations so to elicit an emotional response that draws them in, like months to a flame, blind and aimless.

Interesting Day in Class

2:25pm: I just got outta class: some kid just had a psychotic episode and cursed out the professor.

A student with a thick red beard and aviators waltzed through the classroom door roughly five minutes into lecture and yells ‘Dale Dennet is a fucking douche-bag, who’s with me?!’, throwing up his hands as he walked and collapsed into his seat, leaving the professor staring blanking, poised mid-breath, still hunching over his lecture notes. After a curious pause, the professor, being bellicose and quite provocative, corrected the student by saying “I dont think I’ve heard that name, Dale Dennet” to which the kid replied “He’s the guy who’s actually stupid enough to believe that evolution is actually real.”

With his usual air of superiority, the professor casually retorted “Perhaps the name of the person that you’re trying to, or attempting to, reference that has got you so mad is actually Daniel Dennet, the popular contemporary philosopher, who has written “etc, that book on evolution”. Upon hearing this the student vocalized his dubiousness, arguing back and forth with the professor and saying things like, “Are you sure about that?”, “Are you sure?”, “How do you know?”, “I don’t think you know what you’re taking about”, etc., until the student grew visibly bloated with emotion.

Observing the satisfaction that the professor derived from being right and telling him he was wrong, the berate student blurted for the professor to “fucking read Chris Langin, cause he’s the smartest fucking guy alive”, to which the professor replied that he actually never heard this guy’s name and asked why should he read him, with the student replying “you wouldn’t know him or read him because you’re a god damn athiest”, to which the professor, with his hands in pocket, gave a bewildered and confused look at the kid, a look I interpreted as “what the hell are you trying to do, kid”.

But the student’s emotional discomfort continued, well past the point of boil, and the situation quickly escalated as he leaned toward the professor, postured and erect, and began yelling intermittent profanities into the silent classroom like “you’re a fuckin atheist, a fucking idiot”, “fuck you, fucker”, *pause of shock and silence*, then he yells “I win” and “fuck you”, grabs his bag and stands up, throwing up a peace sign as he passed by the prof’s face, and stomps out the door, yelling “fuck you, peace fuckers”.

Silence and incredulity blanketed the room as each person tried discerning what to make of the episode: if it was a joke, if it was a threat, if we should just continue class, if we should be alarmed. But the prof, slightly bewildered and now evidently perturbed by his own ratiocination’s on the matter, continued with small lecture talk in an effort to ease tensions and make light of the confusing and outrageous behavior.

But not a minute into talking a girl interrupts to ask if he could shut the door because, confessing coyly, she was slightly worried he might come back. At that point the prof regained some gravity over the situation and asked if there should be concern, or any reason we should be concerned, such that would require notifying the police, for instance. The class then began exchanging opinions and weighing in on the matter until a student in the far back raised his voice and vocally assured us, quite ineffectively I might add, that we shouldn’t worry because the behaviors he exhibited appear to be consistent with his past, recalling that the student had taken a leave of absence in previous semesters for similar bizarre phenomena.

Obviously, as you can imagine, this had the opposite intended effect, causing quite the consternation among students, and heightened alarms that he may indeed pose a threat, be it to us or himself or others. As these concerns percolated throughout the classroom the professor, appearing less pugnacious and more thoughtful than usual, acquiesced under the growing hysteria and, with a controlled repose, began jotting down some notes as he slowly indicated to the class that “I think we might just take the rest of the day off, and since we have off Friday, I look forward to seeing you all after break”. Then the commotion gave way like a release of breath and everyone barreled for the door to gossip about the bizarrity of the episode.

Socratic Philosophy as Preparation for Death

This essay argues that Socrates provides a clear and consistent attitude towards philosophy that is justified by and grounded in religious conviction. The core of Socrates philosophical beliefs concern his convictions regarding death, with him stating that “the primary aim of those who practice philosophy in the proper manner is to practice for dying and death.”(64a) His philosophy provides a method for ensuring that the soul will enter Hades in its purest form and attain the highest reward by being granted access into heaven. (113;114c). Socrates’ definition of philosophy is thus inextricably bound to his religious convictions. Although philosophy’s literal translation means “lover of wisdom,” it was not just an activity that one casually partook in, but a mode of living that pervaded every aspect of life as a way of transcending the physical world and possessing near-divine wisdom.(82c) Continue reading “Socratic Philosophy as Preparation for Death”

Pragmatic Reflections on the Will to Power and the Creation of Truth

Hard/ complete: Georg Cantor- Continuum hypothesis

Embodies rationalist/ modernist/ analytic movement

Soft/ incomplete: Godel- Incompletness Theorem

Embodies relativist/ postmodern/ creative movement

Synthetic: Hegel/ James- Dialectics/ Pragmatism

Synthesizes these two perspectives for subjective ends according to their utility to solve and achieve dilemma/ inquiry

All modern studies and disciplines, being defined by prescribed rules, expectations, is limited in its ability and scope, and will be inhibited in adequately addressing novel problems.

In addition, Hegel, and Neils Bohr, saw necessity in taking counterfactuals or contradicting ideas, and holding them together in the mind, suspending their rigid, dissolving boundaries, and creatively synthesizing their properties into a single, third, idea that is able to satisfy the initial counter-facts.

Relativist attitudes: revolution, creation, destabilization, individuality, synthesis, deconstruction.

Will to power- those who master language are the masters. Masters of language- more specifically, masters of delineation, or description- are the creator of causes.

Those who possess language, and the ability to manipulate language- proliferate perspectives and justify actions for everyone else.

To not have language, to not have education, is to be dispossessed, to be dominated. He who develops language, specifically his own language- be it borrowing from others or creating neologisms- can manipulate and dominate. Nietzsche understood this: the jews were masters of language- specializing in the oral and written tradition of the torah- owned and mastered language and eventually used this strength to manipulate the language of their ‘masters’ or the ‘gentiles’ by inverting their values of their language to subversively overpower and dominate them—see the New Testament, or Christ’s message.

The use of existing language can be used to justify by assimilating it into a final vocabulary by removing it from its original context. Decontextualizing is the ability of the pragmatic and creative types: they use existing language (tools), to manipulate and justify a unique (individual) end/ intention (action). Derrida attempts to capture the gestures of decontextualization. He seeks to pervert the internal semantic structure of words and language in order to recontextualize words, or leave them totally suspended in semantic ambiguity.

The reason manipulation can occur is that terms/ facts/ meanings are formed within a ‘present’ context. When the word is borrowed at a later time, it is referring to a previous/ past context, yet its use is always in the present. No two perspectives are alike, for all are subjective and indexed to individual/ unique direct experiences and the prevailing ideology of the context/ culture mutually shared by your social peers.

Language is social. Perspectives, thoughts, are formed to due direct experience, i.e. senses, impressions, experimentation, and ideologies, i.e. the semantic code and historically rooted structure contained in the language maintained by peers.

Perspective takes direct subjective experience and indexes it to the inherently ideological lanugae of yoru social peers. In this way subjective experience (individual consciousness) is censored by language. Likewise, language is compromised by ‘misusing’ semantics (metaphors, metonymies) and ‘decontextualizing’ it from its prevailing paradigmatic ideology. Rorty alludes to this practice when he refers to the accumulating and building of “final vocabularies”.

The ability to use language is the ability to control the mind. Religion once controlled all language, and priests were the arbiters of its meaning—the interpretation of the bible, gods word, his divine will. This allowed the priests and prophets to govern the thoughts, and therefore actions, of their people.

The world tells us—leads us to believe—that language captures facts and truths. This is a form of ‘natural’ domination. ‘Natural’ in that man lives and persists through the “will to power” which enables them to thrive (dominate) in society by leveraging the minds of other men. This “will to believe” is uniquely distinct from other animals in that animals do not leverage the minds or ‘intentions’ or other animals. Instead they possess a “will to survive” which manifests through killing (predators) or compromise (prey).

Pragmatism recognizes the utility of using language—its conventions, rituals, customs, traditions, and accepted practices semantically assumed it contains – and uses it to justify intentions (ends/ actions).

Modes of Thought: Visual-spatial v Auditory-sequential

I am strong visual-spatial learner. Rather than a auditory-sequential, characterized by time and order, I am concerned with relations and assimilate information via space. Order does not diagnose a relation. It only designates hierarchy and assigns values according to this order. Rather than time, I am concerned with space. I do not think in time, order, and temporality by default. I must consciously switch modes of thought for that thought. I think in space and relations between parts. Those who time auditory-sequentially, in time and order, are bound by definite value and temporality. This is not an adaptive way to think since order is an established system. Recombinations are unthinkable outside the designed system of value and order.

Visual-spatial thought is conceptual and occurs on an arrangeable, flexible platitude or recombinatory possibility. Shifts occur that disrupts relations, destroying the perceived order that it temporally occupied.

Freedom lies in the how: how to act, move, combine, shift, create… etc. Slavery lies in the ‘what’: what to act, move, combine, shift, create, etc. The what is concerned with the concrete, atomistic, particulars.

Understanding the ‘how’ requires a multiplicity of perspectives, a pluralistic appreciation for possible alternative methods, concepts, etc. Understanding the ‘what’ is static and dead.

‘Utlity’ is thought to reflect ‘reality’, but it reflects ‘intention’ or ‘perception’. Things are useful because they work for some(one): for an individual subjective perspective according to their intention. ‘One’ is parenthetical because it refers to the (I), the single presence occupied by a consciousness.

Myths are useful, but they are fictional abstracts. ‘Utility’, to be said to reflect reality in the way most people think it does, depends upon the ‘aim’ or precise ‘intention’ driving/ behind the utlity. Things are always useful to some end. But the question is ‘whose’ end? Since they are useful for people (individual subjective perspectives), how these ends are chose is a matter of the “will to power” which, it seems, is a manifestation of living organisms innate ‘will’ to ‘self-preserve’. Is self preservation a manifestation of a deeper cause, such as the “law of conservation of matter”? The law of conservation of matter states that the total amount of energy in an isolated system remains constant over time, or conserved, so that energy cannot be created or destroyed.

Will to power is the primal instinct to transpose ‘will’ (proclivity to preserve mental conceptions/ beliefs by acting on them so that they manifest) onto the world via domination specifically through the use of language, or linguistic coercion, since leveraging minds is more productive and less threatening than physical coercion. (What is the ‘will’? What is ‘domination’?) The Jews do this fantastically. Their race is inseparably connected to their culture and religion which strongly emphasizes the use of language.

Language is God, and God is language.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.” –John 1: 1-5

Greek Transliteration of the first verse:

En arche een ho logos kai, ho logos een pros ton theon, kai theos een ho logos.

In Greek, theos translates as God. logos is defined as: (a) that which is said or spoken; (b) ratio, thought, reason, agreeably with reason; (c) the word, comprising both senses of thought and word.

Understanding the word, being able to use the word, makes you god.

Language is justification, is god, is logic, is reason. He who possesses the language, has access to the language, who is esteemed to possess authority of that language, has power, is god.

The modern gatekeeps: preists, academics, institutions, preofessors, politicians, or anyone deemed authoritative expert. These expertssimply possess language. Authoirty is derived from (a) amount of linguistic capital/ language, including its diversity and depth, (b) application of linguistic capital, (c) creation of new linguistic capital or ‘truths’ or ‘neologisms’.

Experts and geniuses produce and, as a direct result, proliferate ideas (which language is used to capture). Activity is the mark. This activity may translate as a depth of justification within a given scope or activity may translate as a bread outlining of many scopes with brief justification.

Training or repetition instills habituation. Habituation, or consistency and repeatability, is the hallmark of analytic or rational systems which are concerned with the ‘what’. Novelty, change, is creativity. Repeatability is a hallmark of a closed system.

Habituation leads to inhibition.

Truth is a subjective perspective. Isomorphic facts, such as those immediately apparent and accessible to our senses which have no need for reflection to verify, is not what I dispute. Hume argued, as I upgold, that perceptions of ‘things’ or ‘facts’ of ‘cause and effect’ are simply the result of habitual associations, or conditioned correlation. The cause and effect, the perceptions- and categorical structures we organize our senses with- are all subjective, and therefore relative. Hoeber, we converge on agreement on how thesse aforementioned phenomena ‘are’ or ‘exist’ by dialoging with our social peers in order to establish a common/ mutual ground/ standard—which provides the ability to exchange information (communicat) about our unqiue/ subjective perspective and continually add to these convergent agreements and the way things ‘are’ or ‘exist’ in the world.

Novelty is not rewarded. Conformity is rewarded, through achievement in rigid/ formal education systems with ‘degrees’ signifying expert authority on a prescribed system of established study.

Linguistic Relativism

When I support relativism, I do not mean relative isomorphic facts or direct representations about the world. Though, Austin said that the “state of affairs can only be described in words, such as a state of affairs is toto mundo distinct from true statement.” These so called statements that seem true or false have no descriptive content, that is, they cannot be true or false. Strawson denies that facts are something in the world. Facts are not objects or complex objects combining particular and universal elements. Statements refer to such objects but they do not refer to facts; rather they state facts” says Strawson. Additionally, he says “fact is what a statement says, not what it is about. Facts correspond to ‘truth’ or ‘true things/ state of affairs in the world’ but cannot be used to define truth. Facts cal be localized to space and time. Melbr says ‘Facts’ different than facts and that facts, he says, exist independently of whether we talk or think of them.

Thing: an entity whose development in space and time is well defined? What of quantum phenomena within quantum mechanics? See Heisenbergs indeterminacy relation: cannot ascribe properties of space and time simultaneously to one and same object. The difficultly exists in determining quantum entities as thing possessing spatio-temporal location, or an event always obeying causal description, e.g. wave v. particle.

Scheme and System: define similarities, differences, compatibilities, metaphorical relationships.

Think in spheres.

When thinking: a multitude is no substitution for magnitude. Narrow intensity and power is often more persuasive than broad justification.

If heart is the thread then mind is the needle. Correctly combined they stitch together experience—a patchwork of irregular, paradoxical, incongruous experience—into a single reel of life.

Fear is internalized oppression. Of power? Of responsibility?

Fear is the character of inhibitions.

Fear is the manifestation of the inhibitions/ limitations possessed by the subjective character

Cause and Effect Relationships

Domination, Oppression

Individualism, Conformity

Expression, Depression

Wealth, Poverty

Possession, Dispossession

The world does not reward curiosity in the same way it rewards passivity.

Steve jobs understood power and authority’s role in leveraging others for the purpose of his personal creative self-expression that dominated competition.

Domination: properties in serial order

Why? Ends, subjective intention or desire or will, direction, aim
How? Method for attaining why power relations, program
What? Content, facts, things

Why? Will to power, to self-preserve, intention
How? Feelings, emotions, intuitions
What? Rational, reasoning, language

‘What?’ only serves as proof or justification for ‘why?’ or what your ‘believe’. Appeal to what others ‘believe’ or their ‘why?’ and you will leverage their mind.

Appeal/ leverage by way of language—possess and manipulate the language others possess and you will lead/ dominate/ over-power them.

Concentration of power (wealth) exacerbates inequality and decreases mobility by stripping/ inhibiting freedom due to others oppression (will to power)

Jews seem to be the masters language, and thus the art of ‘will to power’: despite their few numbers, they possess more nobel prizes than any other race/ ethnicity and they have more money, and subsequently more power, than any other race. They have done this through, relatively speaking, pacifism (non-violence). They dominate American business and politics and media and academics.

How does thinking in systems differ from thinking in schemes? What strengths do each possess?
Etymological Reflections

In greek, ‘power’ translates as dynamis or dunamis (δύναμις) which means potentiality or potency. It can also be translated as possibility, capacity, ability, capability, force, strength. Another word for power is krátos (κράτος) which translates as hard, or strength. (Think autocracy, democracy, etc.)

The Greek word dunamis, δύναμις (force ; specially, miraculous power (usually by implication, a miracle itself); force; specially, miraculous power (usually by implication, a miracle itself)) is derived from the Greek word dunasthai which is derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *deu-.

The Proto-Indo-European root deu- is the root for plural word form deus (deywós) which, in various languages, translates as God, or celestial or that which belongs in heaven.

In Hebrew this most often translates as Elohim, which means God or power.

In the old Hebrew testament Jehova (kurios or κύριος) is translated to the latin dominus which means lord or master of the house, or to build. (Recall annō Dominī) (dominatus : rule, mastery, tyranny, domination).

To bring this superficial sketch full circle, it seems interesting that logos, or word and reason, is equated with theos (θεός), or god. According to sources, Latin deus is consistently translates Greek theos.

Interestingly, ‘word’ translates to the Proto-Indo-European as ‘verb’ or *were-. The etymology is as follows: verb late 14c., from O.Fr. verbe “part of speech that expresses action or being,” from L. verbum “verb,” originally “a word,” from PIE base *were- (cf. Avestan urvata- “command;” Skt. vrata- “command, vow;” Gk. rhetor “public speaker,” rhetra “agreement, covenant,” eirein “to speak, say;” Hittite weriga- “call, summon;” Lith. vardas “name;” Goth. waurd, O.E. word “word”).

Random Reflections

Modes of Expression:

Hard/ complete: Georg Cantor- Continuum hypothesis: Embodies rationalist/ modernist/ analytic movement

Soft/ incomplete: Godel- Incompleteness Theorem: Embodies relativist/ postmodern/ creative movement

Synthetic: Hegel/ James- Dialectics/ Pragmatism: Synthesizes these two perspectives for subjective ends according to their utility to solve and achieve dilemma/ inquiry

All modern studies and disciplines, being defined by prescribed rules and expectations, are limited in their ability and scope, and will be inhibited in adequately addressing novel problems.

In addition, Hegel, and Neils Bohr, saw necessity in taking counterfactuals or contradicting ideas, and holding them together in the mind, suspending their rigidity, dissolving boundaries, and creatively synthesizing their properties into a single, third, idea that is able to satisfy the initial counter-facts.

Relativist attitudes: revolution, creation, destabilization, individuality, synthesis, deconstruction.

Will to power- those who master language are the masters. Masters of language- more specifically, masters of delineation, or description- are the creator of causes.

Those who possess language, and the ability to manipulate language- proliferate perspectives and justify actions for everyone else.

Random Reflections

Perspective

How does one create new knowledge from existing knowledge? That is: How can a conclusion go beyond the premises?

Begin with premises. Deconstruct. Reconstruct.

Abstraction globalizes problems/ issues and exposes gaps and missing links.

When you change words in your problem statement, you initiate an unobservable process in your mind that may lead to a new thought or idea.

Aristotle: words are sounds that become symbols of mental experience through the process of association.

Use words to suggest—to incite connections—rather than expressing and conveying.

Take statements—problems or perspectives—and invert their truth values: negative/ untrue statements makes us pause and slow down the thinking process.

Positive action statement (four parts):

The action- thing you want to do
The object- thing/ person you want to change
The qualifies- kind of action you want
The end result- result you expect to follow

Perceptual positions determine how we view things. Verbal description of reality is rendered impossible by the structure of language itself.

Context is the combination of axioms: they act as the categorical structure for arranging the ‘facts’ or ‘truths’ gathered from senses through experimentation (direct experience)

Axioms are useless if they are not intimately tied to experience/ sense. Creativity reconstitutes axioms into conceptions; that is, creativity rearranges axioms into different/ new grounds or orders, which establishes new context (new limits). New sense impressions (experience) then yields new and varied axioms/ facts/ Most people think top down. Genius think bottom up: this requires recombination and synthesis, specifically with non-binding spatial thought.

Logic is applied to justify connection/ association of axioms from senses which establishes conceptions/ context. Logic and reasoning occurs after, not before, experience/ sensing. We apply logic to contextualize/ conceptualize (justification through limited premises) axioms/ facts in a way that yields a singular perspective.

Subjective perspective formation:

T: time/ progression of events

H: historical knowledge of past experience/ memory

A: Axioms/ true facts

C: Conceptions/ formalized opinions

H————————–H [T_∞h]

| A_1hA_2h A_3hA_4h | |

P < C₁ C₂ C₃ >P |

| A_1pA_2p A_3pA_4p | |

S————————– S V

[T_p]

Premise

P: subjective perspective

I: ideology

W: etiology/ worldview

S: Science discipline

E: epistemology

F: Facts

T: Testing

R: Relativity (time)

C: Concept

Judge the world as you judge yourself. Self-deception leaves you outside of the world you judge. We see the world as we are.

Creativity is dynamic processing.

Oppression leads people to believe that routine repetition is self-preservation.

Since most people are other people: if you want to know others, know yourself.

I am both an individual and an other. I do not exist simultaneously.

10/30/2011

Etiology Formation

According to Apostel, a worldview is an ontology, or a descriptive model of the world. It should comprise these six elements:

An explanation of the world

A futurology, answering the question “where are we heading?”

Values, answers to ethical questions: “What should we do?”

A praxeology, or methodology, or theory of action.: “How should we attain our goals?”

An epistemology, or theory of knowledge. “What is true and false?”

An etiology. A constructed world-view should contain an account of its own “building blocks,” its origins and construction.

1. There are many explanations of worldly phenomenon, and therefore many worldviews, i.e. etiologies.
(The multiplicity of perspectives, variably determined by the union of direct experience and the influence of the prevailing ideologies within any given context of culture, render unique explanations for every individual; while similarities exist, no two perspectives are completely commensurable. Socialization, or more specifically enculturation, is the single most important determinate in shaping a subjective perspective.)

2. Each explanation contains its own end, or futurology. (Explanations may change when a subject recognizes and challenges the limits of their experience and the latent ideology maintained by their subjective perspective.)

3. Values and ethics are dependent on these ends and seek to preserve these ends.

4. The justification of ends, i.e. the methodology for their achievement, is dependent upon the content of these values and ethics.

5. A subjects epistemology is determined by their perspective, which in turn yields their explanations. (See 1)

6. A world view is domain constituted by the propositional content and functionality maintained by a subjective perspective. (See 1-5.)

Worldview: Etiology Formation

According to Apostel, a worldview is an ontology, or a descriptive model of the world. It should comprise these six elements:

An explanation of the world

A futurology, answering the question “where are we heading?”

Values, answers to ethical questions: “What should we do?”

A praxeology, or methodology, or theory of action.: “How should we attain our goals?”

An epistemology, or theory of knowledge. “What is true and false?”

An etiology. A constructed world-view should contain an account of its own “building blocks,” its origins and construction.

3. Values and ethics are dependent on these ends and seek to preserve these ends.

4. The justification of ends, i.e. the methodology for their achievement, is dependent upon the content of these values and ethics.

5. A subjects epistemology is determined by their perspective, which in turn yields their explanations. (See 1)

6. A world view is domain constituted by the propositional content and functionality maintained by a subjective perspective. (See 1-5.)

Strang/le

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

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

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

The weight of my conscience makes my bones ache.

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

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

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

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

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

Intellectualism vs Scientism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Random Weekend Updates

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thoughts

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

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

Excellent Living

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More later.

Good Company and Discourse

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ranbo Ramdom

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

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

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

Past Living

It is best not to think about the past, else you lose yourself. A part of you will always long to live there.

Clubbing to Death

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

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

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

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

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

Working Dreams

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

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

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

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

Existential Freedom: Simon de Beauvoir

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Works Cited

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

Living here

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

opprimere

Lots of unrefined, undeveloped rambling:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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