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Meaning of Life

Random thoughts

I was thinking about the meaning of life and how integral it is with intention and activity. Some of the ideas are self-evident but I figured I’ll get them out anyway.

Intention. What is intention? The idea of intention has stuck with me the past few days. Intention is characterized by some end-some purpose or aim; it can be said to be about things. It is an orientation, so to speak, a mental or emotional disposition, with a relation. It can be said that a person possessing an intention maintains an intentional state. If thinking and feeling can be marked by changed, one can conclude that an action caused something to occur to bring about this change. In this way the process of thinking and feeling can be considered actions. The intention is a property of being about something. This about is characterized by the end.

All knowledge is a result of actions that bring about an experience that elucidates the nature of the intention. If there is no experience, is there is no meaning? Yes. Even a thought or emotion is an action and surely we experience thoughts, i.e. memories and reflection. (I need to think more about what an experience might be. A property? A substance? Must it necessarily exist? A thought?)

Intentionality gives rise to meaning through human activity. With no intentionality there is no end or purpose. With no end or purpose there is no activity. With no activity there is no meaning.

Depression can be marked by a lack of intention which leaves one to conclude there is no meaning. Anxiety can be marked by an over awareness of intentionality; that is, overwhelmed by the possibilities to act.

Action gives rise to meaning. Action generates experience. A first hand empirical account gives rise to personal meaning. The first hand empirical account is an experience which is attained via sense impressions. The experience resulting from sense data gives rise to meaning when reconciled with the intentional state. If the sense data does not have anything to do with the intentional state (or maybe a peripheral intentional state), it is rendered meaningless.

Meaning is gleaned from the accretion of new experiences and eventually contributes to a web of beliefs, likened to the character or the constitution of a person. A web of beliefs forms as each new experience assents or dissents according to the meaning of past experience. As a result of conditioning and habituation, meaning slowly forms beliefs which cause a person to respond in predictable ways. Establishing unique personal intentions requires that the consciousness critically engages reality for itself. In this way wholly original and unique meaning can be coined that correspond to beliefs and convictions that were personally cognized and verified through personal experience. This is a bottom up approach to arriving at meaning.

In the same way, meaning can be adopted through enculturation. That is, the observation, experience and instruction as a result of human interaction. Meaning, and the beliefs and ideologies they constitute, is transposed onto us second-hand through others. This meaning is not immediately personal or relevant. On the contrary, it is oppressive and robs a person of a critical consciousness that cognizes personal intentions. This oppression transplants meaning and intention that was cognized by another. This is a bottom up approach to arriving at meaning.

If one hopes of finding meaning in life, one need only to adopt an intentional state and act upon in. That is to say, one only needs to set purposes and goals for himself and act upon them. The more focused and deliberate the intent, the more meaningful the action. One can create a life of meaning from the bottom up by cognizing and choosing intentions that are personal and relevant to their degree or interest for themselves. They can weave a web or beliefs that are unique to their intentions, their actions and aims alone. Activity alone will not breed meaning. It must be accompanied with an intention that carries a distinct and clear purpose or aim. One can act without thinking. For example, any oppressive action is simply forcing one person’s intention onto another. It is simply going through the motions. This is why personal goals are necessary. They elucidate the intention and give activity a context for meaning to develop.

The specific nature of the purpose or properties of the end will bring about an activity that is proportionally specific. That is, the more specific the goal, the more specific the activity. For achieving a specific goal, one needs to undertake specific activity. The clearer the goal, the more exact the activity, and the greater likelihood for achieving that goal.

Blah. Anyway. I need to continue clarifying these thoughts.

Bottom line is this. If you are anxious, focus your intention, your mind, on something specific. If you are depressed, chose a purpose or aim and get into action. Chose an intention and act on it. It is near impossible to be sad with your mind is occupied with a purpose and acting on its attainment.

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.

Niet.

I need to get a bit more positive. A renewed feeling in my bones, in my breath, in my step. Something that springs me back instead of weighing me down. No significant revelations as of late. Procrastination seems to be at an all time high. Self esteem, conversely so. I’m battling between these oscillating feelings of meaning, worth, and value. I can’t seem to find anything that sticks.

I thought for sure I had it figured out, that I could will myself hard enough to believe anything that served my ends. Actually, I think I know what happened. I have slowly grown comfortable, too comfortable, with the demands, pressures, purposes that I set for myself. Instead of embracing them with an exuberant determination, I have bastardized them, leaving them to atrophy and wither and rot until I look at them as if never knew them. Then I wake up and find myself in a place totally foreign to me and ask myself “what is this life?”, “have I chosen this life?”, “is this life worth living?”. Perhaps. I’m not sure.

Back to the positivity. I noticed that my mental attitude has been crummy lately. I need a sense of wonder and awe that inspires an optimistic foresight that breeds hope for better times. This is the positivity I am lacking. My mind is entirely too neurotic. Too paranoid. Too sheltered by sensitive judication to protect itself from who knows what.

It’s too damn cold.

People only want to hear themselves.

When evidence for doubt is presented to people, they almost always entrench themselves deeper in their beliefs rather than pulling themselves into question. Funny huh? You think that evidence would open people’s minds but the fact is no, people are not interested in hearing anyones conclusions but their own, and they will fight for those conclusions until they convince themselves, and anyone that will listen, that their beliefs are justifiably real.

A passive populous needs a proactive leader. A proactive populous needs a passive leader.

Human contact facilitates trust and a greater level of understanding and agreement.

Laundry has become a chore. My dryer is located in the basement garage. This requires a roundabout walk outside and into the basement each time I need to load the washer, transfer clothes to the dryer, and retrieve clothes for folding. bah. It’s cold now, so no fun.

I want to draw more. Do art. Get more creative.

I suffer from activation failure. I fail to activate on time, and fail to deactivate too late.

Uncertainty.

Serpentine coils. Fuzzy incandescent rays. Never go back. Always forward. Collections of accessories; troves of personals; gatherings of signs; identity of me, me, me.

Plastic puke.

Sometimes I like being skeptical. Mad. Angry. Resentful. Being disposed in these states feels more anchored than not being disposed. I suppose I should practice wearing more positive states. Anyway. Being skeptical. I like objectifying the world around me, fellow subjects, their ideas and opinions. It throws uncertainty in the face of their flimsy, unchecked conclusions. Eh. I’m not the one who needs to pass that around. I’m about as uncertain as they get. And even thats debatable. There are certainties, I just struggle at arriving at what they are. Are they universals? Particulars? Pah. Whatever.

I need to finish this essay. Instead I regurgitate meaningless impressions onto these keys, solemn fingers stroking away, like mindless doldrums.

If someone asked me what my biggest weakness was, I would answer with ‘inconsistency’. I struggle with applied consistency, routine repeatability. Heterolaterally, inconsistency can be said true as my biggest strength. I am forever anew.

I awake every day with little or no clue of the person I was yesterday. I never cease to surprise myself with new revelations I later find to be old discoveries of a prior me. I. Me. Myself. Subjective. Objective. Possessive. Funny how I can refer and perform utterances as if I contain multiple personalities. I am fungible.

I wish I had something to say. I have nothing. I hope I can look back on this and glean some meaning from it all. Or do I? I suppose that’s how I sell myself on writing, but the truth is it’s a therapy mechanism for exhausting an aimless overactive mind.

I really need to get to bed. Colors. Hues. Shades. The rictus of the horizon swallows the setting sun. My mind is an eye. Colorblind. Obscured by the scudding haze of doubt.

What does it all mean? Labor. Until you close your eyes, and sleep, soundly, forever, into the abyss of eternity.

Niet.

I need to get a bit more positive. A renewed feeling in my bones, in my breath, in my step. Something that springs me back instead of weighing me down. No significant revelations as of late. Procrastination seems to be at an all time high. Self esteem, conversely so. I’m battling between these oscillating feelings of meaning, worth, and value. I can’t seem to find anything that sticks.

I thought for sure I had it figured out, that I could will myself hard enough to believe anything that served my ends. Actually, I think I know what happened. I have slowly grown comfortable, too comfortable, with the demands, pressures, purposes that I set for myself. Instead of embracing them with an exuberant determination, I have bastardized them, leaving them to atrophy and wither and rot until I look at them as if never knew them. Then I wake up and find myself in a place totally foreign to me and ask myself “what is this life?”, “have I chosen this life?”, “is this life worth living?”. Perhaps. I’m not sure.

Back to the positivity. I noticed that my mental attitude has been crummy lately. I need a sense of wonder and awe that inspires an optimistic foresight that breeds hope for better times. This is the positivity I am lacking. My mind is entirely too neurotic. Too paranoid. Too sheltered by sensitive judication to protect itself from who knows what.

It’s too damn cold.

People only want to hear themselves.

When evidence for doubt is presented to people, they almost always entrench themselves deeper in their beliefs rather than pulling themselves into question. Funny huh? You think that evidence would open people’s minds but the fact is no, people are not interested in hearing anyones conclusions but their own, and they will fight for those conclusions until they convince themselves, and anyone that will listen, that their beliefs are justifiably real.

A passive populous needs a proactive leader. A proactive populous needs a passive leader.

Human contact facilitates trust and a greater level of understanding and agreement.

Laundry has become a chore. My dryer is located in the basement garage. This requires a roundabout walk outside and into the basement each time I need to load the washer, transfer clothes to the dryer, and retrieve clothes for folding. bah. It’s cold now, so no fun.

I want to draw more. Do art. Get more creative.

I suffer from activation failure. I fail to activate on time, and fail to deactivate too late.

Uncertainty.

Serpentine coils. Fuzzy incandescent rays. Never go back. Always forward. Collections of accessories; troves of personals; gatherings of signs; identity of me, me, me.

Plastic puke.

Sometimes I like being skeptical. Mad. Angry. Resentful. Being disposed in these states feels more anchored than not being disposed. I suppose I should practice wearing more positive states. Anyway. Being skeptical. I like objectifying the world around me, fellow subjects, their ideas and opinions. It throws uncertainty in the face of their flimsy, unchecked conclusions. Eh. I’m not the one who needs to pass that around. I’m about as uncertain as they get. And even thats debatable. There are certainties, I just struggle at arriving at what they are. Are they universals? Particulars? Pah. Whatever.

I need to finish this essay. Instead I regurgitate meaningless impressions onto these keys, solemn fingers stroking away, like mindless doldrums.

If someone asked me what my biggest weakness was, I would answer with ‘inconsistency’. I struggle with applied consistency, routine repeatability. Heterolaterally, inconsistency can be said true as my biggest strength. I am forever anew.

I awake every day with little or no clue of the person I was yesterday. I never cease to surprise myself with new revelations I later find to be old discoveries of a prior me. I. Me. Myself. Subjective. Objective. Possessive. Funny how I can refer and perform utterances as if I contain multiple personalities. I am fungible.

I wish I had something to say. I have nothing. I hope I can look back on this and glean some meaning from it all. Or do I? I suppose that’s how I sell myself on writing, but the truth is it’s a therapy mechanism for exhausting an aimless overactive mind.

I really need to get to bed. Colors. Hues. Shades. The rictus of the horizon swallows the setting sun. My mind is an eye. Colorblind. Obscured by the scudding haze of doubt.

What does it all mean? Labor. Until you close your eyes, and sleep, soundly, forever, into the abyss of eternity.

 

Matrix

Where is the purpose?

Instead of a population residing within rows of gelatinous vats filled with a pink nutritional serum that sustains the corporeal well-being, we have a population that resides in the pacific confines of more personalized mausoleums adorned with plush material luxury and sealed with empty figments of desire.

The matrix is already here. It is the media. The newspapers. The magazines. The TV. The computer. The internet. The smartphones. All routinely bombarding our attention with messages. All programs of thought. All robbing us of a critical consciousness. Our ability to be for and of our being.

Slowly, surely, we have lost ourselves.

Creative Angst

“In The Courage to Be Paul Tillich mentions the Creative as being unable to accept into or create a unity with himself and reality due to a profound dissatisfaction with it as well as with the ‘absolute threat of nonbeing.’ The problem that arises from this dissatisfaction is that one is then faced with extreme anxiety, which is defined as a state of constant worry and unease due to a situation. Since the situation in question (living itself) is somewhat inescapable, ‘Anxiety turns toward courage, because the other alternative is despair. Courage resists despair by taking anxiety into itself.’ Despair would lead to a kind of escape, but that sort which promises no greater comfort for the anxious and for that reason is often a last resort. Tillich asserts that the ‘average person keeps himself away from the extreme situations by dealing courageously with concrete objects of fear. He usually is not aware of nonbeing and anxiety in the depth of his personality.’ However, ‘He who does not succeed in taking his anxiety courageously upon himself can succeed in avoiding the extreme situation of despair by escaping into neurosis.’

This neurosis is present in many a creative individual because these people are thinkers, sensitive, and unable to ignore their own anxiety, thus having to turn to this method of coping when despair becomes unbearable…The anxiety of the neurotic is what leads him to create alternate worlds: both the artist and the man of logic throws himself into a type of problem-solving which is idiosyncratic on some level. The ‘world’ they create is not necessarily the stereotypical castle of imaginary wonders or something so concrete as the very stylistically differentiable works of some artists…  No, the world is a mental construct wherein one is safe to evaluate reality on his own terms and to create based on his dissatisfactions.”

— World Creators or What I Wish Someone Explained to Me Years Ago

I believe this angst is derived from the existential burden of possibility. Creative minds are not subjected to the same constraining ideologies and conventional ways of thinking that govern the behaviors and thoughts of the rest of the population. They ordain entirely new worlds of thought, preferring to reside among the more familiar comforts of their alien mind, while others look on with the curious perplexity of imitation.

Creative minds do not easily conform to transplanted opinions and beliefs of the whole. Hence, before the feet of the creative lies the question of being, and with it, the responsibility of being. The fear of non-being is the source of madness driving the creative mind to declare their being through thoughts and actions wholly original and reflective of their world. The responsibility of being creates an existential angst, an anxiety overwhelmed by endless possibilities and limitless freedom to be or not be. Creativity is the ultimate expression of free and true being. With it comes a deluge of choice which dilutes the value of meaning into arbitrary and trivial contrivances.

How do I know what I think until I see what I say?

“How do I know what I think until I see what I say?”
-E.M. Forster

I read this quote a long while ago and it stuck with me forever. I always related it to writing as a way of developing the inner voice of conviction. Conversation and discourse may allow you to articulate ideas and arrive at certain convictions, but much of it is in passing and the unreliability of memory provides little material for later reflection. Writing allows you to create a clear, objective portrait of the inner thoughts composing your convictions and principles.

Writing allows you to reinforce your being and gain a sense of self in a way no other medium can.

Thoughts on Language, Meaning, Existence

Lots of random thoughts.
Lately I’ve been having epiphanies regarding meaning and life and other such things.

I’ll write this out more later, but it revolves around language. The philosophy of language totally blew my mind about the way I was conceiving and approaching life’s questions.

“Language is the house of being, which is propriated by being and pervaded by being” -Heidegger

“The limits of my language are the limits of my world” – Wittgenstein

When asking questions and reflecting on life, I try my best not to over intellectualize, but remain in a realm of pragmatism that mediates between an empirical realism and a rationalism. What does this mean? What do I mean?

One will never know. Not even I. At every moment I possess an intention, a disposed state of being, an expression of my consciousness. Every gesture emanating from this state communicates the intention of my being; a direct reflection indicating the disposition of my state of consciousness. A gesture is a declaration of my being. Evidence of my living existence.This intention is lost upon translation. I rely on the standardization of linguistic conventions to communicate the message for me, but the message becomes something that is not my own. Instead it is high jacked by these conventions.

So Language….

Language is a game created to deal with demands. Language occurs on a social level. Without social interaction language would be useless. Why would be need to communicate with ourselves? What immediate purpose in our survival would that serve?

At the core of language is human activity; indeed, language is an activity and the formation of a language occurs as a result of activity. Central to this activity is a purpose or aim. Any activity without a purpose or aim is meaningless or, in other words, crazy. Each person possesses an intention. This intention is characterized by the purpose or aim of the task.

Without language, the very notion of truth and falsity would cease to exist. There would be no word for truth, no question for arriving at truth. There would only be the now which commands no verifiability from ourselves. Indeed, how could we ever conceive of a perspective outside our own?

Truth is a product of language that resulted from agreeing on what is. Language was created as a means for beings to share intentions; a way for converging on agreements regarding a purpose or aims. How do these purposes arise? As a means to satisfy external demands.

Just as any other form of life, people innately possess a necessity for self-preservation. This self-preservation fundamentally requires that a homeostatic equilibrium state is maintained between the inner organism and the outer environment. As the environment changes, so too do the demands on the organism.  Changes in the environment disrupt this equilibrium by shifting the demands placed on the organism. This requires the individual to take corrective action to restabilize the balance.

When demands are place on us, we address these demands. As social creatures, we share many of the same demands with other people. When demands are placed on two people, we bear the same taxing demands. Instead of dealing with the demands individually, we collaborate in order to address the demands mutually. In order to collaborate, there must be a charitable trust with the other. This charity must facilitate a rational accommodation on behalf of the other person so that a maximal agreement can be reached. This agreement, this convergence of intention, is the origin of meaning.

The rise of language is a result of our ability to form a passing theory or mutual agreement of terms.  Theoretically, this passing theory is ad hoc between two individuals. While a passing theory can develop and does develop between individuals all the time, there is most always a context that contains a prior theory of language .  The formation of a passing theory between two individuals is more of less a language game that allows for the convergence of multiple intentions.

A language is formed through a language game where individuals expresses their intention through gestures which are then repeated and performed back and forth until expectations are formed. These expectations are expressions of intention that become imbued with a symbolic power. In other words, the repeatability of our intentions gives a symbolic power to the expression.

What is a symbol? It represents something. What gives a symbol power or force? Its iterability as a function of utility and purpose. The repeatability ossifies into a dependable agreement.

Language comes loaded with a history of past intentions. These intentions reflect the greater web of ideologies and beliefs that characterized the struggles of our ancestors. By its nature it contains the residue of a peoples past purposes and aims.

Is my language my own? No. It is inherited. The more I develop personal and relevant purposes and aims for my life, the sooner I can possess a language that works for me.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” John 1:1

It’s curious to read these passages. Language possesses ideologies and beliefs. Religion solidifies beliefs by offering one language, one text. This creates a cohesiveness that extends beyond borders and time. Simultaneously, the texts rigidity as a sovereign text inhibits the progress and development of new language and new demands. A single text and the single ideology constrains the development of new language and new ideologies that would better suit changing social and environmental demands.

By rejecting the notion of God and religion, one destabilizes the unified perspective regarding the notion of a supreme universal meaning. This fragments the populous into a less cohesive whole. Nietzsche prophetically declared “God is dead.” to signify the end of the sovereign grip that religion maintained on the hearts and minds of men for so long.

With the limits of language no long constrained to the ideologies of a single authoritative text, an entirely new existential freedom is borne. Individuals no longer find ultimate meaning and truth by relying on historical texts and outdated ideologies.  Instead, they create their own meaning and search for truths that resonate with the whims of their will.  Existential freedom offers unlimited possibilities of being.

As you can imagine, the infinite possibility also reveals the arbitrary and trivial nature of being. The result is an existential angst that opens the door of nihilistic thought where nothing is meaningful.

Every language community  is distinctly unique according to the external demands placed on that community. These external demands socially and environmentally rooted according to past social norms as well as the variety of changes occurring in nature and the environment.

It is helpful to think of language existing on three central linguistic levels: language, dialect, and idiolect. A language is a macrocosmic representation of the norms and ideologies of a peoples unique social and environmental demands occurring over a widespread geography.Dialect represents the more regional nuances of these demands. Idiolect representsthe variety of language, norms and ideologies unique to an individual. Language formation occurs top down through the censorship of an individual’s habitus through ideological apparatuses such as family, school, work, and peers. The censorship occurs as these external ideological apparatuses condition the habitus through instruction. This censorship is slowly internalized by the individual and soon becomes self-censorship. Language formation also occurs bottom up through by developing an idiolect that represents the personal idiosyncrasies of an individual.

Any consolidation of language into a formal standardized system of definitions and standards is direct linguistic domination of authority by the authors. This linguistic domination dispossesses people of their language through censorship.

Because language arises from the convergence of passing theories, or the agreement of individuals at a local level, an individuals identity is tightly tied to their language and the language of the community. Demanding the standardization of a language encourages the censorship of humans by dispossesses people of a language that reflects their struggles, purposes, and aims. This robs humans of their identity. An attack on a language is an attack on person.

So I was thinking of journaling and writing. Journaling allows the human to develop their individual voice. Writing beckons the spirit of the inner will. It allows a person to exercise a language personal to them without the censorship of others.

Even in conversation our ability to speak and use language limited according to the understandings of our interlocutors. We mediate our words and language according to the interlocutor’s willingness to reach an agreement, that is, the willingness to exercise the principle of charity, or rational accommodation, and converge on an agreement of meaning. If they are not open, we must accommodate to them, which censors our ability to voice our intention and capture the meaning that arises.

Any creative and novel activity will develop the ability to declare your true being. Any subscription to customs, traditions, norms, conventions, or authoritative systems will constrain potential possibilities to be, for better or worse.

I am not against ideologies. What needs to be constantly considered is the limitations of that ideology. Does the ideology permit the possibility of a solution? The best solution? It may turn out that the ideology forces us into a type of thinking where there is no solution or answer. For example, when seeking escape from an unlocked room, forever toying with the various possibilities of pushing the door open, but never considering pulling as an option.

Anyway… I have a 10 page paper to write. I’ve been losing my mind a bit lately. Falling back into that existential angst that constantly smothers me nauseas with life’s arbitrary incentives.

Existence

“One sticks one’s finger into the soil to tell by the smell in what land one is: I stick my finger in existence — it smells of nothing. Where am I? Who am I? How came I here? What is this thing called the world? What does this world mean? Who is it that has lured me into the world? Why was I not consulted, why not made acquainted with its manners and customs instead of throwing me into the ranks, as if I had been bought by a kidnapper, a dealer in souls? How did I obtain an interest in this big enterprise they call reality? Why should I have an interest in it? Is it not a voluntary concern? And if I am to be compelled to take part in it, where is the director? I should like to make a remark to him. Is there no director? Whither shall I turn with my complaint? ”
-Søren Kierkegaard, Repetition (1843), Voice: Young Man

Sagacity

Contemplation. What good is aimless thought? Does it sharpen? Does it build? What purpose or function does it serve? How do I know what I think if I can’t see what I say? Why wait for the day of judgment to see what I really think about matters? Most people keep it in. They are unknown to themselves. What do people think about in their free time? I think about too much. Far too much. Everything and anything. Mostly the abstract. I often find myself wrestling to reconcile certain paradoxes, or trying to merge dissimilar ideas into an attractive whole.

I am usually not present. I try, I try desperately to be present. I recognize that being present is happiness. Being present with the moment is being eternal. Eternity isn’t bound by feeble notions concerning infinite temporal duration. Eternity is beyond time, open to ultimate possibility, residing in some place of timelessness. Those who seek eternal life must look no farther than the present. The present is our eternal life.

The present. What is the present? This moment. Now. It is a phenomenon. It is a phenomenon that is all encompassing. Nothing escapes the now. In all of time and space, no matter how respective one point from another, there is an eternal inescapable now. We cannot escape its grip. Physically, we cannot escape the now. Nothing can. What about psychologically? Can we mentally escape the now? How would this be possible?

The now is defined by sensations- sense data and impressions- registered from the external environment. Can we escape these sensations? Can we recreate sensations and alter our consciousness so that we find ourselves attending to sensations that are not present? Surely. Any recall provides this mental escape. Memories allow us to revisit mental states. They recreate the sensations within us and allow us to inspect and judge their perceived nature according to what the present confirms.

When we imagine, or reflect, or think, I believe this is what we do.  Perhaps reason is as much of a vice as it is a gift? In that, it removes us from present demands and causes us to become preoccupied with demands that are distant and far removed from the now.

Perhaps this is why faith plays such an instrumental role in theology and religion? Living in the present requires a blind attendance to the now. It requires that we hold off judgement, criticism, analysis, and react to an intuition that embodies belief.

Belief forms the sum of man’s experience. It is the core of his being, a amalgam that wholly embodies actuality.

I was recently thinking about my life and what I want out of it. What is it that I want from life? Everything really. I wouldn’t mind money, fame, solitude, poverty, adventure- whatever. I could take it all, be it all, do it all.  I suppose I could be happy with anything really. I say that because it’s all too often that I find myself happy with nothing; the absurdity of life, the trivial nature of existence.  Life has no meaning as soon as one loses the illusion of being eternal. But how does one lose that illusion? Straying too far from the present, perhaps?

I spoke with my father and voiced my concern about continuing along with economics as a major. While the discipline fascinates me to no end, it doesn’t provide my curiosities enough stimulation. I would like to follow my passions on conviction alone. I don’t want desires transplanted from outside me as dictated from the world. I am my own master. My conclusions are my own.

So I was thinking of finishing up all my major requirements in Philosophy next semester and pursuing courses more liberally. I’d like to take some classes in English and writing, math and physics, possibly chemistry, history, anthropology, sociology and, why not, some more classes in economics. Sure I can take more philosophy classes, but as a philosopher, why stop with philosophy? Philosophy is concerned with truths, with facts and the paradigms where they reside. It is concerned with existence, meaning, and life. Any discipline of study will afford me the material to think more critically about life. Studying new disciplines will only add to my language, build my vocabulary, and allow me to think beyond my current capacity for thought.

“The limits of my language means the limits of my world.”
— Ludwig Wittgenstein

Pursuing unfamiliar domains of thought and experience provides the unique opportunity for new acquaintances and carries me to a proximity in which I can more closely engage life in general.  Repeated exposure with any unknown soon renders a familiarity that becomes known to us. We learn the idiosyncrasies, coin meaning and expectations. New language expands my world, my conception of life, my understanding of existence.

Introspection. More introspection. What is introspection? A self-examination? Personal reflection? A mediation?  –spect comes from L. spectrum “appearance, vision, apparition.Intro- comes from L. intro “on the inside, within, to the inside.”

Introspection: 1670s, from L. introspectionem, from introspectus, pp. of introspicere “to look into, look at,” from intro- “inward” + specere “to look at” (see scope (1)).

The relative nature of our world fascinates me, particularly words. We treat them as these definite building blocks and act as if they maintain a univocity. The reality is that all language, all words that comprise language, has been past down and inherited by each successive generation throughout the ages.

We rely on a semantic content that is fixed, previously agreed upon and assigned. If it were not, communication would be near impossible. The fixed semantic content we attribute to words is not inherent, rather it is borne out of normative conventions that allow for a smooth exchange of understanding.

When I write it becomes much more evident of the relative nature of words. If I understand the content of a word in which someone else lacks there will be a gap in communication. Metaphors fill this gap. Metaphors. That’s another interesting phonomenon I’d like to study in more depth. Metaphors. Hot is red. Cold is blue. Why do these seem so intuitive? We describe certain people as being ‘radiant’. Of course they don’t shine or glow, but we associate nongermane concepts to things such as personality that illustrate the particular semantics of our expressive language. Is it true or false that a person is radiant? Or that someone is blue? Nietzsche captured the relative nature of language and the misguided assumptions of their truth and falsity in this passage with beautiful simplicity:

What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions — they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins.

-Friedrich Nietzsche, in On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense (1873)

As per usual, I have been giving quite a bit of thought to relativity. The relativity of life, meaning, purpose, language and the like.  Freedom as well.

If we wish to go beyond, to expand our minds and our worlds, we need to reexamine not just what language we use, but how we use it. Just as we cannot apply the same tool for every task, we cannot apply the same language for every problem. As Abraham Maslow said, “To the man who only has a hammer, everything he encounters begins to look like a nail.”

We must actively question which language tools we are apply to certain matters and situations. The unknown and unfamiliar, or anything that leaves us feeling disoriented or ‘wrong’, should never deter us from exploring the limits of our current conceptions. Learning and growth is a result of continual revision and adoption.

So long as man feigns the familiar, he will be forever trapped. If it does not occur to us to pull rather than push, we will be endlessly imprisoned in unlocked rooms that open inward. Life is open for all; seek the way with astute self reliance and courageous humility.

Anyway… need to continue writing that novel.

Sagacity

Contemplation. What good is aimless thought? Does it sharpen? Does it build? What purpose or function does it serve? How do I know what I think if I can’t see what I say? Why wait for the day of judgment to see what I really think about matters? Most people keep it in. They are unknown to themselves. What do people think about in their free time? I think about too much. Far too much. Everything and anything. Mostly the abstract. I often find myself wrestling to reconcile certain paradoxes, or trying to merge dissimilar ideas into an attractive whole.

I am usually not present. I try, I try desperately to be present. I recognize that being present is happiness. Being present with the moment is being eternal. Eternity isn’t bound by feeble notions concerning infinite temporal duration. Eternity is beyond time, open to ultimate possibility, residing in some place of timelessness. Those who seek eternal life must look no farther than the present. The present is our eternal life.

The present. What is the present? This moment. Now. It is a phenomenon. It is a phenomenon that is all encompassing. Nothing escapes the now. In all of time and space, no matter how respective one point from another, there is an eternal inescapable now. We cannot escape its grip. Physically, we cannot escape the now. Nothing can. What about psychologically? Can we mentally escape the now? How would this be possible?

The now is defined by sensations- sense data and impressions- registered from the external environment. Can we escape these sensations? Can we recreate sensations and alter our consciousness so that we find ourselves attending to sensations that are not present? Surely. Any recall provides this mental escape. Memories allow us to revisit mental states. They recreate the sensations within us and allow us to inspect and judge their perceived nature according to what the present confirms.

When we imagine, or reflect, or think, I believe this is what we do.  Perhaps reason is as much of a vice as it is a gift? In that, it removes us from present demands and causes us to become preoccupied with demands that are distant and far removed from the now.

Perhaps this is why faith plays such an instrumental role in theology and religion? Living in the present requires a blind attendance to the now. It requires that we hold off judgement, criticism, analysis, and react to an intuition that embodies belief.

Belief forms the sum of man’s experience. It is the core of his being, a amalgam that wholly embodies actuality.

I was recently thinking about my life and what I want out of it. What is it that I want from life? Everything really. I wouldn’t mind money, fame, solitude, poverty, adventure- whatever. I could take it all, be it all, do it all.  I suppose I could be happy with anything really. I say that because it’s all too often that I find myself happy with nothing; the absurdity of life, the trivial nature of existence.  Life has no meaning as soon as one loses the illusion of being eternal. But how does one lose that illusion? Straying too far from the present, perhaps?

I spoke with my father and voiced my concern about continuing along with economics as a major. While the discipline fascinates me to no end, it doesn’t provide my curiosities enough stimulation. I would like to follow my passions on conviction alone. I don’t want desires transplanted from outside me as dictated from the world. I am my own master. My conclusions are my own.

So I was thinking of finishing up all my major requirements in Philosophy next semester and pursuing courses more liberally. I’d like to take some classes in English and writing, math and physics, possibly chemistry, history, anthropology, sociology and, why not, some more classes in economics. Sure I can take more philosophy classes, but as a philosopher, why stop with philosophy? Philosophy is concerned with truths, with facts and the paradigms where they reside. It is concerned with existence, meaning, and life. Any discipline of study will afford me the material to think more critically about life. Studying new disciplines will only add to my language, build my vocabulary, and allow me to think beyond my current capacity for thought.

“The limits of my language means the limits of my world.”
— Ludwig Wittgenstein

Pursuing unfamiliar domains of thought and experience provides the unique opportunity for new acquaintances and carries me to a proximity in which I can more closely engage life in general.  Repeated exposure with any unknown soon renders a familiarity that becomes known to us. We learn the idiosyncrasies, coin meaning and expectations. New language expands my world, my conception of life, my understanding of existence.

Introspection. More introspection. What is introspection? A self-examination? Personal reflection? A mediation?  –spect comes from L. spectrum “appearance, vision, apparition.Intro- comes from L. intro “on the inside, within, to the inside.”

Introspection: 1670s, from L. introspectionem, from introspectus, pp. of introspicere “to look into, look at,” from intro- “inward” + specere “to look at” (see scope (1)).

The relative nature of our world fascinates me, particularly words. We treat them as these definite building blocks and act as if they maintain a univocity. The reality is that all language, all words that comprise language, has been past down and inherited by each successive generation throughout the ages.

We rely on a semantic content that is fixed, previously agreed upon and assigned. If it were not, communication would be near impossible. The fixed semantic content we attribute to words is not inherent, rather it is borne out of normative conventions that allow for a smooth exchange of understanding.

When I write it becomes much more evident of the relative nature of words. If I understand the content of a word in which someone else lacks there will be a gap in communication. Metaphors fill this gap. Metaphors. That’s another interesting phonomenon I’d like to study in more depth. Metaphors. Hot is red. Cold is blue. Why do these seem so intuitive? We describe certain people as being ‘radiant’. Of course they don’t shine or glow, but we associate nongermane concepts to things such as personality that illustrate the particular semantics of our expressive language. Is it true or false that a person is radiant? Or that someone is blue? Nietzsche captured the relative nature of language and the misguided assumptions of their truth and falsity in this passage with beautiful simplicity:

What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions — they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins.

-Friedrich Nietzsche, in On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense (1873)

As per usual, I have been giving quite a bit of thought to relativity. The relativity of life, meaning, purpose, language and the like.  Freedom as well.

If we wish to go beyond, to expand our minds and our worlds, we need to reexamine not just what language we use, but how we use it. Just as we cannot apply the same tool for every task, we cannot apply the same language for every problem. As Abraham Maslow said, “To the man who only has a hammer, everything he encounters begins to look like a nail.”

We must actively question which language tools we are apply to certain matters and situations. The unknown and unfamiliar, or anything that leaves us feeling disoriented or ‘wrong’, should never deter us from exploring the limits of our current conceptions. Learning and growth is a result of continual revision and adoption.

So long as man feigns the familiar, he will be forever trapped. If it does not occur to us to pull rather than push, we will be endlessly imprisoned in unlocked rooms that open inward. Life is open for all; seek the way with astute self reliance and courageous humility.

Anyway… need to continue writing that novel.

Curiosus

Curiosity beckons all the day, like a persistent itch, wherein scratching provides only temporary relief; were I to nurse my curiosities all the day, they should find no further relief.

Itching provides no amelioration, no mollification that delivers the attention from its incessant rapping.

The etymology is itself curious:

curious: mid-14c., “eager to know” (often in a bad sense), from O.Fr. curios “solicitous, anxious, inquisitive; odd, strange” (Mod.Fr. curieux) and directly from L. curiosus”careful, diligent; inquiring eagerly, meddlesome,” akin to cura “care” (see cure). The objective sense of “exciting curiosity” is 1715 in English. In booksellers’ catalogues, the word means “erotic, pornographic.” Curiouser and curiouser is from “Alice in Wonderland” (1865).

Me.

I love solving problems. When I’m passionate about a task, I can concentrate endlessly until completion. I am a non-skeptical realist visionary idealist who strives for perfection in the closest, most functional sense. My passions and interests have followed me unceasingly throughout my life. There is nothing so enjoyable as reading a book. I rely on my imagination to keep my world alive. I enjoy puzzles of any kind. I enjoy synthesizing non-germane concepts into novel ideas. Paradoxes intrigue me to no end. I set and maintain high standards for myself. My long term memory is impeccable. I possess a deep compassion for my fellow man. There is nothing is so irritating and so satisfying as my persistent curiosity. I believe that laughter is the closest cure all we will find.

An acute sense of awareness keeps me forever absorbed in details comprising the whole. While I am no mathematical prodigy, I appreciate the simplistic beauty of mathematics and find myself endlessly entranced by its pure description of what is.

Contemplation is the defining characteristic of my existence. It is where my true being, if one exists, resides. I search endlessly for meaning in life. Intuition is my guiding star, the flame the gives rise to my awareness, the source that captures all of life’s particulars into a unifying experience.

I am highly emotional and sensitive. I maintain strong moral convictions. The limits of my language dictate the limits of my world. I have a passion for words and language. I often find myself out-of-sync with others.  Perception is everything. I constantly seek out new insights. I question prescribed rules and authority and challenge the status quo. I systematize and organize various collections.

I thrive on challenge. I learn new things rapidly. I am often overwhelmed by the multitude of interests I possess. I have a great deal of energy. I stand firmly against injustice. My creativity drives me to do more, be more. Imagination, inspiration, craft and artistry compel me to develop a more colorful existence for myself and others.  I love indulging in deep fervent conversation. I have many unusual ideas and perceptions. I am complex.

Mind Dump

“The distance between you and your goal is often the length of a single idea.”   -Vic Conant

Where is my mind?

I feel ill at the moment. A stomache ache. Something that’s gripping me. Mentally and physically. It’s strangling. I have a flame. I have a god damn flame. Why doesn’t it burn? Where is my curiosity for life? Where is the vigor? Where is the heartfelt desire and drive to delve into life with a precocious can-do attitude? Why do I feel like everything is dull and lifeless? Why do I feel like I’m dull and lifeless? Why the fuck can’t I strip myself from this weight that grips and claws at my insides? Where is the wonder? The god damn wonder? Hello? Anyone?

Thanksgiving break seemed overly typical this year. Family drama. Something that usually keeps itself at bay, or at least it’s usually its managed. Maybe I’m just getting older and have grown more aware of the conflicts within the family. I don’t understand problems. Why are there problems? Why are there disagreements? If its at the expense of happiness, what the hell does it matter if you think something is wrong or right? Isn’t happiness what life’s all about? Don’t you think it’s almost better to be wrong and be happy, or at least have things work out? then to be right, or assert your position at the expense of shit hitting the fan and people getting hurt?

My god. What has happened to me? The dread. This terrible dread. My mind has grown dilatory and unresponsive. I need some genuine enthusiasm. I need something to pick me up and rivet me and hurl me over the edge. I need the adrenaline, the burst of uncontrollable joy erupting from my pores. I need to taste that richness. That life.

Is life suppose to be like this? I mull and dig, turn over the soil, churn the water, hoping for some answer. And I know that life is about attitude. It is attitude. Life is about perception. What you percieve. How you percieve. All that. It is nothing more. If you look for shit, you will find shit. Probably sooner than later. Am I looking for shit? Is that why I feel so listless and apathetic? My muses! Where have they gone? I have not exhausted my investigations. My goals have not been satisfied. They have not been acheived. They have grown distant and cold. That is the problem. I need to bring them back, wring them in. I need to focus. God. It’s the same story with me. Focus. Focus. Focus. I wish I was a computer that I could manually program, like once, so that the task and goals and aims I desperately yearn for could be realized. There’s something wrong here. I’m missing something. Something is missing. It must be deeper. What kind of deep shit are you not dealing with Michael? Hm…

Whatever it is eludes me. Action. ACTION. Action breeds all genesis. It brings forth life. Without action, there is stagnation. Life is like a garden that will grow rampant with weeds and thistles and thorns unless it is properly attended through diliberate action. I need to till my life, uproot the random bullshit, the random thoughts, the useless fascinations, and make sure that I care for only the most pressing issues of my heart and soul.

I read over journal entries from years ago when I was on the upward swing of things. I’m envious of that person. I was so resolute in body and mind to see certain goals attained. I controlled every environmental and emotional and mental factor to the utmost scrutiny.  When negative or inconsequential thoughts crept in, I immediately reacted by turning on the right thoughts. Thoughts of success, or achievement, or who I believed I was, who I believed I could be. Agh.

Life is absurd. Sometimes I wish it was easy. That. That right there is the problem. I am running from the struggle. Life was never so beautiful as when it was a struggle. The pains yielded the joys. Like spring and summer labor yields forth the fruits of the fall and sustains us through the winter. It is during those months of labor, of hot arduous painstaking labor, that lead us to happiness.

Such aphoristic speech repulses me. That. That needs to stop. Negative criticism. Where are these thoughts coming from? Who the hell cares if I speak sententiously? Do I really care? hm… no. Then why the hell do I continue chastizing myself. Anyway.

I would like to elaborate with a little more depth. That’s something that I’ll need to work on. I have been avoiding the issue of work and labor as of late. I have let the power of pain get away from me. It is no pain. These internal struggles. I can interpret them in any way I like. Work can be a pleasure, or a burden. Why one would choose the latter is beyond me. It is my duty. I need to refine my self conception. I am someone who enjoys laboring, in all things. I go the extra mile. I burn the mid night oil. I attend only to the tasks that will have direct and definite consequences for achieving my goals. All others, all other fantastical obsessions and desultory desires need to be shelved. My mind is sharp. It is not for beating. It is for slicing. Slicing through obstacles, blazing through endeavors, goal after goal.

Sometimes I think I’m mad. Indeed, I am. We’re all mad. I don’t know why I let myself believe that anyone has it figured out any more than anyone else. Sometimes I just need to let things go. This goes along with choosing my tasks wisely. Being prudent, as they say.

I went to Florida for a few days. Caught up with some great friends. Got into some mischief. Read a few chapters of philosophy of language for class; specifically Wittgensteins private language theory and Nietzsche’s theory of metaphors and truth and lies in the non-moral sense. Read a few pages of Faulkner. Read of few poems of T.S. Eliots The Wasteland. Flew remote controlled helicopters. Went on a bike ride.

My parents are religious zealots. I love them dearly, no doubt about it, but it’s difficult to engage in conversation when there are such drastic differences in worldview foundations. Sometimes I forget, and I assume that we use the same language, that we operate from an similar ideology, but then the conversations build up heat as these contrary worldviews skirt past eachother and generate a friction. To them, everything goes back to God. That’s cool and all. But that means a lot gets thrown out when it shouldn’t be.  Such as, anything related to secular science. ‘Emotions were built into us by God. That person’s emotional issue is a spiritual issue. They’re wrestling with their will and God’s will’ It seems a bit short sighted. I’m apt to believe that there are much more comprehensive models for explaining why we find ourselves in certain emotional states. You can look at environmental factors, for one. Or physiological factors. Or personality factors. Or family factors. Or a crap ton of other factors that doesn’t substitute a catch all explanation. It seems much too arbitrary. And maybe it is. Anyway. I don’t even know what I’m saying anymore.

It’s funny. People that are so blind that they can’t see it. Am I blind? No doubt. I’m sure I am. But I want to be wrong. I desperately want to be wrong. I am at the mercy of understanding. That is all I want. I don’t want to be right, I just want to understand. Life is too short to search for all the answers. I just want to understand how it all works. I want clairvoyance into the harmonious dynamics governing thought and action.

What else do I have on my mind? I need to buy myself another book shelf. Too many books all over my room. They are probably more of a distraction than anything, but they offer a warmth. Seeing them reminds me of their knowledge. It keeps me conscious of the obligation I have to what little knowledge I was able to glean from their pages.

I need to familiarize myself with my tasks. I need to absorb and osmose their nature, their idiosyncrasies, their facets, their personality, their character. Tasks. Goals. Aims. Aspirations. Destinations.

I am not in a rush to gain value. To grow. I must be diligent with my time. I must respect the force of the finite junctures I face. College happens but once at my age. Education and learning happens forever. Let me not forget that.

I want to be fiercly absolute in my character, who I am, who I desire to be. Do not back down. Do not fawn for other’s approbation. God. The thought sickens me. ‘Others’. Who has it figured out? Ha.

Objectification. When I see the world as objects, rather than subjects, I can maneuver with much more ease and grace. There is something about subjects that paralyzes. We give subjects too much benefit. We bestow all the working knowledge privileged to us and us alone unto them, as if they grasp and understand the unknown depths of our world with the same capacity. We are all naive souls, grasping as shadows.

I have to write 15,000 more words in three days. 5,000 words a day. Holy…

Tomorrow I will write a minimum of 10,000 words. All day. I will wake at 8am, and write all day long. One guy wrote 50,000 words in a single day. Wow. Many more have written 20,000 words in a day. My record so far is around 5,000. Doubling that will be taxing but, nonetheless, within the realm of achievable.

When I am finished this novel business, I will go on to write a 10 page paper for Social and Political Philosophy, probably on the role of the state regarding public education. That should turn out to be around 3000-4000 words. Ha. I scoff at such a paper. ha. anyway…

I need to sleep. Long day tomorrow.

Mind Dump

“The distance between you and your goal is often the length of a single idea.”   -Vic Conant

Where is my mind?

I feel ill at the moment. A stomache ache. Something that’s gripping me. Mentally and physically. It’s strangling. I have a flame. I have a god damn flame. Why doesn’t it burn? Where is my curiosity for life? Where is the vigor? Where is the heartfelt desire and drive to delve into life with a precocious can-do attitude? Why do I feel like everything is dull and lifeless? Why do I feel like I’m dull and lifeless? Why the fuck can’t I strip myself from this weight that grips and claws at my insides? Where is the wonder? The god damn wonder? Hello? Anyone?

Thanksgiving break seemed overly typical this year. Family drama. Something that usually keeps itself at bay, or at least it’s usually its managed. Maybe I’m just getting older and have grown more aware of the conflicts within the family. I don’t understand problems. Why are there problems? Why are there disagreements? If its at the expense of happiness, what the hell does it matter if you think something is wrong or right? Isn’t happiness what life’s all about? Don’t you think it’s almost better to be wrong and be happy, or at least have things work out? then to be right, or assert your position at the expense of shit hitting the fan and people getting hurt?

My god. What has happened to me? The dread. This terrible dread. My mind has grown dilatory and unresponsive. I need some genuine enthusiasm. I need something to pick me up and rivet me and hurl me over the edge. I need the adrenaline, the burst of uncontrollable joy erupting from my pores. I need to taste that richness. That life.

Is life suppose to be like this? I mull and dig, turn over the soil, churn the water, hoping for some answer. And I know that life is about attitude. It is attitude. Life is about perception. What you percieve. How you percieve. All that. It is nothing more. If you look for shit, you will find shit. Probably sooner than later. Am I looking for shit? Is that why I feel so listless and apathetic? My muses! Where have they gone? I have not exhausted my investigations. My goals have not been satisfied. They have not been acheived. They have grown distant and cold. That is the problem. I need to bring them back, wring them in. I need to focus. God. It’s the same story with me. Focus. Focus. Focus. I wish I was a computer that I could manually program, like once, so that the task and goals and aims I desperately yearn for could be realized. There’s something wrong here. I’m missing something. Something is missing. It must be deeper. What kind of deep shit are you not dealing with Michael? Hm…

Whatever it is eludes me. Action. ACTION. Action breeds all genesis. It brings forth life. Without action, there is stagnation. Life is like a garden that will grow rampant with weeds and thistles and thorns unless it is properly attended through diliberate action. I need to till my life, uproot the random bullshit, the random thoughts, the useless fascinations, and make sure that I care for only the most pressing issues of my heart and soul.

I read over journal entries from years ago when I was on the upward swing of things. I’m envious of that person. I was so resolute in body and mind to see certain goals attained. I controlled every environmental and emotional and mental factor to the utmost scrutiny.  When negative or inconsequential thoughts crept in, I immediately reacted by turning on the right thoughts. Thoughts of success, or achievement, or who I believed I was, who I believed I could be. Agh.

Life is absurd. Sometimes I wish it was easy. That. That right there is the problem. I am running from the struggle. Life was never so beautiful as when it was a struggle. The pains yielded the joys. Like spring and summer labor yields forth the fruits of the fall and sustains us through the winter. It is during those months of labor, of hot arduous painstaking labor, that lead us to happiness.

Such aphoristic speech repulses me. That. That needs to stop. Negative criticism. Where are these thoughts coming from? Who the hell cares if I speak sententiously? Do I really care? hm… no. Then why the hell do I continue chastizing myself. Anyway.

I would like to elaborate with a little more depth. That’s something that I’ll need to work on. I have been avoiding the issue of work and labor as of late. I have let the power of pain get away from me. It is no pain. These internal struggles. I can interpret them in any way I like. Work can be a pleasure, or a burden. Why one would choose the latter is beyond me. It is my duty. I need to refine my self conception. I am someone who enjoys laboring, in all things. I go the extra mile. I burn the mid night oil. I attend only to the tasks that will have direct and definite consequences for achieving my goals. All others, all other fantastical obsessions and desultory desires need to be shelved. My mind is sharp. It is not for beating. It is for slicing. Slicing through obstacles, blazing through endeavors, goal after goal.

Sometimes I think I’m mad. Indeed, I am. We’re all mad. I don’t know why I let myself believe that anyone has it figured out any more than anyone else. Sometimes I just need to let things go. This goes along with choosing my tasks wisely. Being prudent, as they say.

I went to Florida for a few days. Caught up with some great friends. Got into some mischief. Read a few chapters of philosophy of language for class; specifically Wittgensteins private language theory and Nietzsche’s theory of metaphors and truth and lies in the non-moral sense. Read a few pages of Faulkner. Read of few poems of T.S. Eliots The Wasteland. Flew remote controlled helicopters. Went on a bike ride.

My parents are religious zealots. I love them dearly, no doubt about it, but it’s difficult to engage in conversation when there are such drastic differences in worldview foundations. Sometimes I forget, and I assume that we use the same language, that we operate from an similar ideology, but then the conversations build up heat as these contrary worldviews skirt past eachother and generate a friction. To them, everything goes back to God. That’s cool and all. But that means a lot gets thrown out when it shouldn’t be.  Such as, anything related to secular science. ‘Emotions were built into us by God. That person’s emotional issue is a spiritual issue. They’re wrestling with their will and God’s will’ It seems a bit short sighted. I’m apt to believe that there are much more comprehensive models for explaining why we find ourselves in certain emotional states. You can look at environmental factors, for one. Or physiological factors. Or personality factors. Or family factors. Or a crap ton of other factors that doesn’t substitute a catch all explanation. It seems much too arbitrary. And maybe it is. Anyway. I don’t even know what I’m saying anymore.

It’s funny. People that are so blind that they can’t see it. Am I blind? No doubt. I’m sure I am. But I want to be wrong. I desperately want to be wrong. I am at the mercy of understanding. That is all I want. I don’t want to be right, I just want to understand. Life is too short to search for all the answers. I just want to understand how it all works. I want clairvoyance into the harmonious dynamics governing thought and action.

What else do I have on my mind? I need to buy myself another book shelf. Too many books all over my room. They are probably more of a distraction than anything, but they offer a warmth. Seeing them reminds me of their knowledge. It keeps me conscious of the obligation I have to what little knowledge I was able to glean from their pages.

I need to familiarize myself with my tasks. I need to absorb and osmose their nature, their idiosyncrasies, their facets, their personality, their character. Tasks. Goals. Aims. Aspirations. Destinations.

I am not in a rush to gain value. To grow. I must be diligent with my time. I must respect the force of the finite junctures I face. College happens but once at my age. Education and learning happens forever. Let me not forget that.

I want to be fiercly absolute in my character, who I am, who I desire to be. Do not back down. Do not fawn for other’s approbation. God. The thought sickens me. ‘Others’. Who has it figured out? Ha.

Objectification. When I see the world as objects, rather than subjects, I can maneuver with much more ease and grace. There is something about subjects that paralyzes. We give subjects too much benefit. We bestow all the working knowledge privileged to us and us alone unto them, as if they grasp and understand the unknown depths of our world with the same capacity. We are all naive souls, grasping as shadows.

I have to write 15,000 more words in three days. 5,000 words a day. Holy…

Tomorrow I will write a minimum of 10,000 words. All day. I will wake at 8am, and write all day long. One guy wrote 50,000 words in a single day. Wow. Many more have written 20,000 words in a day. My record so far is around 5,000. Doubling that will be taxing but, nonetheless, within the realm of achievable.

When I am finished this novel business, I will go on to write a 10 page paper for Social and Political Philosophy, probably on the role of the state regarding public education. That should turn out to be around 3000-4000 words. Ha. I scoff at such a paper. ha. anyway…

I need to sleep. Long day tomorrow.

 

Contemplation

“To arrive at the simplest truth, as [Sir Isaac] Newton knew and practiced, requires years of contemplation. Not activity Not reasoning. Not calculating. Not busy behaviour of any kind. Not reading. Not talking. Not making an effort. Not thinking. Simply bearing in mind what it is one needs to know. And yet those with the courage to tread this path to real discovery are not only offered practically no guidance on how to do so, they are actively discouraged and have to set about it in secret, pretending meanwhile to be diligently engaged in the frantic diversions and to conform with the deadening personal opinions which are being continually thrust upon them.”

— George Spencer-Brown

Strangers are People

1989.

Tall like trees. Bodies danced at the margins of my world, filling the jungle with movement and life.
My mother strolled ahead. I was two at the time. We were in Saint Luis Obisbo California. My father was in the middle of a six month naval cruise somewhere in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Operation Desert Storm was underway.  Patty, my mothers best childhood friend, was visiting our new family from the east coast. They wandered through the public promenade and admired the Californian city scape while they caught up on life’s new details. My sister Jaclyn was strapped tightly to a toddler rook, hanging like a swollen sack from my mothers back. Her little arms protruded out to the sides and her tiny fingers grasped at the passing air. My mother latched onto my hand like a leash and led the way through the thicket of legs and knees that shuffled along the sidewalk. I stared at my shoes. My laces lashed back and forth as I toddled to keep pace. Gum smeared the cement. I looked up: the world was tall.

Suddenly there was a pause. I watched their lips move in parley as their eyes surveyed the storefronts for a potential lunch spot. I jerked my hand away: I wanted freedom. I stared at my flopping laces and continued walking without thought to where I was going.
“Michael!” My mother called me; her voice was piqued with concern. “Get back here Michael. You need to stand near me. There are strangers here.”
I looked up and found her eyes peering at me. Bodies bustled about. Conversations echoed near and far. On nearby benches sat individuals, some propped and alert, others slumped and sluggish, all with a distant look in their eyes; their minds absorbed in contemplation.
“There are no strangers here. There are only people.”
I looked at her curiously, blinking. A smile warmed her face.
“You’re right Michael. There are no strangers. There are only people.”

Do rad.

Oh, tell me, who was it first announced, who was it first proclaimed, that man only does nasty things because he does not know his own interests; and that if he were enlightened, if his eyes were opened to his real normal interests, man would at once cease to do nasty things, would at once become good and noble… we all know that not one man can, consciously, act against his own interests … And what if it so happens that a man’s advantage, sometimes not only may, but even must, consists in his desiring in certain cases what is harmful to himself and not advantageous[?]

Dostoeyevski, Notes from the Underground

Interesting quote.

I don’t want to conform. I don’t want to be traditional. I don’t want average. I don’t want normal. I don’t want typical. I don’t want regular. I don’t want ordinary. I don’t want usual. I don’t want to be okay.

I want to live radically.

Radical living. What would this look like? Radicalism is characterized by extremes and the stolid allegiance to certain unalienable convictions and principles. It is a life without compromise.

The choice to live radically, live according to your convictions, is a notion lost on many. Societies have sprung and self-reliance has withered. We depend on others. For knowledge. For economy. For survival.

I’ve often thought about the costs and benefits of human relations. I believe that as one being, one life, in the world, you have access to some element of reality just as much as any other man.  I believe that this element offers a perspective wholly unique and distinct from any other. While one can argue the utility of such staunch self-reliance and the lone perspective it offers, we are no less the demiurge of our fate. It is our task to compose the melodious eminence, the sonorous song, of our spirit. We and we alone must weave the trappings of our worldly constitution into a festooning fabric for all eyes to revere or renounce. We must make it count.

Oh, tell me, who was it first announced, who was it first proclaimed, that man only does nasty things because he does not know his own interests; and that if he were enlightened, if his eyes were opened to his real normal interests, man would at once cease to do nasty things, would at once become good and noble… we all know that not one man can, consciously, act against his own interests … And what if it so happens that a man’s advantage, sometimes not only may, but even must, consists in his desiring in certain cases what is harmful to himself and not advantageous[?]

Dostoeyevski, Notes from the Underground

Do rad.

Oh, tell me, who was it first announced, who was it first proclaimed, that man only does nasty things because he does not know his own interests; and that if he were enlightened, if his eyes were opened to his real normal interests, man would at once cease to do nasty things, would at once become good and noble… we all know that not one man can, consciously, act against his own interests … And what if it so happens that a man’s advantage, sometimes not only may, but even must, consists in his desiring in certain cases what is harmful to himself and not advantageous[?]

Dostoeyevski, Notes from the Underground

Interesting quote.

I don’t want to conform. I don’t want to be traditional. I don’t want average. I don’t want normal. I don’t want typical. I don’t want regular. I don’t want ordinary. I don’t want usual. I don’t want to be okay.

I want to live radically.

Radical living. What would this look like? Radicalism is characterized by extremes and the stolid allegiance to certain unalienable  convictions and principles.

The choice to live radically, live according to your convictions, is a notion lost on many. Societies have sprung and self-reliance has withered. We depend on others. For knowledge. For economy. For survival.

I’ve often thought about the costs and benefits of human relations. I believe that as one being, one life, in the world, you have access to some element of reality just as much as any other man.  I believe the element offers a perspective wholly unique and exemplary. While one can argue the utility of a lone perspective, we are no less a demiurge. It is our task to weave the viscous textures of our worldly constitution into a festooning fabric for all eyes to revere or renounce. Make it count.

Lucy

LSD is like a surprise party you’ve heard all about; even before the first encounter you believe yourself to be distantly acquainted like an astral soul mate. As the time approaches you believe yourself prepared and ready, maintaining a perfectly formed idea of the minute details comprising the events of the party: where it’s at, whats going to happen, who’s gonna be there. You are terribly excited and cannot wait to be greeted by the anticipated surprise.  However, as one who savors the novelty of life, you go to great lengths to ensure the vernal appeal is fully preserved. You sneak up quietly, tip-toeing, trying not to disrupt the au courant beauty of your expectations. You await the glory, the thrill and approbation.

At the last expecting moment you feel an abrupt slap in the ass that throws you into an utterly befuddled, confused state. Swiftly, you swing around to find a retinue of happy, joyous, strange, aliens cheering your arrival. You do not know these people, you do not know why they are looking at you with such glib enthusiasm. You don’t know whether to greet them with a smile and beam equal joy, or recoil in alarming fear. This does not parse well with your expectations. You were expecting a party, but this is not the party you thought you’d attend. These are strangers, unknown to you. Their visage may suggest a warm disarming invitation to stay, but there is a strangeness. Do I embrace these outstretch arms and party with conviviality and without consternation? Or do I attempt to run? Should I escape and flee to a more familiar place? Perhaps the party I expected?

Little do you know, in that moment, you have no choice in the matter. You cannot cross  the thresh hold twice. Fate has left you here and this is the party you must attend. The sooner you embrace it, the sooner you can appreciate it. Running from it is like running inward. There is no escape. You only go deeper and deeper, until you lose yourself. You cannot escape yourself.

Peregrination

It’s late. I should be in bed. I figure I need to get some thoughts out.

An update. I’m growing my beard out. Not sure how I feel about it. It’s the first time in twenty-four years of my life that I’ve given my cheeks shade and let the facial hair run rampant. It’s sort of funny. Initially it was awkward having this thatching covering my face. Almost uncomfortable. But eventually I stopped giving a shit and now it’s not too bad. Not sure the ladies dig it. Maybe some Canadian women who have a thing for lumberjacks. Don’t know if I’ll find that crowd here in the south, let alone Vanderbilt. No matter.

Haven’t spent too much time pursuing the ladies. Usually that’s a question that comes up when talking with people, like it’s expected that you should have a girlfriend. ‘Any ladies?’ they say. There’s a repertoire of preloaded social inquiry. It’s necessary for communication. I do it. The question of girls is interesting. It’s on cue in the back of every guys mind. It’s a universal need that needs to be addressed and asking about it only harks back to its importance. Anyway.

I went to the library this evening and checked our four books by William Faulkner as well as a collection of poems by T.S. Eliot. I wonder what TS stands for? (Thomas Stearns)

Am I happy? Not sure. I like that I’ve been writing and thinking about writing as much as I have. It hasn’t exactly been great for keeping me focused on school. In fact, it’s prompted an insidious reaction within me to reject school altogether and revert back to my anitauthoritarian mentality. I am a free spirit, I cannot be kept like a bird in a cage. The soaring wings of imagination and passion must take flight without the constraining walls of formality. School has far too much of this formality. Can I master the system? Absolutely. But at what cost? At what cost am I willing to dampen my creative intellect? Do I have the imagination and tenacity to do both? To command myself to be a slave and master simultaneously? I think so. I should try. There’s something so stifling about expectations. They sap the damn energy out of you. They hack at the knees before the first step is taken. It’s like pushing against the sky: out of reach and unrealistic. Or maybe that’s just my self-imposed expectations.  Anyway. I’m rambling.

Honesty. Suffering. No one wants to hear about anything but the suffering. People love commiseration. It reminds us of our frailty, of our humanity. I just want to capture what the hell it means to be human. If I can do that, and relay and relate it, I will feel accomplished.

It’s getting cold. And gray. The leaves have withered away, fallen like feathery fruit from the trees. The open skies resemble gray carpets void of life and depth like a dead drafty room.  The winged rats of the air take flight in spotted contrast, arranging and rearranging their fleeting patterns. Birds. No more blue skies. No more slanted sunshine and slinking steam scudding across the open air.

Thanksgiving dinner at the house tonight. I’ll be staying here over break. Looking forward to it. I have an economic statistics test tomorrow. Hmph. Not too thrilled about that but we’ll see what happens. I need something to smack the shit outta me. Wake me up. I need something meaningful. I hate going through the motions. You have one life. ONE life. That is it. Why oh why do I feel like I waste far too much of my life! I need to do more, be more, think more, create more. ONE LIFE. To try it all, do it all, love it all, taste it all, smell it all, feel it all. One. Then, you die. No more. You cease existing and eternity disappears along with your life. Nothing. Now is the time. Am I living up to my fullest potential? Am I developing what that even means? We can’t hit a target if we can’t see it. If I am to develop my potential I desperately need to have an idea of what I’m developing and what I desire the finished product to look like.

I was thinking the other day about how many people have lived and died throughout history and no one gives their life a moments consideration. They may have had some sort of impact on history. Maybe. They left a smidge of a ripple that barely made it to the ponds perimeter, let alone churn and stir the waters. I want to create waves!

The people we read about wrote down their thoughts. I can’t imagine a life where I can’t see what I think. I don’t know how I would think about my past, my identity. It would be so trivial and left up for interpretation, my word and others. If I never wrote, never recorded my thoughts, materialized my mind into words, I may as well have never existed. In a century nothing will be left of me but some ashes. If that. Think about all the people who have lived and were never remembered. I’m sure they were great people with great ideas too, but we’ll never know. The only people we know about are the ones who had the courage to declare their being and write it down.

Anyway. It’s late. I should really get to bed. I want life!

Peregrination

It’s late. I should be in bed. I figure I need to get some thoughts out.

An update. I’m growing my beard out. Not sure how I feel about it. It’s the first time in twenty-four years of my life that I’ve given my cheeks shade and let the facial hair run rampant. It’s sort of funny. Initially it was awkward having this thatching covering my face. Almost uncomfortable. But eventually I stopped giving a shit and now it’s not too bad. Not sure the ladies dig it. Maybe some Canadian women who have a thing for lumberjacks. Don’t know if I’ll find that crowd here in the south, let alone Vanderbilt. No matter.

Haven’t spent too much time pursuing the ladies. Usually that’s a question that comes up when talking with people, like it’s expected that you should have a girlfriend. ‘Any ladies?’ they say. There’s a repertoire of preloaded social inquiry. It’s necessary for communication. I do it. The question of girls is interesting. It’s on cue in the back of every guys mind. It’s a universal need that needs to be addressed and asking about it only harks back to its importance. Anyway.

I went to the library this evening and checked our four books by William Faulkner as well as a collection of poems my T.S. Eliot. I wonder what TS stands for? (Thomas Stearns)

Am I happy? Not sure. I like that I’ve been writing and thinking about writing as much as I have. It hasn’t exactly been great for keeping me focused on school. In fact, it’s prompted an insidious reaction within me to reject school altogether and revert back to my anitauthoritarian mentality. I am a free spirit, I cannot be kept like a bird in a cage. The soaring wings of imagination and passion must take flight without the constraining walls of formality. School has far too much of this formality. Can I master the system? Absolutely. But at what cost? At what cost am I willing to dampen my creative intellect? Do I have the imagination and tenacity to do both? To command myself to be a slave and master simultaneously? I think so. I should try. There’s something so stifling about expectations. They sap the damn energy out of you. They hack at the knees before the first step is taken. It’s like pushing against the sky: out of reach and unrealistic. Or maybe that’s just my self-imposed expectations.  Anyway. I’m rambling.

Honesty. Suffering. No one wants to hear about anything but the suffering. People love commiseration. It reminds us of our frailty, of our humanity. I just want to capture what the hell it means to be human. If I can do that, and relay and relate it, I will feel accomplished.

It’s getting cold. And gray. The leaves have withered away, fallen like feathery fruit from the trees. The skies resemble gray empty carpets void of life and depth like an empty room.  The winged rats of the air take flight in spotted contrast, arranging and rearranging their fleeting patterns. Birds. No more blue skies. No more slanted sunshine and slinking steam scudding across the open air.

Thanksgiving dinner at the house tonight. I’ll be staying here over break. Looking forward to it. I have an economic statistics test tomorrow. Hmph. Not too thrilled about that but we’ll see what happens. I need something to smack the shit outta me. Wake me up. I need something meaningful. I hate going through the motions. You have one life. ONE life. That is it. Why oh why do I feel like I waste far too much of my life! I need to do more, be more, think more, create more. ONE LIFE. To try it all, do it all, love it all, taste it all, smell it all, feel it all. One. Then, you die. No more. You cease existing and eternity disappears along with your life. Nothing. Now is the time. Am I living up to my fullest potential? Am I developing what that even means? We can’t hit a target if we can’t see it. If I am to develop my potential I desperately need to have an idea of what I’m developing and what I desire the finished product to look like.

I was thinking the other day about how many people have lived and died throughout history and no one gives their life a moments consideration. They may have had some sort of impact on history. Maybe.  At best they left a smidge of a ripple that barely made it to the ponds perimeter, let alone churn and stir the waters. I want to create waves!

The people we read about wrote down their thoughts. I can’t imagine a life where I can’t see what I think. I don’t know how I would think about my past, my identity. It would be so trivial and left up for interpretation, my word and others. If I never wrote, never recorded my thoughts, materialized my mind into words, I may as well have never existed. In a century nothing will be left of me but some ashes. If that. Think about all the people who have lived and were never remembered. I’m sure they were great people with great ideas too, but we’ll never know. The only people we know about are the ones who had the courage to declare their being and write it down.

Anyway. It’s late. I should really get to bed. I want life!

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/ submission to authority.

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 represents.

We are creatures of habits. The habituation of ideologies shape the way we view the world. We embody habituated ways of using symbols through the environmental influences we were born or conditioned into. These habits elucidate the societal structures we find ourselves. 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. These habits that accrete 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.

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

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

The notion of ‘control’ characterizes 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.

This emphasizes the subject-object relationship within ideologies. Louis Althusser describes interpellation as a psychological mechanism that causes a subject to react within a certain way despite their self recognized personal identity. The Ideological State Apparatus (ISA) is the willingness of subjects to conform to engagement. Althusser States in Ideology and the State:

“The ideology of the ruling class does not become the ruling ideology, by the grace of God, nor even by virtue of the seizure of State power alone. It is by the installation of the ISAs in which ideology is realized and realizes itself that it becomes the ruling ideology.”

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 your control over 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.

Never Conform

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is, that it scatters your force. It loses your time and blurs the impression of your character.

R. W. Emerson, Self Reliance from Essays: First Series (1841)

There was a point in my life when I aspired to change my destiny by changing my thoughts. I mediated on certain passages from books that contained uplifting inspiration. That was four years ago and I still have this quote memorized.

This essay is still a favorite that I read regularly.

Also, a soothing song: Foreground by Grizzly Bear.

Signs and Semantics

sign (n.) early 13c., “gesture or motion of the hand,” from O.Fr. signe “sign, mark, signature,” from L. signum “mark, token, indication, symbol,” from PIE base *sekw- “point out” (see ‘see’). Meaning “a mark or device having some special importance” is recorded from late 13c. Sense of “characteristic device attached to the front of an inn, shop, etc., to distinguish it from others” is first recorded mid-15c. Ousted native ‘token’.

There are a lot of fragmented thoughts swirling about my mind at the moment. I need to get them out in no particular order. Stream of consciousness:

I’ve been thinking a lot about people lately. People and social interaction. I’m surprised how many people aren’t aware of how their behavior affects the perceptions of other people. The world judges us. We judge the world. We have to. It’s a survival mechanism. First impressions go a long way, even if we train ourselves to be open, these impressions are a pretty reliable source to make evaluations.

Example: I see a guy whose clean-shaven, wearing a suit, nicely shined shoes. I can probably deduce he has a job that commands a level of respect. If I know he’s wearing a designer suit, wearing a Rolex and driving a luxury car, I don’t have to wonder if he’s a limo driver. He’s probably someone with money or important. In contrast, if you see a guy with a beard wearing a no name graphic T-shirt and tattered or dirty clothes, you’ll probably think he was a bum. Without any conversation you will form an opinion about that guy. If you are smart, you’ll wait till you have a conversation with him, but our first impressions are pretty reliable.

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to communication recently. More specifically, the role of unspoken communication and appearance.

Communication is defined by the conveyance of signs, or symbols. What are signs? They are markers that convey meaning. Like a road sign. Like any sign. These signs themselves contain meaning. Gestures, symbols, noises: they all possess a normative levels of meaning. This meaning is conveyed to those who are familiar with the signs. The vast majority of signs are culturally rooted in language or social conventions. If you speak Chinese to me, I won’t be able to immediately interpret the meaning of the sign. It’ll be noise. If you speak English to me, I’ll immediately begin to interpret the meaning. Some signs traverse cultural divides, like facial gestures and body posture. The study and interpretation of these signs within a culture is called semiotic analysis.

semiotic: 1620s, of symptoms, from Gk. semeiotikos “significant,” also “observant of signs,” adj. form of semeiosis “indication,” from semeioun “to signal, to interpret a sign,” fromsema “sign.” Use in psychology dates to 1923.

When you become aware of how to leverage the meaning of these signs, through appearance and language, you learn how to leverage what meaning you convey to the world. A lot of people I talk to don’t give much thought to the signs they convey to the world. They are conditioned to think that because they don’t give it much thought, that it somehow doesn’t matter. I suppose this stems from a pervasive notion that being an individual and different is a good thing and valuable, and that everyone recognizes the value of their individualism. I don’t think this is the case.

Signs point to something. They yield significance. They categorize and elucidate meaning. Certain signs- like nice cars, classy wine, fine cheese, the New Yorker, a big house on a rolling lawn, a nice neighborhood, etc- indicate higher social status. Other signs- like cheap beer, cigarettes,  trailers homes, obesity, etc- indicate lower social status. There are countless other categories and subcategories in between. What makes someone a punk? Or Scene? Or Grunge? Or a Hipster? Or Goth? Preppy? A Jock? They all are classified by the signs they convey. The the language they use and the things they surround themselves with. How well we adopt the conventions and customs of a group dictates if or how quickly we are received by them. It seems intuitive, but it’s amazing how little thought people give to the messages they send to the world.

Language is a key component for breaking into a group. If you can adopt the conventions, cultural gestures, and standard definitions of their language, you will meet much less resistance, e.g. learn the linguistic nuances of their humor, how they use words to describe things, intonation, body language, and the like. Couple this with adopting their appearance and you’ll fit right in.

Context lays a big role in how these signs are interpreted. A road sign on the street conveys a much different meaning than a road sign hanging from the wall of someone’s room. On the street it adopts to the normative conventions of navigation that allow for safe driving. In a room it can be interpreted as a gesture of rebellion to the state or other social constructs.

I’ve spoken with quite a few friends about appearance. They insist that because they don’t think about what they wear, or don’t have any intention of representing a  message in their clothing, that they are absolved from the meaning that their style conveys. They think that just because they don’t explicitly endorse a style that they aren’t conveying meaning. This seems a bit shortsighted. The interpretation of signs is left to the interlocutor. Just because you intend to communicate the meaning of something does not mean that you have successfully communicated that intention to others who perceive you. Their semantic evaluations may differ quite a bit considering their experience with the signs you convey as a result of their social, economic, and cultural status, and even age.

Everything we do conveys meaning. Our senses are constantly working to process the sense data we receive and interpret possible meanings. This sense data works to interpret environmental markers that take on various visual, haptic, gustatory, olfactory, and auditory forms that give rise to signs. All the other senses require a certain proximity to be interpreted. Sight allows the interpretation of signs from a distance.

I’m inclined to believe that appearance plays a huge role social interaction and assimilation. Doesn’t matter if you are aware of it or not. We navigate our world by sight. Our vision is usually the first indicator of meaning. Our interpretation of that meaning dictates our response to that meaning.

Appearance commands our attention to cues. It primes our cognitions before we engage with a situation or a person. It prepares us for speech. If your goal is to seek respect and acceptance within a community it is necessary that you adopt the conventions and customs that certain signs represent.

As long as we interact with people, we are judged. Like it or not. The resistance to conform is just as much a statement, and a much more obvious statement, than the adoption of conventional norms.

Just because you don’t wear brand name clothing doesn’t mean you don’t convey meaning. To some it conveys low income. To others it may convey the statement that you are counter cultural, or just above it.

Society is stratified by class no matter how you cut it. Appearance often conveys a person’s class or position in society. It elucidates a person’s tastes and perferences, and those have significant meaning.

Gestures convey an internal state about a person. It is easy to notice a person who is shy simply by the way they stand, hesitate to engage in conversation, or their reluctance to make eye contact. The same goes for people who are sad or depressed. They retain a certain lethargy that pervades their actions: their figure is slouched, their eyes are ‘downcast’, they move slowly, their expression is drawn down. A happy person is energetic, they are ‘looking up’ both figuratively and literally. They are ready to engage the world. They have a smile that is ready to curl upwards at any moment. They world looks brighter and they see things with wonder and enthusiasm. Research here .

Posture is important. Power and authority is conveyed through standing erect, chest out, feet spread. Space is dominated, through gestures, eye contact, and even the volume and bold tone of their voice. They speak with decisiveness and deliberateness. Power and authority are conveyed through this confidence. Power and authority invade space, as if to say ‘I have a right to be here’. It does not hesitate. It infringes on and engages with as much space as possible.

Eye contact is an interesting extension of this power and authority. When men stare at each other they convey their power by occupying the space within their vision. This seems to challenge their power and authority in an intimidating way. Many people become reactive and confrontational as a result of this challenge. Perhaps this is why public speaking causes people to become so anxious. It challenges their power and authority, it causes them to question themselves and doubt. It’s like public eyes sap the power and authority of their words.

Posture conveys power and authority. If you want to appear sure of yourself, of the power and authority of your being, your posture must convey steadfastness, sturdiness, dominance. It must communicate a willingness to engage without hesitation. Walking with a purpose in your step, shaking hands with firmness, eye contact that looks at the core of a person, an erectness that elevates your stature, a stance that is squared and balanced.

Hygiene plays a role as well. We take care of the things we care about by ensuring their maintenance and cleanliness and repair. We must give ourselves the same respect.

Respect is attributive to value. We attribute respect to things we deem valuable and, more often than not, we attribute respect to things other’s deem valuable. People give us the same respect we give to ourselves. When we fail to respect ourselves, others will fail to respect us. We must respect ourselves if we wish to communicate our value to others.

It is difficult to respect things that have no or little value. If you  want others to respect you, you must respect yourself. This requires that you see yourself as valuable. You must love and appreciate that value, not in a narcissistic way, but a way that communicates a genuine respect and purpose. If you want someone to love you, you must love yourself. Cliche, yes, but nonetheless true.  You must be someone who is worth loving.

Just as our behavior conveys our internal states, it also shapes internal states. By assuming certain behaviors or postures, your psychology changes according to your physiological posture. If you smile, you can’t help but feel happy. Your brain literally generates endorphins as if it was happy. If you make yourself laugh, you can’t help but feel good. Your brain releases the happy neurotransmitters just as if you were laughing. If you stand up tall and straight, you will feel confident.  Same goes for less desirable states like depression. If you slouch, look at the ground, talk slow and in a low voice, you will literally become sadder, and your energy levels will seem to disappointed. Your body reactions to your physiological behaviors and positions. Research has continually confirmed this, as seen here and here.

The subconscious is a powerful mechanism. Our actions and reactions are primed and pre-load according to the our recent cogitations. There is a quote that illustrates this:

“When we change the way we look at the world, the world we look at changes.”

When we are thinking positive or optimistic thoughts, we are much more apt to interpret the world through the lens of those words. If we read a group of words like “ugly, foul, haggard, wicked, etc”, then look at photos of neutral scenes or people and report our emotional response, our reactions correlate with these words. We might take longer to assess a picture of something beautiful, or rate it less favorably than we would otherwise. The same works for positive thoughts. Surround yourself with only the most positive thoughts, people, or environmental cues and you will prime your brain to see things through that lens. Research supports this. Other research confirms this with how we interpret smells.

Not only do our ruminations and reflections prime these responses, but our environment shapes it quite a bit. The people and friends we surround ourselves’ with exposes our mind to their thoughts. These invasive thoughts shape our perception by priming our mind with their thoughts.

This is also the case with other environmental influences, like weather and landscape. Bright colors and warmth are associated with good feelings. Dark colors and cold are associated with negative feelings.  This is also confirmed with research.

So. The point of all my rambling was this: What message are you communicating? How are you being interpreted? You could make things much easier on yourself by adhering to certain customs and conventions. If you wanna make the rules, you have to first play and master the rules. If you don’t like certain customs, be a leader and change them. In order to do that, you first need to develop an affinity with people by submersing yourself in the signs of their conventions and customs. Do not overlook the details.

Also, I don’t mean be a conformist. I suppose this all needs more explaining.

Anyway. I’m done rambling.

Signs and Semantics: Social and Psychological

sign (n.) early 13c., “gesture or motion of the hand,” from O.Fr. signe “sign, mark, signature,” from L. signum “mark, token, indication, symbol,” from PIE base *sekw- “point out” (see ‘see’). Meaning “a mark or device having some special importance” is recorded from late 13c. Sense of “characteristic device attached to the front of an inn, shop, etc., to distinguish it from others” is first recorded mid-15c. Ousted native ‘token’.

There are a lot of fragmented thoughts swirling about my mind at the moment. I need to get them out in no particular order. Stream of consciousness:

I’ve been thinking a lot about people lately. People and social interaction. I’m surprised how many people aren’t aware of how their behavior affects the perceptions of other people. The world judges us. We judge the world. We have to. It’s a survival mechanism. First impressions go a long way, even if we train ourselves to be open, these impressions are a pretty reliable source to make evaluations.

Example: I see a guy whose clean-shaven, wearing a suit, nicely shined shoes. I can probably deduce he has a job that commands a level of respect. If I know he’s wearing a designer suit, wearing a Rolex and driving a luxury car, I don’t have to wonder if he’s a limo driver. He’s probably someone with money or important. In contrast, if you see a guy with a beard wearing a no name graphic T-shirt and tattered or dirty clothes, you’ll probably think he was a bum. Without any conversation you will form an opinion about that guy. If you are smart, you’ll wait till you have a conversation with him, but our first impressions are pretty reliable.

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to communication recently. More specifically, the role of unspoken communication and appearance.

Communication is defined by the conveyance of signs, or symbols. What are signs? They are markers that convey meaning. Like a road sign. Like any sign. These signs themselves contain meaning. Gestures, symbols, noises: they all possess a normative levels of meaning. This meaning is conveyed to those who are familiar with the signs. The vast majority of signs are culturally rooted in language or social conventions. If you speak Chinese to me, I won’t be able to immediately interpret the meaning of the sign. It’ll be noise. If you speak English to me, I’ll immediately begin to interpret the meaning. Some signs traverse cultural divides, like facial gestures and body posture. The study and interpretation of these signs within a culture is called semiotic analysis.

semiotic: 1620s, of symptoms, from Gk. semeiotikos “significant,” also “observant of signs,” adj. form of semeiosis “indication,” from semeioun “to signal, to interpret a sign,” fromsema “sign.” Use in psychology dates to 1923.

When you become aware of how to leverage the meaning of these signs, through appearance and language, you learn how to leverage what meaning you convey to the world. A lot of people I talk to don’t give much thought to the signs they convey to the world. They are conditioned to think that because they don’t give it much thought, that it somehow doesn’t matter. I suppose this stems from a pervasive notion that being an individual and different is a good thing and valuable, and that everyone recognizes the value of their individualism. I don’t think this is the case.

Signs point to something. They yield significance. They categorize and elucidate meaning. Certain signs- like nice cars, classy wine, fine cheese, the New Yorker, a big house on a rolling lawn, a nice neighborhood, etc- indicate higher social status. Other signs- like cheap beer, cigarettes,  trailers homes, obesity, etc- indicate lower social status. There are countless other categories and subcategories in between. What makes someone a punk? Or Scene? Or Grunge? Or a Hipster? Or Goth? Preppy? A Jock? They all are classified by the signs they convey, the language they use, and the things they surround themselves with. How well we adopt the conventions and customs of a group dictates if or how quickly we are received by them. It seems intuitive, but it’s amazing how little thought people give to the messages they send to the world.

Language is a key component for breaking into a group. If you can adopt the conventions, cultural gestures, and standard definitions of their language, you will meet much less resistance, e.g. learn the linguistic nuances of their humor, how they use words to describe things, intonation, body language, and the like. Couple this with adopting their appearance and you’ll fit right in.

Context lays a big role in how these signs are interpreted. A road sign on the street conveys a much different meaning than a road sign hanging from the wall of someone’s room. On the street it adopts to the normative conventions of navigation that allow for safe driving. In a room it can be interpreted as a gesture of rebellion to the state or other social constructs.

I’ve spoken with quite a few friends about appearance. They insist that because they don’t think about what they wear, or don’t have any intention of representing a  message in their clothing, that they are absolved from the meaning that their style conveys. They think that just because they don’t explicitly endorse a style that they aren’t conveying meaning. This seems a bit shortsighted. The interpretation of signs is left to the interlocutor. Just because you intend to communicate the meaning of something does not mean that you have successfully communicated that intention to others who perceive you. Their semantic evaluations may differ quite a bit considering their experience with the signs you convey as a result of their social, economic, and cultural status, and even age.

Everything we do conveys meaning. Our senses are constantly working to process the sense data we receive and interpret possible meanings. This sense data works to interpret environmental markers that take on various visual, haptic, gustatory, olfactory, and auditory forms that give rise to signs. All the other senses require a certain proximity to be interpreted. Sight allows the interpretation of signs from a distance.

I’m inclined to believe that appearance plays a huge role social interaction and assimilation. Doesn’t matter if you are aware of it or not. We navigate our world by sight. Our vision is usually the first indicator of meaning. Our interpretation of that meaning dictates our response to that meaning.

Appearance commands our attention to cues. It primes our cognitions before we engage with a situation or a person. It prepares us for speech. If your goal is to seek respect and acceptance within a community it is necessary that you adopt the conventions and customs that certain signs represent.

As long as we interact with people, we are judged. Like it or not. The resistance to conform is just as much a statement, and a much more obvious statement, than the adoption of conventional norms.

Just because you don’t wear brand name clothing doesn’t mean you don’t convey meaning. To some it conveys low income. To others it may convey the statement that you are counter cultural, or just above it.

Society is stratified by class no matter how you cut it. Appearance often conveys a person’s class or position in society. It elucidates a person’s tastes and perferences, and those have significant meaning.

Gestures convey an internal state about a person. It is easy to notice a person who is shy simply by the way they stand, hesitate to engage in conversation, or their reluctance to make eye contact. The same goes for people who are sad or depressed. They retain a certain lethargy that pervades their actions: their figure is slouched, their eyes are ‘downcast’, they move slowly, their expression is drawn down. A happy person is energetic, they are ‘looking up’ both figuratively and literally. They are ready to engage the world. They have a smile that is ready to curl upwards at any moment. They world looks brighter and they see things with wonder and enthusiasm. Research here .

Posture is important. Power and authority is conveyed through standing erect, chest out, feet spread. Space is dominated, through gestures, eye contact, and even the volume and bold tone of their voice. They speak with decisiveness and deliberateness. Power and authority are conveyed through this confidence. Power and authority invade space, as if to say ‘I have a right to be here’. It does not hesitate. It infringes on and engages with as much space as possible.

Eye contact is an interesting extension of this power and authority. When men stare at each other they convey their power by occupying the space within their vision. This seems to challenge their power and authority in an intimidating way. Many people become reactive and confrontational as a result of this challenge. Perhaps this is why public speaking causes people to become so anxious. It challenges their power and authority, it causes them to question themselves and doubt. It’s like public eyes sap the power and authority of their words.

Posture conveys power and authority. If you want to appear sure of yourself, of the power and authority of your being, your posture must convey steadfastness, sturdiness, dominance. It must communicate a willingness to engage without hesitation. Walking with a purpose in your step, shaking hands with firmness, eye contact that looks at the core of someones being, an erectness that elevates your stature, a stance that is squared and balanced.

Hygiene plays a role as well. We take care of the things we care about by ensuring their maintenance and cleanliness and repair. We must give ourselves the same respect.

Respect is attributive to value. We attribute respect to things we deem valuable and, more often than not, we attribute respect to things other’s deem valuable. People give us the same respect we give to ourselves. When we fail to respect ourselves, others will fail to respect us. We must respect ourselves if we wish to communicate our value to others.

It is difficult to respect things that have no or little value. If you  want others to respect you, you must respect yourself. This requires that you see yourself as valuable. You must love and appreciate that value, not in a narcissistic way, but a way that communicates a genuine respect and purpose. If you want someone to love you, you must love yourself. Cliche, yes, but nonetheless true.  You must be someone who is worth loving.

Just as our behavior conveys our internal states, it also shapes internal states. By assuming certain behaviors or postures, your psychology changes according to your physiological posture. If you smile, you can’t help but feel happy. Your brain literally generates endorphins as if it was happy. If you make yourself laugh, you can’t help but feel good. Your brain releases the happy neurotransmitters just as if you were laughing. If you stand up tall and straight, you will feel confident.  Same goes for less desirable states like depression. If you slouch, look at the ground, talk slow and in a low voice, you will literally become sadder, and your energy levels will seem to disappointed. Your body reacts to your physiological behaviors and positions. Research has continually confirmed this, as seen here and here.

The subconscious is a powerful mechanism. Our actions and reactions are primed and pre-loaded according to the our recent impressions and cogitations. There is a quote that illustrates this:

“When we change the way we look at the world, the world we look at changes.”

When we are thinking positive or optimistic thoughts, we are much more apt to interpret the world through the lens of those words. If we read a group of words like “ugly, foul, haggard, wicked, etc”, then look at photos of neutral scenes or people and report our emotional response, our reactions correlate with these words. We might take longer to assess a picture of something beautiful, or rate it less favorably than we would otherwise. The same works for positive thoughts. Surround yourself with only the most positive thoughts, people, or environmental cues and you will prime your brain to see things through that lens. Research supports this. Other research confirms this with how we interpret smells.

Not only do our ruminations and reflections prime these responses, but our environment shapes it quite a bit. The people and friends we surround ourselves’ with exposes our mind to their thoughts. These invasive thoughts shape our perception by priming our mind with their thoughts.

This is also the case with other environmental influences, like weather and landscape. Bright colors and warmth are associated with good feelings. Dark colors and cold are associated with negative feelings.  This is also confirmed with research.

So. The point of all my rambling was this: What message are you communicating? How are you being interpreted? You could make things much easier on yourself by adhering to certain customs and conventions. If you wanna make the rules, you have to first play and master the rules. If you don’t like certain customs, be a leader and change them. In order to do that, you first need to develop an affinity with people by submersing yourself in the signs of their conventions and customs. Do not overlook the details.

Also, I don’t mean be a conformist. I suppose this all needs more explaining.

Anyway. I’m done rambling.