Living Via Cognition

The Abraham Story

2011-08-21T09:00:00.003-04:00

[Oh look, a new blog! The following are some thoughts, old and new, I've had on the Abraham story. I imagine that this will be either the outlines or one small part of an eventual paper. As it is, it doesn't have the conceptual flow that I want, but, for the blog medium, it will do.]

Kierkegaard brings us to the foundation of faith. If one has any concern for the implications of our leaps of faith, of our affirming particular proposition (religious or otherwise) in the face of ethical/rational norms, one need not go further than what Kierkegaard has so vividly displayed for us. Others have similarly furrowed their brow and pleaded with their God for understanding when it comes to the commandment thrust upon Abraham - the commandment to sacrifice "thy" son. But what Kierkegaard manifests for us puts a different sort of weight on such a story. For it is not just that we must sacrifice our offspring if God decides; moreover, Kierkegaard tells us that it would be the right thing to do.

Using Kierkegaard’s terminology, this means that the theological trumps the ethical – that God can choose at any point to overthrow any ethical norm and make what is right change. So, the Abraham story, in simple – and, in all reality, extremely brief - fashion, establishes the necessary divide between what is ethical and what is commanded by God (Sidenote: Here is where faith enters the picture; for faith is not where one ends up, it is where one begins).

Now let’s look at a more contemporary (and less erudite) source for a nuanced take on the Abraham story: the Hollywood movie “Year One”. Jack Black and Michael Cera are the co-protagonists in the film and at one point in their journey come across Abraham raising the knife over his son Isaac (they meet a variety of characters, such that it is obvious chronological consistency is not exactly a goal of the film). Here is the non-verbatum exchange [I’m making a educated guess that Black intensionally means murder when using the word ‘kill’] :

Black: “hey! What are you doing?!?!”
Abraham: “I’m…. uh, we’re playing a game. Its called cutty cutty, burny burny.”
Black: “This doesn’t look like much of a game. You were going to kill him!”
Abraham: “No I wasn’t! I was going to sacrifice him. There’s a difference.”
Black: “Not to him there isn’t.”

What Year One beautifully exemplifies in its telling of the Abraham story (to spite its weak humor in this scene) is what a change in perspective can illuminate for us. It is hard enough to put ourselves in the shoes of Abraham (and agree to sacrifice our son), and it is another thing to be Isaac, but it is altogether another story to be Jack Black's character, who represents the public. In other words, what do “we” do when someone else is murdering their son? This is why Black says that from his own perspective, the distinction Abraham makes (explicit in the movie, but implicit in the biblical version) between killing and sacrificing doesn’t existing. Either way, Isaac is going to die at the conscious hand of his father and we should starting thinking about how we the public should respond to such an event.

Kierkegaard focuses the energy of his book on this idea. For him, it is a question of whether something commanded by god can go against something as established as “don’t murder” and still be right. A quick defense would be to say what Abraham does in the movie: “I’m not murdering him, I’m sacrificing him.” In other words, make the ethically weighted act, a religious act. And this is precisely what is at stake. Can what is an act of murder for the public, be a right and indeed holy act when I carry it out, so long as god commands it?

The former option, concerning the public, simply says that not just anyone can go out and kill another person – we call that murder and incriminate that person. But the latter option, concerns only the (or an) individual, who presumably was told by god to kill. So at what point do we or can we accept as a justified/legitimate reason the exclamation that “god told me to?” In other words, when do we, as a public, upon seeing some guy kill his son, say that it was the right thing to do? Is it right if he says god told him to? I think this is a perfectly legitimate weight to attribute to the Abraham story. So here is where we should invoke the perspective change.

So often, we nobly thrust ourselves into the Abraham story, as Abraham! This is what Paul asks us to do later on: look to the father of faith. Indeed, we want to be the protagonist - we want the fate of our community on our shoulders - we want our faith to bear out the most austere of consequences! (and psychoanalysts would say: we want to be the father). But what Kierkegaard wants us to do (which Year One illustrates), is to put yourself into the 2nd person perspective, the ‘we’. Don’t be Abraham, don’t be Isaac (who really never thought anything through all this) but be Jack Black. What do “you” do when you are on the outside of this story? What do you do when this story isn’t your godly story?

My two cents on this whole thing are, well, worth about two cents. My only thought is that too often people invoke the Abraham story in their own sacrificial way, in the sense of slaughtering something, not in the sense of something selfless. In fact, it is exactly opposite of selfless; it is entirely selfish! It puts “you” in the center of the story. “You” are the one whose decision will change the fate of the world! But when we are selfless and let someone else be the protagonist, the story is an altogether different one. There is a phrase that I’ll invoke here: violent narrative. A violent narrative is one that overlooks all the “others” of the story and focuses only on the decisions of the protagonist (whether it’s one person or a community). It is violent because, for the sake of the story (and usually the image of the main character(s), the narrative marginalizes and completely overlooks everyone else in the story and how the consequences bear out for them. I worry that this happens too often when the Abraham story is retold.

Royal Weddings

2011-04-30T08:51:00.002-04:00

Since my news channels have been inundated with Britain royal family wedding coverage, and haven't been able to help coming up with various one-liners making fun of it as well as general points about the frenzy, I’ve decided to make a running list of them in a blog.

Some Jokes
- a red tuxedo is pretty tacky for a wedding
- how can you feel good about your purpose in life if you're a news reporter, stationed in london, discussing the rumors of the possibilities of a honeymoon for a couple and how they might have been transported there.
- William is such a man that he changed her first name too.
- Sucks to be Kate’s sister… (but then again, some other rich white guy will probably want the fame of marrying her, so she’ll be ok)
- The only way 2 billion people watched this was if china forced all of its citizens to watch.

And the finale-
- Apparently, they could be going to Australia, Africa, or a private Caribbean island for the honeymoon... Ironically, 150 years ago, all three of those places would have been "private islands" for the British...

Some Thoughts
- We have a show called (and a pervasive phenomenon of) “bridezillas” because so many women watch royal weddings.
- The idea that “every wedding is a royal wedding” is simply false. I actually am sympathetic to the idea that these ideal (or paradigmatic) weddings provide a way to make our own non-ideal weddings meaningful, but this wedding was not meant to idealize every wedding. Obviously, you cut out all non-protestant weddings, then all non-Christian religious weddings, then all non-religious weddings. I would even go further and say that all non-white, non-Britain weddings shouldn’t treat this as the ideal wedding either. They have the pageantry they do due to a couple centuries of colonization. And if you want that wedding as your ideal wedding, then you should take note that all of that history is written in to many of the images, rituals, and ideals constituting that whole day.

Feel free to add more jokes or thoughts.

Technology and Humanness

2011-03-27T16:24:00.001-04:00

Technology intends to provide a more agreeable means to some end we desire. Whether it is the steam-engine, the spoon, an anti-biotic, or the iphone, I take the definition stated above to capture the general idea of what we describe as technological.

In what follows I will begin by discussing the nature of technology and some of the problems concealed within it. Then I will discuss our relation to efficiency and the erasure of our humanity, which I take to be our main concern when it comes to the technological realm. Lastly, I discuss what technology means for “choice.” Throughout this essay, I will use either personal experience or t.v. commercials to help support these perhaps abstract points. I’d love to hear feedback on this; its something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently, and, after reflection, is something I’ve subconsciously been concerned with for a while now.

Technology’s goal (our goal in producing it) does not involves its own existence. When a technology is nascent, its existence is painfully obvious. The first computers were bulky, taking up entire rooms. Then, with the advent of the personal computer, they only took up half the surface-space of a typical office desk. Now, they can be hidden in our pocket. So what is created in light of a desire for some end is then discarded and replaced by something better, something less ugly, less in the way. What this shows is the obvious fact that we want the end-product, not the device itself. We want to improve our communication, not have a cumbersome phone on our person for the sake of the item.

There is an Xbox Konnect commercial that simply states: “You are the controller”. This shows that the game consol is literally destroying itself. It is also interesting that our computers, tv’s, phones, computers and gaming consols are all becoming the same thing. A corollary is that ‘technology,’ whatever it is, is not the pieces of technology, nor the aggregate of all the pieces across time; rather, it is a particular human method of achieving ends.

While technology has solved many issues, it almost never is the case that some invention does not bring other undesired aspects along with it. As a result, we have new issues, which require new means of being dealt with. An easy example for this is cords. Our devices first needed cords to stay charged and be connected. But cords are ugly and cumbersome. So now we have battery-based, wireless everything. Cordless charging now exists for cell phones and cordless power for our wall-mounted, flatscreen t.v.s is only a few years out.

There is a Microsoft commercial advertising a “simplified” touch-screen phone that won’t bog you down when trying to find a contact, phone number, or app. In an information age, we want ALL the information; thus, technology did what we asked of it and we ended up with phones/internet devices with conceivably thousands of apps (the Droid slogan is: When there’s no limit to what Droid gets, there’s no limit to what Droid does). The perceived problem is that we now don’t know what to do with all this information and all those apps! We have a new hurdle, so we invent a new device. But what is significant is that Windows suggests to us that the only way out is to buy their phone, which only uses a few, big (easy-to-press) buttons. We end up feeling like we “need” to buy more and more stuff to take care of these new problems technology always seems to bring with it, even if the new devices had little to do with the initial desired end (technology and consumerism are symbiotic to say the least). What is worth noting is that there is always a residue. A new device does not simply resolve some problem, but also exists in its own right, creating some new sort of relation. And given enough time, this technological residue clings so tightly, we think it is a part of us, a part of our being human.

A quite serious consequence which emanates from this technological residue is that it is not too difficult to prefer the technological realm to the reality. For instance, there is a Vizio t.v. commercial that has a man choosing the t.v. version of Beyonce over the real Beyonce right in front of him. Or take note of the Microsoft commercial where a woman photoshops her family portrait so that it can be “presentable,” which presumes that how her family actually looks is something to be hidden or done away with. While these are meant to be jokes, there are many instances like this that aren’t so ridiculous, nor so laughable. For instance, think about the number of people who would rather talk on-line than in person, or the person who would rather masterbate to pornography than have any sort of intimate relation with a fellow human being. What’s worse, in some cases, the person’s mind is so altered by the cyber-sex that even when they do have human contact, it isn’t enjoyable (or they can’t even do it) because they’d much prefer to do it alone, illuminated by the pornography whose reality is in their control. Technology’s residue, in this instance, turns our sexuality into something we can’t enjoy without it.

Per my definition of technology, efficiency is built in to what technology essentially is. If technology is the creation of a means to an end we can’t readily achieve on our own, then technology is our vehicle of efficiency (or method as stated earlier).

The most striking commercial that openly displays what technology implies for us is a Droid phone commercial. In the commercial, a businessman is at a meeting, seated at a conference table surrounded by a host of fellow-business-types. While a presentation is being given at the head of the table, the man is texting on his Droid phone. As he types, his fingers move at an increasing speed. Slowly, starting with his fingertips, which are rapidly tapping at the phone screen, his arms turn into what appears to be a machine-like system of metal and joints. The voice for the commercial, in a deep, assertive tone, states that, with Droid, you too can become a “model of efficiency”.

Notice what happens: the human becomes replaced. While the Droid doesn’t actually turn your arms into machine pistons, firing away as you text, the implication is very real. Prior to the conceivable reality of having our physical bodies become machines (which isn’t that unrealistic), we have a very near reality where our human-ness is destroyed; instead of a machine displacing our body, it is efficiency which displaces our humanity.

When thinking about the Droid commercial, notice the statement the voiceover pronounces as a selling-point: “a model of efficiency.” It is an assumption of the commercial that we would choose to give up our hands (not necessarily a metaphor here) in order to text more quickly. While we achieve efficiency, we revoke our humanity. Is it bad that we want to text more quickly? Not necessarily. Is it problematic when, slowly, we find ourselves more often than not, detached from our body, removed from our daily situations that help constitute our human-ness? Yes. One point I have not mentioned is that in this board meeting, he is obviously not paying attention, which is of course the purpose for his presence at the meeting in the first place. But what he chooses (and what so many of us already choose) is to digitally transport his person elsewhere. We disengage from our surroundings; we transport ourselves elsewhere. But that elsewhere isn’t quite a ‘here’ (another example of the residue). Thus, we are no longer here nor are we quite there. And through this process, we no longer can find our place (our being) in the world.

Another example of our humanness being erased is found in an Xfinity commercial which, in promotion of their On Demand catalogue of shows and movies, portrays their t.v.-viewers as becoming 2-d screens or cut-outs of the shows they’re watching. The people are erased by their shows; they “become” the endless shows they’re watching.

Keeping in mind the 2nd definition of technology, e.g. that it is a vehicle of efficiency, I continue with the theme of ‘efficiency’ and focus on the resulting problems of choice and decision (or lack thereof). Almost comically, there is now an app for Robitussen that helps you pick the right medicine for whatever ails you… because Robitussen now has so many medicines tailored to individual symptoms that you simply couldn’t know which one to pick on your own (this also relates to the “only technology can save us from technology” idea). This hopefully brings to the surface an issue that pervades our world today.

If part of getting what we want is being able to find the thing that best fits our desire, then part of technology’s task is to provide us with the most options (internet shopping is a more than sufficient example). But at some point, our world becomes saturated with choices, both in the number of possible options constantly being presented to us and in our incessant decision-making acts those options require of us. What this means in our present age then, is that our choices are everywhere. Choice used to be a privilege, or a moment of joy. Imagine the excitement when a person could first choose between his thousandth coconut and fresh fish, which he could acquire due to his invention of a spear. Fast-forward to now, and most restaurants have menus so big they cover an entire table if each person has one.

We have gotten to the point now that at almost every moment, we have a choice to make. DirecTV boasts of over 6,000 shows and movies. Rhapsody has a commercial promoting a 60-day trial use of their vast, online song collection. They point out that, if you use their product, your whole day can have a soundtrack and each moment is filled with “infinite possibilities.” Everything has become available to us. But, as technology progresses, all choices become equal in value. The ‘cons’ kind of disappear and all we see are ‘pros’. Thus, not only are we bombarded with choices, but, piled on top of them, we also have the weight of making the right choice (if I had all the options in front of me, why didn’t I pick the right one!?!?!). This leads to a disabling effect. We see here that technology no longer gets us to our end more efficiently; to the contrary, it turns our end back in on itself and blocks our access to what we really wanted in the beginning.

We end up not with an acquisition of our end, but with efficiency working only for efficiency’s sake. As an example, I once spent 30 minutes in a video store! I spent a third of the length of the movie I eventually watched, just trying to pick the movie itself! Suddenly, my goal of watching a movie becomes an obsession with picking one. What we are left with is a deep uncertainty about our choice. And when our life is filled with choice after choice, we quickly find ourselves uncertain a lot of the time. And uncertain people are anxious, full of self-doubt, and lack contentment.

What began as a desire for some end, becomes an obsession with achieving our ends more quickly. Our logic: Ok, I can get what I want, now how can I get it in the best way? But notice this conflates the end with the means; we no longer focus on the end, but on the process by which we get there. Part of our end becomes the means. Soon enough, our obsession overcomes us, and we lose our goals (not to mention ourselves) in the process. This really hits home for me. I have noticed that I’ll spend so much time planning and weighing options, that I end up wasting more time than if I just went with a plan of action and worked it out as I went along. The “model of efficiency” becomes nothing more than that; it consumes the human, just like the Droid commercial depicts it. Somewhere between having a goal and working it out, we destroy our ability to get there. Consequently, our life becomes filled with either the achievement of ends that quickly become obsolete and thus meaningless, or with a series of goals that we never reach, because we’re too “busy” figuring out how to get to them. Our human-ness is not enhanced, but replaced by this “model of efficiency”.

What I find most shocking is that the aspects of technology I find so problematic turn out to be the explicit selling-points for the various devices.

60 some years ago, Heidegger had his own issues with technology, some of which I’ve most likely restated above. The most jaw-dropping part of his work on the subject, in my opinion, is that he PREDICTED the invention of “stand-by” flying… No joke. Over 60 years ago, he pointed out that, in a world of technology, the technology will eventually lose its tool-ness for us, and the relationship of human and tool is lost. In his words, “[e]verywhere everything is ordered to stand by, to be immediately at hand, indeed to stand there just so that it may be on call for a further ordering.” No longer are the planes existing for us to get from city to city, but now, we will fly “stand-by” and wait for when a plane next flies… all in the name of efficiency. What a brilliant, sobering prognostication.

What should we do? Good question. Heidegger suggests we focus on what Hubert Dreyfus phrases as "the saving power of insignificant things". I think this isn’t far off. Don’t treat your walk in the park as a time to make a phone call you’ve been meaning to make. Don’t use your commute as a good time to eat breakfast. Don’t read that next book just to say you’ve read it.

Life without weekends

2011-02-20T19:32:00.002-05:00

Imagine life without weekends. Not a life where one worked 7 days a week, but where there was no identifiable distinctions between what you did on weekends and what you did during the week.

As it is, our lives are framed into 7 day segments – specifically due to the business/work week. As a result, the “main” part of our weeks are the weekdays, with the minor portion of our weeks being the week-ends. Because we spend the main part of our weeks working, we usually spend the minor part of our weeks recuperating or doing small tasks that we had put off during the energy-exhausting weekdays. Actually, colloquially, the term ‘weekdays’ can be and typically is replaced by the word ‘week’. For instance, I can say “I go to school during the week” and no one (at least in America) will take me to mean that I attend school all 7 days of the week. We turned what was once a 7-day week – it technically is still 7 days in length - into a 5-day (business) week, which contrasts the week-end.

Thus we have a week and a week-end, with the technical meaning of ‘week’ coming to only be used in reference to larger categories of time such as months and years. We still say there are 4 weeks in a month and 52 weeks in a year, but we do not (in most cases) take ourselves to mean that there are only 20 business days in a month.

Obviously, business/job realities are not the only things structuring our frames of time. Church and sporting events have found themselves to become defining aspects of our weekends. Just imagine a Friday night without high school football or basketball, or a Sunday without the NFL, or a Sunday morning without droves of cars heading for their respective sanctuaries. Just as our jobs define our weeks, so too do our expectations of weekend activities. Of course, I would not be unwarranted in positing that most weekend activities have found the sacred week-end days they have due to the Monday through Friday business-week.

What can be problematic about such a framed understanding of one’s time on earth is the fact that it allows these partitions in time to be boundaries, things to be endured or overcome. How often have you heard someone (including yourself) desperately assert that “if I just get through this week, I’ll be in the clear”? What results though, is that many of our weeks become the object of such outlooks. In fact, for those who do not particularly enjoy their job or classes, almost every set of 5 week-days become this. And not only is the main part of the 7-day week something to be endured, but that also means that your weekend becomes two days to do nothing. If you spend 5 of 7 days “surviving”, you aren’t going to want to spend the other 2 days of your life doing a whole lot. Thus, the 2 days between your 5-day weeks become determined themselves, become a time to decompress, and to prepare for the upcoming week. Thus we find ourselves spending 5 days of our lives doing something we (often) would rather not be doing, and the 2 “free” days of our lives determined, or limited, by those 5 days. So after a year of "getting through" this week and "getting through" that week, you realize you have indeed "survived" those weeks, but at the same time, you also wonder what happened to your year.

So what would life look like without this 5-day/2-day structure? What would our experience of life be if we did not segment them into 7-day spans? Sure the sun and moon would still rise and fall on the horizons, but those sunrises wouldn’t have the significance, positive or negative, that they have for us now. Without weekends, the days can no longer be distinguished as either a week-day or a weekend-day. Everyday becomes the same day. It would be much more difficult to have this structured view of time where days or weeks become things-to-be-gotten-through. So while the days lose their distinction and significance, suddenly, our human activity takes on its own significance. It now becomes our choice as to what structures our life.

What’s more, if there is no weekend, then there are no 7-day weeks, and that means the calendar year now becomes a foreign organizational system to us too. Days are still days, defined by the rotation of the earth and years are still years defined by the orbiting around the sun, but the significance of how we spend those indistinguishable moments is up to us.

I’m not sure whether such a life is possible these days, and I’m not even sure whether such a way of living is any better than the one we currently have. But I wouldn’t mind trying it some time.

Rhetoric in Real Life: Sarah Palin and the Bush Tax Cuts

2010-12-01T01:05:00.005-05:00

I believe I've hit on this before, but if a particular piece of legislation is scheduled to end, then it is not permanent. Further, if that particular piece of legislation was a non-permanent reduction of a certain number, then, when that legislation ends, the reduction will cease to be in effect and thus, the "original" number will be reinstated, not established. So, not creating new legislation that would maintain the current reduction would not seem to be an increase or "hike". According to her tweet on the eve of the congressional debate, Sarah Palin thinks differently. What is of notice is that she initially, using a non-loaded adjective, refers to the issue as the "tax changes". I gather from this that she views it as only her opinion, of which she entreaties her readers to agree with, that they are "hikes".

Sidenote: who is she tweeting to? I don't think the public has a say in the debate that is taking place this morning, as it is up to our elected officials to decide. So do our representatives read the tweets of ex-governors who quit in the middle of their term to professionally campaign, give speeches across the nation (including one at a private Christian primary school in Pennsylvania?), "write" two books, go on national book tours for both of those books, be a remunerated guest on Fox News, and have his or her family star in an 8-episode reality cable-tv show?

McCain

2010-11-23T10:49:00.001-05:00

On Meet the Press two Sundays ago, they played a clip from 2004 where Senator John McCain is saying the exact same thing, in regard to the Bush Tax Cuts, as Obama is saying now (viz. to not extend the tax cuts for the top 5% or so). McCain defends his own discord by saying that those were different economic times than now and that we shouldn't raise the taxes on anyone when in a recession.

What he meant to say is that him saying what he said in 2004 helped him out politically, and that what he says now, which is in opposition to his 2004 view, helps him out politically (because it is against Obama). Take a look at Stewart's onslaught of McCain flip-flops here. I can't seem to find it, but Stewart also has a shocking clip where McCain mentions that "the system is broken" and "Washington needs changed" about 15 times over the course of 1992-2010. It's sickening really; A politician can spout the same empty phrase over and over and continue to get reelected. McCain is more concerned with reelection than having his stay in Washington, however lengthy it is, be valuable to the American people. If the system does need fixed, perhaps we should have a new senator from AZ. in office...

Race in Rhetoric: Body-scans and Race

2010-11-18T08:30:00.003-05:00

In regards to an alternative to the much talked about body-scans that he so opposes, Steve Doocy says “I like the idea of profiling”.

Shortly thereafter, he says: “I’ve read some websites” that have said that when 3 year olds and nuns get patted down, the terrorists have won because our 4th amendment rights have been taken away (sidenote: this is exactly what I’m talking about when I say that today, facts only require the mere allusion to “some” speculation). But who is the “we” (whose rights are being taken away) in this statement? If he wants profiling, then he wants particular ethnic groups searched (read: “profiled”), and of course, their 4th amendment rights don’t matter in this. The rights that matter are the rights of white people.

On the same subject, Ann Coulter is in favor of checking “foreign” people, because all terrorists have been foreign. She is just as outraged as Doocy that her whiteness is not being enough to prove that she’s a safe person. (She is also the women who, within the past year, said that Christians are "perfected-Jews")

In the world of the Bush-signed Patriot Act, why wouldn’t they welcome such an invasion of privacy? Oh right, because its “our” freedom, not “their” freedom. As if that points out any thing but English-speaking, white-skinned people. Now if we can just get rid of a few unwelcomed, pesky ethnic groups that fit that criteria, this free land of ours will finally be pure… [← sarcasm!]

I understand that body-scans aren’t the best option, but if we’re so paranoid about our planes being blown up, measures must be taken. And if that means my body is seen for a few seconds, I’ll take that. I’ll take that over limiting the freedom of AMERICANS, who happen to have skin of a different color.

Rhetoric in Real Life: Bush Tax Cuts

2010-11-08T10:07:00.001-05:00

The Bush tax cuts took effect in 2003 and gave tax cuts to most of the tax brackets. The legislation terminates here shortly and, given our economic thin ice, it is a hot-button issue. Because this is only a temporary law, if nothing is done, the tax percentages will go back up to their 2002 levels. Those in favor of reinstating/upholding/maintaining the Bush tax cuts argue that, in more or less words, we should not raise taxes for small business owners or rather, employers. First, it is not “raising” taxes when there is an established law maintaining it at that level and the current numbers are only where they are for a determined number of years. And secondly, there is no daggum way that “small business owners” are those populating the top 5%.

But when people argue in favor of the tax cuts, and use this language, it sounds as if Obama’s administration is tying the hands of small mom and pop stores all over America. And of course that sounds horrendous!

A more convincing argument that side invokes is that we shouldn’t increase the taxes on those who provide jobs, because they won’t have the money to hire people. This is true, but again, misleading. The owners of companies are not the companies. Companies hire people, private individuals do not. Thus, this argument only supports the capital gains tax portion of this law, not the top-earning brackets of individuals.

On another aspect, the owner’s salary has a minimal effect on the profit of the company; typically, the big CEOs do not have ridiculous salaries. It is the bonuses, which are given from the company to the owner (a private person) that are the biggest deal. So really, saying that we shouldn’t tax the employers is a backward way of saying that the richest should get a tax break so they get bigger bonuses too. Of course, I understand that I’m conflating the top-earners with the CEOs (employers), but if this isn’t the case, then the opposing argument is even more faulty.

Rhetoric on Jon Stewart's Rally to Restore Sanity

2010-11-02T09:57:00.003-04:00

This post will be a continuation of the general theme found in my previous post and my newspaper article in The Munice Star Press: rhetoric in real life. The particular topic of this post is on one show’s coverage of The Rally to Restore Sanity.

I haven’t kept track of all the links, but everyone (from talkingpointsmemo.com, salon.com, the New York Times, Fox News, Chris Matthews and I’m sure many others) has conveyed at least some, if not outright, disapproval of Jon Stewart’s rally. As you can tell, there is not just a left/right divide here. If you’re interested in the full length points being brought up, searching Stewart’s name on the particular website will bring up the relevant stories. Below, I will summarize what the gists of the criticisms.

Some of the arguments include: 1) the media is doing the right thing in focusing on these big, divisive issues (Matthews); 2) the media doesn’t have the impact Stewart says it does (NYTimes); 3) there was no true point to the rally (salon.com).

My understanding of the rally’s impetus and argument goes as follows: 1) CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News all use fear to get people to watch their shows 2) if things were truly as bad as they say they are, we’d all be dead (from bed bugs, STD’s, alcohol, and all the health warnings to Marxists, Muslims, terrorists, progressives, fascists and all the horrible people, who ‘we’ of course aren’t) 3) we should realize that we do get along and working with people does not mean the end of everything we ever believed in. In sum: “These are bad times; they are not endtimes.”

But all of that is prefatory to my main point which focuses on a brief segment on the Sunday edition of Fox and Friends on Fox News. I will provide a link here, as I want you to watch the rhetoric in action for yourselves. Its up to you if you watch it first, and then read what follows, or conversely, wait to watch it until after you read what I have to say.

This show, Fox and Friends, is not news. It is speculation at best, misleading on a neutral view, and deliberately misleading at worst; the clip typifies their approach to “news”. They say a lot of things and rather quickly, so I have brought up four main points each of which has at least one direct quote that you can find in the video.

1) The woman pointed out that they were comedians parading as “newspeople.” This is an immediate attempt to discredit any relevance the rally may have had. Her logic: if they’re comedians, they have nothing valuable to say. Of course this is almost entirely false; many, many comedians speak about important issues and usually convey, through their medium of comedy, opinions worth contemplating; George Carlin is paradigmatic in this regard. She must not have gotten anything from the great Greek comedic playwrights either. But more to the point, her rhetoric is inappropriate because comedy, to work, must make reference to a shared meaning. A person who does not get the meaning of a joke doesn’t laugh. In other words, the listener must understand the meaning being conveyed in order to discover the comedy found within it. Ever notice how you don’t laugh at a roast when you don’t know who the person is? This is because you don’t have all the background information on the roastee and so the meanings of the jokes are lost on you. Of course Stewart’s and Colbert’s version of comedy is satire, which is, albeit a circuitous one, one of many ways to make valid points. Yet this woman acts as if satire is no more relevant than a forth-grader’s opinion on state politics.

2) Gretchen Carlson then acts as if she doesn’t remember Colbert’s name or the name of the rally. Again this is a backhanded way to discredit any validity the rally may have. There is no way a news anchor (who is true to the title) would forget a name in a story. And even giving the benefit of that doubt, there is no way a news anchor would forget the name of a person they’ve played clips of countless times on their show and who’s show has a nightly national crowd of 1.5 million viewers. This point is the most pathetic one. Check here for Stewart’s bit on her “playing dumb” on an earlier topic.

3) Crowd estimates have become a big deal lately, starting with Glen Beck’s rally. As a result, Stewart and Colbert were preemptive and mentioned that it was pretty likely that the numbers would be distorted: Colbert had an early morning tweet that said he heard an estimate of 6 billion in attendance… So, knowing all of this, the smug gentleman on the left doesn’t even mention an estimate (because if he was accurate, he’d have to say that it was more than Beck’s rally, but if he underestimated, he’d be ridiculed by Stewart the next day. So he proceeds to go at the subject in a more subtle way. He only mentions that “we’ve heard some various estimates”. From this, the viewer, has no idea how big the crowd was… no idea. What the viewer does recognize is that there are several estimates, which presumably disagree and so what ever number I might hear on some other network must be an exaggeration which is obviously slanted to a liberal bias. Its genius really. All he has said is true, but certainly leads the viewer toward an obvious conclusion, which is that there weren’t that many people, not matter what number you hear.

4) He mentioned that there were “political overtones …….. to vote” Notice how long that pause is and what effect it actually has. The only overtones Stewart had was “to vote” but if he leaves it at “there were political overtones” one is led to believe that Stewart was overtly anti-right. And later, he goes on to say that the rally was overall, against the tea-party. Again, while no parties were mentioned at the rally (and the message was mainly against the media), the anchor leads the viewer into the opinion that it was overt and largely derogatory when he says that the signs “seemed kinda crazy”. He conflates the signs at the rally with Stewart’s message. But if you never saw the speech, you would think it was Stewart going on and on about how bad right-wingers.

What is perhaps most significant here is the fact that these 4 points I just covered were all brought up in the first 43 seconds of the clip… and all before a single second of the video was shown. My last two points are found later in the clip and refer to 1) and 2) from above:

They again mention that the two speakers were comedians when they says that they “actually tried to be serious”; presumably this occurred only once, given the rhetoric’s implications. This is furthered when she mentions that Stewart looked “fancy in a suit”. Of course, Stewart and Colbert wear a suit for every show. And lastly, the speakers were comedians “so it had to be funny”, which again dismisses any validity that may have been found in the rally. What is perhaps the most ironic moment in the show occurs when their news correspondent for the rally was listed as a “conservative comedian”. They mention about 5 different times that comedians are only worth laugh at, and yet their correspondent was a comedian.

Lastly, the only number they did point out was the number of people the Huffington Post bused in: 10000 people (which is an estimate). So while they refuse to mention any number about total attendees, they do mention how many people they believe were bused in from New York by a liberal newspaper. But because they never give the total number, which was estimated at well over 100,000, 10,000 seems like a ton of people. Of course, it was at least less than 10%, but without mentioning the other number, the 10,000 stands out.

To be fair, they do raise a good point, pertaining to the use of Cat Stevens, at the end of the clip.

This general topic will probably become a regular theme for this blog as it has really begun to get on my nerves when watching news shows. News is about reporting; but sadly, when the reporters shade the stories with misleading commentary, viewers take it as just reporting, and are illinformed about those topics that at the heart of the story in the first place. More importantly, this all shows just how important our words are when we communicate, and this holds for all aspects of life, not just punditry.

"Mosque" Debacle Became a Newspaper Article

2010-10-25T17:03:00.002-04:00

I had had a blog up for about a week, discussing another take on the alleged "ground zero mosque" and then was told that the Muncie Star Press had agreed to print it. So I took it down immediately. But I forgot that some of you may not have gotten word of that so this post is just to pass along the link to the article. I wouldn't recommend the comments; they truly consist of bout 4 people blindly arguing about points not relevant to my article. But read them if you desire.

The Mosque Debacle

2010-08-21T08:29:00.005-04:00

Well I can hold off no longer. The amount of commentary in the mass media, focused upon the proposed building of an Islamic mosque within a few blocks of the former WTC location, has caused a number of reactions by me, from interest, to confusion, to boredom, to outrage, to perplexity, and I’m sure others as well. But despite the mountains of words spewed on both sides, I feel I still need to express my, slightly limited, view. But hopefully that will work to my advantage, because, as usual, I feel that people are discussing things at the already-confused, diffused surface of the topic. In true philosophical form, I want to discuss something that I take to be at the root of this (or at least only what I can infer must be there, based on the rhetoric people have been using).

Things I want to point out: 1) the logic implemented by the people who do not want the mosque to be built. 2) how Obama's religiousity is related.

This is just one video, but does give you an idea of the sorts of logic being used. Where’s the argument in that video? “The mosque is wrong, so wrong.” There it is; that’s the argument being put forth in that video. Well that’s fine as a conclusion, but it doesn’t work so well as an argument, which is something you won't find in that video. So let’s keep going.

Please, please watch this 10-minute Daily Show clip. It is, in my opinion, one of the best Daily Show pieces they've done, although they typically are pretty good at reporting on things like this. Hopefully, that'll give you a taste of some of the points being made, and what sort of logic they are attempting to use.

Most (but not all) people realize it is not a legal issue, as they have the right to build there. Its not illegal because the constitutions only mentions of religion are stated in the first amendment and are as follows: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. And that mentions nothing about prohibiting a religious center, based on its location.

So it is not illegal, but "wrong". So what is wrong about it? They want to build a Muslim religious site close to a place where terrorists, who are Muslim, killed thousands of people. What's the connection? Apparently, they are not being sensitive, or respectful, to those who were affected by the attack. This isn't exactly a horrible plea. Out of all the jargon, I can respect this point more than any other. But nonetheless, to believe that an entire religion can be represented by the actions of less than 20 of its members is ludicrous. What about recent Christian leaders such as Ted Haggard, George Alan Rekers, Tony Alamo, Joe Barron, as well as the slew of Catholic leaders who have been accused or convicted of having sexual relations with children. Does this prohibit the building of Christian churches near schools? Does it make it "wrong" to have Sunday School? It hasn't seemed to be a problem yet. We isolate those "bad characters" from the rest of Christianity in attempts to retain the pristine character of Christianity. But when it comes to Islam, one represents all.

So here is my contention, which is nothing original, pertaining to the logic behind prohibiting the building of the mosque: muslim = terrorist = non-american = non-christian = immoral = wrong

The same logic is being used simply by the fact that Obama's religion is being questioned and that that makes it somehow relevant to the U.S. political realm. This is an extremely well-researched op-ed piece in the NYT on Obama’s religion. My point, which is one of the ones mentioned in article, is that it should not matter. But, according to that logic, if Obama is a Muslim, then he becomes all those things in that equation above. And if you don't trust that equation, notice how his nationality (which in America, perplexingly remains tied to ethnicity) and religion are always brought up together, always. And why, even when Obama says he is a Christian, do people not believe he is a Christian? That's usually good enough for most other politicians, even when their actions say otherwise.

Levinas on Discourse (or how to not have a monologue when talking to people)

2010-07-11T10:27:00.004-04:00

Can objectivity and the universality of thought be founded on discourse? Is not universal thought of itself prior to discourse? Does not a mind in speaking evoke what the other mind already thinks, both of them participating in common ideas? But the community of thought ought to have made language as a relation between beings impossible. Coherent discourse is one. A universal thought dispenses with communication. A reason cannot be other for a reason. How can a reason be an I or an other, since its very being consists in renouncing singularity? …

But to make of the thinker a moment of thought is to limit the revealing function of language to its coherence, conveying the coherence of concepts. In this coherence the unique I of the thinker volatilizes. The function of language would amount to suppressing “the other,” who breaks this coherence and is hence essentially irrational. A curious result: language would consist in suppressing the other, in making the other agree with the same! But in its expressive function language institutes a relation irreducible to the subject-object relation: the revelation of the other. In this revelation only can language as a system of signs be constituted. The other called upon is not something open to generalization. Language, far from presupposing universality and generality, first makes them possible. Language presupposes interlocutors, a plurality. Their commerce is not a representation of the one by the other, nor a participation in universality, on the common plane of language. Their commerce ... is ethical.

Schopenhaur on the Will, Intellect, and Moral Judgments

2010-06-19T07:38:00.002-04:00

Arthur Schopenaur: The World as Will and Idea, Chapter 19 On the Primacy of the Will in Self-Consciouness

If now it is said of one man, “he has a good heart, though a bad head,” but of another, “he has a very good head, yet a bad heart,” every one feels that in the first case the praise far outweighs the blame – in the other case the reverse. Answering to this, we see that if some one has done a bad deed his friends and he himself try to remove the guilt from the will to the intellect, and to give out that faults of the heart were faults of the head; roguish tricks they will call errors, will say they were merely want of understanding, want of reflection, light-mindedness, folly; nay, if need be, they will plead a paroxysm, momentary mental aberration, and if a heavy crime is in question, even madness, only in order to free the will from the guilt. And in the same way, we ourselves, if we have caused a misfortune or injury, will before others and ourselves willingly impeach our stultitia, simply in order to escape the reproach of malitia. In the same way, in the case of the equally unjust decision of the judge, the difference, whether he has erred or been bribed, is so infinitely great. All this sufficiently proves that the will alone is the real and essential, the kernel of the man, and the intellect is merely its tool, which may be constantly faulty without the will being concerned. The accusation of want of understanding is, at the moral judgment-seat, no accusation at all; on the contrary, it gives great privileges. And so also, before the courts of the world, it is everywhere sufficient to deliver a criminal from all punishment that his guild should be transferred from his will to his intellect, by proving either unavoidable error or mental derangement, for then it is of no more consequence than if hand or food had slipped against the will.

Certainty Without Religion

2010-06-18T01:07:00.002-04:00

Certainty doesn’t require knowing. In fact, certainty doesn’t even require facts; except the fact which it itself creates. And in that case, such a requirement fulfills itself.

A little while ago at work, a lady I was working for began talking about god and Jesus and stuff and how (almost verbatim, but forgive my memory) “you may think you’re certain, but the only true certainty is with God.” I just smiled and nodded politely, as I didn’t have the desire to have any form of in-depth conversation given the circumstances. Well I didn’t agree with that statement when I heard it, and I disagree with it more and more as time goes on.

What she is telling me is that human certainty is no certainty at all. Ok then, what certainty is actually certain? Well her reply would be a certainty found through a relationship with god (whatever shape her god and her relationship to it might take). In sum, humans, on their own, are incapable of having certainty (how Cartesian of her). And as you can tell, I disagree.

I assume this religious relationship she is referring to involves a belief, and a faith. In which case, certainty seems to be precluded. Or would she say that? Does she gain a certainty from her faith? I bet she does; she just doesn’t want to grant me the same (godless) result.

But analogously, I think we create our own certainty by taking all sorts of leaps of faith, and without a religious figure in the picture. When two people, both possibly standing on quite uncertain ground, take a leap of faith and create something new through a pact or some sort of agreement, they create their own certainty. In other words (and somewhat perplexingly), through uncertainty, they gain their own certainty. This is because we can create it. And this is what a relationship (of any type) is; for if both parties agree to it, or in other words put their faith/trust in the other, then of course the relationship will be fulfilled. And in fact, that is the only way for it to work. I am not saying that her religious certainty is fake; rather, I am saying it is no different than a secular certainty.

We gain our certainty when we first cease to doubt; and we don’t need religion to do that. [and for the students of philosophy, this is one of the most critical and logically fallacious mistakes of Descartes’]

Some Thoughts of Time, Part II

2010-06-12T08:43:00.000-04:00

This post has no real main point that I’m trying to argue but, similar to my last one, is a flow of ideas on time and identity.

In my previous post I said: “As a single event, I do not have existence; as an event, comprised of a past, I take up my identity (or even seen differently, I find myself). For there to be an “I” which looks back, there must first be that past which can be looked upon by the “I,” as the self in the present.”

The self is always present and only immediate. To be now it must have destroyed itself and yet still recognize itself as having been then, as some thing removed and distinct from what it is now. It is only through this recognition that time is possible, and it is only through time that identity is possible. Seemingly paradoxically, an “I” can only be present and yet is possible only through a succession of those presents, in other words, through time.

But isn’t this how we view time anyways, as a succession of present moments? The past is no special aspect of time, rather it is just the collection of experienced presents, which can be recollected in some fashion. Similarly, the future is just the totality of the unexperienced, and thus only perhaps possible, presents, which can be imagined in some fashion. The tenses of time are always in relation to the present.

The Relatedness of Time

In a blog post awhile back, I repeated a theory I had heard once:
“After one year of life, that past year was 1/1, or 100%, of your experience. After your twentieth year of life…, the previous year was 1/20th of your experience. So each year, since we are unable to expand our brains, causes the percentages of our brain to get reconfigured.” So the span of a day (which we calculate by the rotation of the earth), actually goes faster the older that we get, because it represents that much smaller of an experiencing than it once did. If time is only relative, then it is the case that as we get older, time gets shorter.

So I’m not only purposing the relative theory of time that says time only occurs with movement or in the relation of physical objects to one another, but also one that says that time is also related to itself; in fact, that is how it is possible. Because as mentioned two paragraphs back, the past and future are only modes of the present, modes of the “I” experiencing. And notice how I must use the in-process verb of “-ing” to express what an “I” does. When we say that “I worked yesterday”, we are saying that I was working at that given time and thus that I recall an experience of a present that is no longer be”ing” experienced.

So if time is related to itself, then every past event is defined as an experience”ing” which can now be objectified and thereby experienced anew (and yet in a new, removed way) by a new present “I”. Thus, memory is a collection of presents, which have become objects accessible to the now-present “I”.

What is odd is that an “-ing” implies a duration, a succession of experience. So as soon as we try to talk of an actual present (not just the present, as today or this year, but rather as the moment where experiencing occurs), we reduce it to such a slice of existence that it disappears altogether. So it seems that while having this notion of present is useful, when thought through, it is really an impossibility. And if I just spent this whole blog saying that all of time is in relation to our notions of the present, and the present doesn’t exist, then what is time?

Some Thoughts on Time

2010-06-01T06:58:00.001-04:00

Time, by its very nature, takes all up within it; thus, there is no outside of time. For anything posited outside of time, so long as it is put in relation to time, will be captured by time. And so as soon as we say a thing is outside of time, it then is taken up by time.

Humanity, at once both crossing time and, as a result, yet nevertheless caught up by it, can only know things through it. For one can only cross in time, and never across or out of it. All things in relation to us, accessible to us, are then tethered by time and, as such, have only finite existence; in fact, they can only ‘be’ through such tethering. We cannot say there is a timeless idea such as Communism or Christianity; rather, in time, things which receive such a name share some commonalities, but each takes up its own identity, specific to that era, to that people. Reciprocally, time makes us and we make time.

As a single event, I do not have existence; as an event, comprised of a past, I take up my identity (or even seen differently, I find myself). For there to be an “I” which looks back, there must first be that past which can be looked upon by the “I,” as the self in the present. For example, when encountering a stranger, that is what they are. They have no history for us, and so we cannot call them anything but a stranger, endowed with superficial attributes that even then, require a history of their own. If we notice a big scar across the cheek, we imagine the sort of past that person would have had.

But at the same time, what is time without a recognition of itself? Can there be a succession of events without some event (some thing in time) first recognizing that succession, and thus those events. That we say there is a time before man is only the necessity of succession being thrown upon the preexistence which lays dormant for us, hiding in shadows. We only infer a before-humanity because, as mentioned before, we need a past to have a present. We cannot be without at least some thing once having been. But notice again, there can be no outside of time; even when some thing lies outside humanity’s jurisdiction (i.e. the time before we were), we still find a way to account for it (our current theory is evolution). Thus, we create our past, even when it is inaccessible to us, and never ours to begin with.

The Devil

2010-03-06T10:17:00.003-05:00

"Readers are advised to remember that the devil is a liar." - C.S. Lewis

That line is conveniently situated in the preface to Lewis’ “The Screwtape Letters”. The next line goes on to say that even the lines written by the fictitious spirit, Screwtape, should not be taken as necessarily true. (Of course, should we doubt Lewis too?)

I immediately was drawn to that initial quote. I’ve often thought about what it must be like to be the devil of Christianity. For instance, why and how is the devil an individual being? Why must the devil be a man? Well, I suppose all angels must be men, and have a phallus.

Now that is the fascinating part; the devil is (was?) an angel. It must be. It must be a (the) fallen one, an antagonist, an opponent. But is this a pure negation? If the Christian God is pure spirit, shouldn’t the devil be purely physical?

I suppose any negation of the Christian god is a complete negation, or at least of a completely different sort of nature. I take humans as also being some sort of negation, but this must surly be a different type of denial than that of ‘the eternally fallen one’. (Strangely, humans are physical, yet the devil is still a spirit.)

Questions:
Must the devil always lie? Are all lies ones of the devil? What truths would the devil espouse? In what way are those truths ‘true’? What truths could aid the devil’s cause? What type of cause can the devil have? What type of cause does the Christian God allow the devil to have? What does it mean for the Christian God to allow an antagonist an agenda? What does it mean for the Christian God to have an antagonist? Questions are easy. Answers are not.

My Two Cents:
What a worrisome world to live in for that person for whom the devil is behind every corner and every claim. How great the doubt! How great the fear! My issue with a statement like Lewis’ is that it makes the Christian’s life extremely individualistic: “I must doubt all things (all people), except my thoughts attached to my God, which I must take on faith.” That individual is scared for his or her life, trembling from a different sort of fear …

Deconstructing

2010-02-16T20:32:00.004-05:00

Two prefatory points:

1) What follows is going to be something new for me. Rather than constructing and thinking about a piece of writing, this is just going to be a straight copying from some writing I did a few weeks back. I just started writing and the body of this blog will be word for word from that. As such, there is less argument and more contemplation. I'd love to hear feedback/criticism.

2) I don't believe I've read any explicit deconstruction literature; but I have read a good deal of recent literature that has all the general tendencies which I perhaps incorrectly presume to be a part of the deconstructionist goals. In general, I'm sure I haven't read near enough on this subject. I also believe that some people who are labeled deconstructionists, don't like the term. This may point to something about their thinking.

----

When one deconstructs, destabilizes, disfigures, fractures, delimits, or muddles the very concepts in question, what is left? More importantly, where is that person then left? On what basis can they discuss the given thing? By transfiguring the words, by doing all the things from the list above, what are they then talking about? Something new? What are they then critiquing? Can the deconstructionist talk? And thus, can the deconstructionist think?

Perhaps they are aware of this, and this is what leads to their abstruse rhetoric which obfuscates the reader into frustration, anger, and then dismissal. Their text leads to submission of the reader. Communication is relegated to a realm of errors and is thus done away with. This leads us back to the guiding question: how can the deconstructionist think. If its transmission, and thus logos itself, is unable to do its job, what does the intellect offer? Indeed, what progress is made from human discourse?

Perhaps something new is more appropriate. Let us hope progress is a concern. Correcting error is indeed progress, but to do away with so fundamental of an object, concepts themselves, is to do away with one's own progress. So the deconstructionists are inventive; forging ahead, and finding new concepts. They create a new form to human discourse. But can we then call it discourse? Earlier I mentioned there is a loss of communication. So maybe there is some vestige of discourse still present. At the very least, if there is to be any progress, there must be some resemblance to the former discourse and this new, "non-discourse".

phenonmenology of time

2010-02-03T10:40:00.002-05:00

Here is an article from NPR that talks about some of the same stuff I more or less parroted in a previous blog.

As far as an original blog from me, perhaps I'll write one soon.

Update

2010-01-05T15:45:00.001-05:00

Well since I almost never give personal updates on here, I decided to break up the academic-oriented posts and update my life (which, oddly enough, primarily consists of academic things).

Winter break was splendid and productive. I was able to hang out with all of my friends quite a bit: continued the tradition of New Year’s Eve at my friend Hugo’s; got a night of bowling in with the crew; watched a few football games with them as well; had a poker night; had two risk nights; played halo with the cousins (thanks Blake for the commentary); had a movie night with Carden; and visited some friends from Ball State who went to Wawasee.

I was also very pleased to spend as much time with my family as I did and really enjoyed drinking coffee with Shawn while he worked on the wireless and I read; we always had a sporadic little side-bar story from our respective work to tell the other person for a good laugh.

Speaking of reading, I was able to read:
- Kierkegaard’s “Fear and Trembling”
- -half of Hick’s “Faith and Knowledge”
- some of Pascal’s “Pensees”
- Sedgwick’s “Epistemology of the Closet”,
- Foucault’s “History of Sexuality”
- Russell’s “Why I am not a Christian” (which had one of the best short essay’s I’ve ever read called ‘The Free Man’s Worship’)
- I am currently ¾ the way through Kojeve’s Introduction to the Reading of Hegel (by far my favorite overall reading of the break)
- and plan on reading Milton’s “Paradise Lost” before school starts back up.

On to the upcoming semester:

I am the editor-in-chief of Ball State’s undergrad philosophy journal, Stance. We’ve already received the papers and will begin the process to pick out the top papers over the course of the semester.

Like last semester, I’ll be a tutor for Phil100 and will also be a T.A. for an introductory Religious Studies course.

As far as “regular” classes, I will be taking Philosophy or Religion, Feminist Ethics and Epistemology, and Latin (we’ll actually be reading real, not textbook, latin this semester!).

It will be a busy, thought-provoking, exciting, eye-opening, interesting semester to say the least!

Why I Always Want to be Right

2009-12-31T12:21:00.005-05:00

“For all serious intellectual progress depends upon a certain kind of independence of outside opinion.” – Bertrand Russell 1940

On a few occasions, some people whom I’m having conversations with have suggested that I can’t stand being wrong (read as “incorrect”, thus not in a moral sense). But I quickly respond and mention that nothing could be farther from the truth. In fact, I love being shown where I’ve failed, or where I’ve missed something. Why, you ask? Because I then have learned something whereby I am then in a position to be more correct. I enjoy being proved (shown) wrong, so that I can then be right. ☺

Then I got to thinking, that this seems kind of snobbish. It would beg the response: “You always have to be right, don’t you?!?!” But I ask what else would one desire in matters such as these? Who would want to be wrong, for the sake of being wrong? I’m not discussing matters such as romantic relationships or morality, which receive their “rightness” from somewhere else. I’m discussing intellectual correctness in public discourse, which leads to personal development.

This is what I’m concerned with: development and growth. It is about a “winning”, only there should not be a loser. Both parties should gain and grow. The leading quote by Russell references the “outside opinion” which is necessary for growth. And there is nothing snobbish about wanting, and being proud of, progression.

Democracy

A more general example of this is democracy. I’m no political science guru of any type but here are my two cents. Democracy is also about being right, for its constituents; it is about the growth, progress, and development of its citizens. Now what makes democracy unique is its methods in achieving such goals. Democracy believes voices should be heard. Not that we should find or reach a majority voice and then base our truth off of it; rather that through the work of rational discourse between a multitude (not solely the democrat/republican dichotomy we currently seem to have fallen into) of views, we then discover (discern) a more “correct” (right) view.

This is what Russell is talking about. If you want progress, you cannot have a majority voice, whether political or other, judge the value of the other opinions, and thus dominate and determine truth. Democracy is reliant upon debate and genuine debate requires an independence of opinions, a suspension of a determination of truth. Listening to the minority voice (or just the other side of a given topic), while never being prepared to change your own position, is not a genuine, or rational stance to take. Part of what it is to be rational is the willingness to change (progress), to no longer remain dogmatic, or what Russell would call “rigid”.

My discussion of truth may sound very relativistic, but that is not what I mean. A relativistic truth would say that no side is more right/correct than the other. What I am trying to express is that you need the openness first, as a foundation, to then, in rational discourse, be better prepared to see which view is more correct. Relativism, on the other hand, never gets off the ground. It never makes the decision; it always remains at the opposition (if you can call it that) and as such, can never have genuine discourse.

Democracy is also predicated on the fact that we can be wrong. That is why the majority view cannot be seen as truth. We cannot dogmatically hold on to the majority view, for the fallibility of people is a foundational part of democracy. The “independence of outside opinion” must always exist to keep us honest.

Conclusions

To tie this back into my original points, I want to get back to the individual being right or wrong. Those people have said that I can’t stand being wrong because I freely attempt to support my side, or the devil’s advocate side, with as much argumentation as possible. It is not that I discredit (dis-value) the other side, but that if we are to ever progress, we must be fair to both sides and must have them both be argued for as such. A big benefit to being able to argue coherently for your opponent is that you are forced to focus on the rational discourse (which requires multiple views), rather than merely your conviction for one side of a given topic. So actually, it isn't about me being right, but about all of the parties involved learning from the discourse.

Perhaps, it is less about individuals (and democratic discourse) being “right”, and more about the progressing.

“The world needs open hearts and open minds, and it is not through rigid systems, whether old or new, that these can be derived.” – Bertrand Russell 1957

Christian Ritual

2009-12-28T12:39:00.006-05:00

[Disclaimer: this post makes a lot of broad claims, sometimes even historical ones! My goal is not to lay out universal claims for Christianity, but rather to explain my experience of a select, remote Christian context. Feel free to correct, explain, denounce, or question, anything said hence forth. I see no reason why my un-cited statements would be insufficient or misleading in some way.]

Ritual is a part of most, if not all, religions; Christianity is no exception. From major events such as marriages, baptisms, and funerals, to daily and weekly actions such as prayer, meditation, fasting, communion, singing, etc., 21st century Christianity appears to retain its ritual. In fact, after mentioning all of those, it seems as if it is primarily ritualistic. And yet, I find more and more that there is a constant doing-away with it.

Through the commencement of the enlightenment era, where modern thought found a place outside of religion, religion faced decisions such as: should it take up the rationalism of the time, should it concern itself only with itself, its doctrine, faith, and its own construction and exemplification of morality, and many other questions similar to this. In some form or other, many of the Christian sects have incorporated modernal rationalism in some fashion or other.

Seeing that the “science and religion” game isn’t a very good one to play (explained below), Christianity has recently begun to attempt to refocus upon what it is good at: faith, community, the development of its own sort of morality through charity, and ritual. However, I do not think the recent heritage of rationalism and focus on cognition within the past few centuries has been shed so successfully.

I recently attended a church service of a northern Indiana missionary church and the “rituals” astounded me. Concerning almost every song, and in almost every prayer, there was a call to a thought of, reflection on, attention to, etc. (a constant reflection and consciousness concerning what the attendee was doing). No longer can one “do”; rather, one must always think, reason, explain, justify, his or her ritualistic actions: think about the words of the song; know and explain why you celebrate Christmas; understand what this prayer means; and countless others.

Christianity is becoming a mental, cognitive, and very conscious-oriented religion. Even in trying to do away with the rationalism of the last several centuries, the congregation is asked to “think” back to the roots of Christianity and the bible, and then reflect upon that.

Even in ritual, there is this reiteration of the reflection; a centrality of thought in a realm created in and for thoughtlessness, for doing. Further, thinking and reflection also have their place in religion; we should always be prepared to think about what things we chose to be a part of. But with contemporary Christianity, thought (cognition) has become central, and this centrality is displacing the efficacy of ritual.

The Results

First, there is the resultant guilt (and self-centeredness) of repeatedly focusing on failures. This constant visualization and contemplation of the lack, cannot but conclude with a failure to succeed. One cannot achieve a success; there is always a failure and always a thinking on that failure. In this self-ish repetition, the Divine almost never enters in to it and thus, there is no peace.

But more to the point, it leads to doubt. This is why I said the “science and religion” game is not a good one to play. It is always misleading. So while I do not feel that the tension is warranted, it is always present. Part of the sermon talked directly about this. When people are constantly shown scientific information which appears to “explain” things that the church cannot, it results in doubt. Again, this explanation should never displace religion, but nonetheless, there is a fight for who gets the position, the sole position, between science and religion (in my opinion, there are two realms, and neither should problematize the other). Thus, people doubt the rational side of religion, completely missing the equally relevant non-rational/cognitive sides, such as ritual.

Perhaps the more disconcerting effects are the following:
Prayer becomes a (self-centered) petition for forgiveness of sins and chance at improvement of the self, rather than an openness to the Divine. Song is no longer sung and participated in, but the lyrics are to be contemplated and thought out. In rituals such as marriage, communion, funerals, and baptism, there is a constant call to reflection on the reasoning for the event, rather than the experiencing of the event itself. The self must always be (self-)conscious and aware of what it is doing, rather than being a part of and taken up in the experience. It delimits the self and closes off the believer from his or her relations with the ritual, the community, and the Divine.

The experience of Christianity has become remarkably cognitive.

Poetry, Art and my Ramblings on Them

2009-12-24T16:52:00.002-05:00

First, as a disclaimer, I've never taken a course on Aesthetics. Thus, this post is in no way grounded in any historical account of aesthetics; it is merely my own take on something I have never been much good at: art. Consequently, there is most likely a few thousand pages discrediting everything I'm about to say. Owell.

Poetry
I’m not a big fan of poetry, never have been. I’m all for using uncommon words and constructing your writing in unique and inventive ways, but I don’t feel that you need poetry to achieve those effects. I hate dry, monotonous diction and syntax just as much as the next reader, but poetry, while certainly avoiding monotony and constantly playing with sentence structure, remains unappealing nonetheless.

I don’t doubt that there is much meaning to be had in poetry. But for me, there is a good deal of difficulty in discerning good poetry and bad poetry. That doesn’t exactly give me much hope for poetry.

I do however, enjoy rhyming. I think it takes a lot of skill to rhyme. Chaucer used a decasyllabic meter with an A-A, B-B rhyming scheme for the entirety of Canterbury Tales (I could be slightly off on this). That my friends, is impressive. It takes discipline. But this discipline is predicated on structure. Rhyming forces the writer to subject his thoughts to structure, but not in such a way as to lose the value and individuality of the thought. Rather, whatever the writer is attempting to express, s/he must always form the expression within a pattern, or structure.

Now you could say that this is stifling creative thinking and writing. And while I do not disagree, you then open the writing up and no longer is it able to be subjected to criterion. Dissolving the structure of the writing, at the same time, absolves the writing from judgment. No longer can the reader say, this piece of poetry is good, or that piece of poetry lacks quality. In fact, the designation (of the “this” or “that” as poetry) itself becomes less certain.

Prose is more than capable of giving us the creativity and ingenuity to stimulate and fill our imagination. (Read you some Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde)

Art in General
Within structure, the skill and thus, quality can be determined. I suppose this despising of poetry stems from an issue I have with art as meaning-making in general. With no structure as a guide, no end-point by which to base the work on, the creator no longer requires skill. Hence why the distinction between good poetry and bad poetry becomes muddled.

Great artists rarely are considered great by one piece of art. It takes a collection; a repeated creation and production of art by which, we can then judge the artist. A single piece can be magnificent, but that does not make the creator magnificent.

We don’t praise haphazardry (if it wasn’t a word before, it is now) because it doesn’t involve skill. There is no specificity, and thus, it is open for all to achieve (if you wish to call it an achievement).

Pablo Picasso: “There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.”

I love that quote. There is always “something” there first, and then the artist abstracts away. This “away” is taken directly from the Latin prefix ‘ab’, and entails a “something” first there, from which we move. But this abstraction, this removal (or movement away), is not done simply. It is technically done, it involves skill. And through this movement away, a trajectory or structure of the piece is then discovered. And through the structure, we then are able to judge the quality, the skill, of the artist.

People Who Use "Extravagant" Language

2009-11-06T11:41:00.003-05:00

Before I begin, I know this is lengthy but I encourage everyone to read it through, think about it, and then comment to me (on here or in person). This is a topic that hits close to home for me. Notice I put this at the beginning so people wouldn't get half way and decide they didn't want to read the rest and then not see how important this topic and their comments are to me :)

A quote: "Hegel wrote in his essay "Who Thinks Abstractly?" that it is not the philosopher who thinks abstractly but the person on the street, who uses concepts as fixed, unchangeable givens, without any context. It is the philosopher who thinks concretely, because he goes beyond the limits of everyday concepts to understand their broader context. This makes philosophical thought and language seem mysterious or obscure to the person on the street."

I take this to mean 2 things.

1. When people use various words without thinking about their meaning/context, they don't realize the ramifications of what they're saying, as well as what they're not saying. As a result, they have a set of static words which people take to mean something, but that that "something" is no longer necessarily the same referent (intended word). When we take language as something static, we do not realize how language works. This creates the possibility for unintended statements, miscommunication, and most often confusion on both parties.

2. And so if we are to then begin thinking (being aware and open), we must now step outside and away from typical verbage. Thus, someone who thinks about (analyzes) these concepts, and describes/explains things in "not-normal" ways, is seen as weird because they have to use words outside of the normal lexicon. But when the typical lexicon is steeped with ambiguous, if not vague, meanings and connotations, it is no longer fruitful to use such words when participating in discourse.

I tend to agree with this (go figure right?), but I do feel like I have some support for this (go figure again...).

I've begun reading some Heideggar and can't help but notice that whenever he begins to think about and discuss a particular topic, he often gives about 5 different and possible definitions for that word. Once the reader works through all the options and sees how he then begins to use the word, his writing becomes much more poignant and lucid. The reader realizes that when he uses a given word, this is in no way a nilly-willy invocation; rather, it is a deliberate, methodical representation of a specific concept (I emphasize the specificity), which all the more allows the reader to become more readily available to the thought of his work. And that is how thinking begins.

A perfect example is the beginning of this blog. I took twice as many words to interpret one simple paragraph. It says something about a person's writing when they can write very little and evoke a great deal of thought. (For me, its a sign of great writing.)

Those are my thoughts, but I am seriously interested to hear what my friends and family (or perhaps all ten of you who read this) have to say on this topic. This is something that directly relates to who I am and the people who have friendships and familial ties with me, and so I would like hear what other opinions are on the subject.

Sarcasm is a serious thing… no, really!

2009-10-19T20:39:00.002-04:00

First, I apologize for never writing part 2 to my previous post (from August?!?!?!). That topic is now uninteresting to me.

Second, I realize this post is long. I thought about breaking it into two parts, but then figured, if its that big of deal, the reader can just read half of it, then come back two days later and read the other half. I’ll even denote a half-way point for those who desire to take this course of action.

Sarcasm is typically seen as the invocation of mockery or irony as a result of contempt for something. In either case, the intended meaning does not lie in the truth of the stated proposition. The intent of the statement is actually meant to be contrary to the utterance. So if you combine the mockery with possible confusion when hearing sarcasm, you are left with a dangerous rhetorical device.

There are two big dangers: 1) the speaker is taken as serious or 2) the speaker’s intent was correctly diagnosed by the listener as being sarcastic, but then loses authority or reliability in future dialogue.

Sarcasm, like most language, is based on assumption. The speaker assumes the listener knows s/he is being sarcastic and that s/he will not be taken to be serious. Now this assumption is usually not rash. We have intonation, and facial expressions which help assure that the sarcasm is relayed effectively. But with text, the assumption becomes much more precarious. However, outlandish remarks also safely do the job. If the listener (or reader in this case) understands that what is being said is ludicrous, then the irony or contempt is received more fully. Difficulty arises when sarcasm is not ridiculous. The more coherent and/or possible the statement, the less recognizable the intent, when sarcastic.

The second danger is that the speaker loses authority over time. As the listener begins to understand that, less and less, this particular speaker means what s/he is saying, but rather means something else, sincerity heads to the backburner. The more sarcasm is used, the more the speaker is taken in jest. It’s a “boy-who-cries-wolf” story where the boy slowly loses his ability to convince. As a result, when a typically sarcastic person wants to say what they mean, they will go unheard and their speech becomes frustrated.

Half-way! If you’re tired of reading what I have to say right now*, then just leave this page and come back in a day or two! * [and by “now”, I mean “now” as when you read the word “now”, not “now” as in when I typed the word “now”; although it is certainly possible that those days will be the same, if you read it today. And I mean “today” as in the day I typed “today”, not necessarily the day in which you read it.]

So why do we use sarcasm? Why do we *say* what we don’t mean? Why is it beneficial or even useful? Well I’ve already mentioned the primary reason, viz. to show contempt or to mock. At some point, repeating what the other said, maybe in a sneering tone, was signifying that if you take what was just said, and hold it up to the fire, it will wither away like the supposed waste you take it to be. In a sense, it’s a reductio. One is saying, “look, if you take what you said, this is the ridiculousness that results.” And so we use grandiose words to inflate their statement, and then pop it with our sharp tone.

Sarcasm is also funny. I haven’t thought much about this, but it seems to be one of the bigger oddities we have in language. Of course the bigger question is why is anything funny, but in particular, why do American’s find so much comedy in sarcasm?

One final use lies in the possibility for ambiguity. Again, this is a direct function of any rhetorical device or word. Unclear terms leave open possibility, and utility stems directly from possibilities. It is left up to the interlocutor to figure out exactly what is being meant by the word or phrase. The speaker has said it, and knows what they meant; but it now remains to be seen whether or not this meaning will ever be fully grasped by the listener. This can be quite useful and if correctly employed in this fashion, sarcasm is deadly.

Thus, I can say something sarcastically while knowing that most everyone else will think I am being serious, and plant a little seed (of sarcasm) which will wait to explode sometime in the near future. As people begin to understand more and more about who I am, what I’ve been saying, and my intentions, suddenly, the things I’ve said now take a different meaning: they become the meaning I intended, the meaning that now becomes a bit sharper, and this makes those words a bit more real.

Pattern

2009-08-17T10:11:00.002-04:00

This post will deal with pattern. My next post will translate pattern into our daily life, with time and “fate” being considered.

Pattern first hit me in the face while reading On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins. His entire thesis says that memory and prediction are the same thing and all revolve around pattern. Our brain collects input and remembers the pattern in which all the various data are sequenced. When we go through a situation similar to one we’ve experienced before, we remember it, and can better prepare for what is most likely coming next. Intelligence then, is our ability to recognize patterns in the world and then react appropriately.

The better you understand an event, the more likely you’re able to be in control throughout it. The intelligent being sees a piano falling from the sky and realizes it will continue to fall, and will crush them if they do not move. The unintelligent being doesn’t have a grasp on the pattern of events that are going to occur, they cannot predict the outcome, and thus don’t move, and are hit by the piano.

This is only a theory. But I find it extremely appealing and most certainly applicable. (You can see from this brief, unlikely example that there is a type of fitness level built into it; i.e. the intelligent being can understand events and thus keep itself alive). Hawkins believes that pattern recognition is an integral function of our brain. I would agree. Not only do we seek pattern per se, but also meaning (perhaps the two are closely related with meaning being the more abstract cousin of the cold, “factual” data that pattern connotates). As mentioned before, to understand something is to be in control. Also, to discover a pattern, is to provide meaning for a sequence of events. Having done that, we have taken control of the event, and no longer need to worry about the chaos an unpatterned, meaningless event would entail. Once we’ve given something meaning, it has value in our life, and fits into our idea of the world.

The next post will take a few of these ideas and raise a point or two, as well as a few questions.

P.S. My blog-friend Sam Nunnally has a blog series on an age-old topic of the compatabilty of religion and science. But he’s taken an extremely refreshing approach already (he’s only 2 posts in) and has definitely put an insightful spin to it. I think ya’ll will enjoy it.

The Sacred and the Profane

2009-07-25T20:27:00.004-04:00

This post primarily consists of two direct block quotes from Mircea Eliade's book titled The Sacred and the Profane . For anyone who's interested in religion, the history of religion or comparative religion as a subject-matter, I strongly recommend this book(oh, and disregard the non-gender-neutral language he employs. He wrote in a different time).

The book is by no means an easy, nor straight-forward, read, but it will simply rock your world. There were points where I'd read a sentence or paragraph and simply stop and smile and/or shake my head in awe at the power and resonance Eliade's writing contains. So without further ado:

From page 23:

Revelation of a sacred space makes it possible to obtain a fixed point and hence to acquire orientation in the chaos of homogeneity, to "found the world" and to live in a real sense. The profane experience, on the contrary, maintains the homogeneity and hence the relativity of space. No true orientation is now possible, for the fixed point no longer enjoys a unique ontological status; it appears and disappears in accordance with the needs of the day. Properly speaking, There is no longer any world, there are only fragments of a shattered universe, an amorphous mass consisting of an infinite number of more or less neutral places in which man moves, governed and driven by the obligations of an existence incorporated into an industrial society.

From page 203:

We only observe that, in the last analysis, modern nonreligious man assumes a tragic existence and that his existential choice is not without its greatness. But this nonreligious descends from homo relgiosus and, whether he likes it or not, he is also the work of religious man; his formation begins with the situations assumed by his ancestors. In short, he is the result of a process of desacralization. Just as nature is the product of a progressive sacralization of the cosmos as the work of God, profane man is the result of a desacrilization of human existence. But this means that nonreligious man has been formed by opposing his predecessor, by attempting to "empty" himself of all religion and all transhuman meaning. He recognizes himself in proportion as he "frees" and "purifies" himself from the "superstitions" of his ancestors. In other words, profane man cannot help preserving some vestiges of the behavior of religious man, though they are emptied of their religious meaning. Do what he will, he is an inheritor. He cannot utterly abolish his past, since he himself is a product of his past. He forms himself by a series of denials and refusals, but he continues to be haunted by the realities that he has refused and denied. To acquire a world of his own, he has desacrilized the world in which his ancestors lived; but to do so he has been obliged to adopt the opposite of an earlier type of behavior, and that behavior is still emotionally present to him, in one form or another, ready to be re-actualized in his deepest being.

.... Crazy-good.

Stupid Questions

2009-07-22T14:30:00.004-04:00

First an update and then on to the true topic, the title of the blog.

I'm 2 days away from completing my summer course. Notice the singular noun "course" and not the plural which would have been the case had I not dropped my first ever university course. After the first test, and a few homeworks (one which was a zero because he had switched book editions while keeping his course supplement the same), my grade was hovering in the low C range. I figured I'd be able to pull that back up on the next test. When the next test proved to rock me worse than the first, I dropped it. I have no desire to have a C calculated into my GPA (not to mention that, given the trend, my grade would have been a letter lower than that).

Having said that, the class average, across the first two tests which I was there for, was a 62%. That was the main reason for me dropping it. When a teacher's class has a D- as a class average on his or her tests, something is amiss, and it doesn't lie with the students.

On a more joyful note, I've been spending some quality time with my girlfriend on the weekends, which has included: going to Indy to meet Shawn and Monica, going to her hometown fair to see her MC a "lil miss and mr." contest as well as model for a fashion show, and then this weekend, go to the Elkhart Co fair this weekend. Great times.

Speaking of fairs, since there is a 3-week dead spot between summer sessions and fall semester, I will be working at the Indiana State Fair for that period of time. That was nice to have worked out so I stay busy and make some money going into the school-year.

I will be going to Warped tour again this year. It has become a staple of my summers and something I wish would come around more often. Forty bucks for almost ten hours of 5 stages of music. I currently have 12 bands I plan on watching. So far, I've been able to see all the ones I've wanted to see in the past without them playing simultaneously. Hopefully that continues this year.

And oh ya, by the way... I turn 21 in less than 10 days.

Now on to the title of the blog:

There is a phrase I've heard quite often. Some might call it words of wisdom or something along those lines. I call it wrong. The phrase is "there is no such thing as a stupid question".

Let me explain some examples of where this certainly does not hold:

An instance where someone asks a question and either discovers the answer before the other person can generate a response or, along the same lines, was simply too lazy to "look" and "see" the answer right in front of them. I do this all the time, especially when I'm at work. I'll ask someone where a tool or something is and they pretty much point right in front of me to where the object was. I hate it and its a perfect example of when someone asks a stupid question. Its the same thing when someone asks a question and then discovers the answer on their own before anyone can respond. Did you really have to ask the question if it took less than 2 seconds to find the answer and you found it on your own? Probably not.

In both cases, stopping to think, for only a brief moment, will save time and the annoyance of the person I'm/your asking the question to. These types of questions are stupid because they're unnecessary. Not to mention that very little insight is actually gained by the actual asking of the question. Typically, the goal of a question is to find some sort of information in respect to that question which, before asking the question, the interrogator had no access to. When a stupid question is asked, this entire process becomes meaningless because, the goal (information) was already available to the questioner without the need for the question, making the question-asking needless and irrelevant.

One might say that we only discover stupid questions in retrospect, after we find that we discovered the information on our own, before any interlocutor could respond. But I would be willing to bet, that if we took a moment to think, and to consider just what it is we're asking before we ask our question, we would all save ourselves the time and annoyance of asking stupid questions.

Update and Cool Internet Pictures

2009-06-26T13:50:00.003-04:00

Update:

- I am one week (20%) done with 2 summer courses at Ball State this summer.

- I am officially living in my first ever house (thus, I am paying all sorts of bills, including my first ever trip to buy groceries for myself).

- I picked a great week to stop working and commence sitting in a classroom during the day (it seems to have been at 90 degrees or above since Friday, my last day of work. Last night it was still 90 at 7:30 P.M.!

- Now that I don't work, I can get back to running. Less stress on my body from landscaping and more endorphins released from the running has already made me feel much better and more energetic throughout the day.

- I have a girlfriend!!!!! Her name is Megan Burkett. Feel free to facebook stalk her, but she's more interesting in person.

- Her and I will be hanging out with my bro and sister-in-law next weekend in Indy. I'm very much looking forward to it!

- While in Indy, I'll also be going to a concert next Saturday with my friend Kolton. Notice: We'll throw down with anyone!... if there's only one of them... and s/he is smaller than us.

Pictures:

I have linked this site several times, but for those of you who don't know how to subscribe, here are some amazing pictures. My last post talked a lot about how small the earth is, and necessarily how small we are. But these pictures, with their blend of natural and human constructed geography, do give me a sense of awe when (on this scale, which is much larger than we're used to) we see how human beings capably interact with the natural world around them. It also helps show how there are some instances where we manipulate the world around us, and how we also must be adaptive and utilize what natural forces and events exist, outside of our control.

Part of my summer reading has included Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot. The book mainly is a justification/call for scientific research in/on space. Sagan is defending NASA funding (and other endeavors like it). I recommend the book if only for the pictures, which range from capturing the grandeur of galaxies, to portraits that merely encompass our little earth. Most of the book is explaining what all was gained and advanced by the Voyager expeditions, as well as the Apollo missions and others. One quick example is that the way we discovered that CFC's react with ozone molecules the way that they do, stemmed from scientists working on different chemical reactions which would be taking place in the atmosphere of Venus, which contains large amounts of cholrine and flourine. I'm not promoting NASA funding, mainly because I don't know enough about it, but the book does give you some good examples that can combat the ignorant, unthought ramblings of people who say space research is useless in light of the current issues here on earth. There certainly has been and can be much gained from such studies.

After that digression, I'll get to the quote this post was intended for, which has little if anything to do with the previous paragraph. It comes from chapter 1, titled "You are Here". I actually used a bit of this for a speech in one of my comm classes and feel that it is one of the most inspirational while at the same time, put-in-our-place couple of paragraphs I've ever read.

Within the blue circle is the "pale blue dot" we call home. The picture was taken by a Voyager satellite as it left our solar system and turned around for a look back. Enjoy:

That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out there lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar", every "supreme leader", every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

2 Year Agreement (with myself)

2009-05-31T16:09:00.005-04:00

To any of you, if there are any, who missed my writing, I'm sorry it has been so long since my last post. Since then, I've had semester finals, a move back home for a brief summer, and a jump right back into hectic work weeks and friend-filled weekends. That leaves little time for blogging but, with the conclusion of a rather significant period of time ending soon, I felt it was necessary to devote a bit of time to it.

Two years ago, give or take a day (take one), I ended my last high school relationship. After a bit of time, I realized that almost the entire two years previous (50% of high school!!), I had been in a dating relationship of some type. There was a lot of good things to come from those two years, and I certainly learned things from them that I could have obtained in no other way. But I decided that the next two years of my life were going to be drastically different than the previous ones and that college was going to entail a much different outlook than high school. As a result, I formed a sort of 2-year pact with myself that I was going to remain single and devote those years to myself, to my education, to experiencing life, and to do all of this while not being restricted in any form by a relationship. (Disclaimer!!!: I know that not all relationships are chains and whips. But, if I were to truly care about someone, I would want to treat them properly and give them the time they deserve. And that necessarily takes time away from other things that were to go on in those first couple of years in college.)

Well believe it or not (believe it), that pact will come into completion tomorrow, June 1st. That is correct. Two years have passed and I have remained 100% single for the entire two years.

In retrospect, quite a lot has resulted from my decision, most, if not all, of it for the better. As of right now, I can only see good stemming from it. Who knows, that could change. I do know there was a (now) noticeable psychological effect on me. It was something that I didn't fully discover until a few days ago, but I fully believe it was there the whole time. However, it seems to not have caused a problem. Luckily I was able to see it and begin working against it.

So I guess one thing I can offer to anyone who would consider making a resolution of any type, is try to recognize what it would actually create within you. Try to see how a given resolution would affect your mind and your outlook on the world and those around you. A noble goal may create some unforeseen stepping stones along the way that may not be so good to have in your possession.

Where do I go from here? Who knows... (actually I might). Regardless, I step forward into a new period of my life, using all the information I've gained from the past two years, taking on new things as they come, and experiencing life all along the way... with whomever may be experiencing it there with me.

.....ladies.

Last day in April

2009-05-01T14:18:00.003-04:00

Well I am officially done with all my classes for the Spring semester of my sophomore year. Consequently, I decided this would be a good time to post a blog before I begin the studying process. Two tests (non-comprehensive) on Monday. Latin test Tuesday. Paper Wednesday. Paper Friday. I'm glad my week fell into place like it did; it could certainly be worse.

Yesterday something happened to me that has never happened before. Little things built up and a few key events occurred back-to-back that tipped it off. I won't deal with specifics (I don't feel this is the appropriate venue for such conversation) but I would gladly discuss it with anyone that desires to know more.

It only lasted about 3 hours. For that, I am thankful. Others have certainly experienced longer bouts of this than that. I suppose you could call it a mood or perhaps a disposition. There were no dangerous thoughts or anything along those lines. In short, it involved a great deal of foundational introspection and radical thinking/questioning. But like I said, I don't wish to discuss anything more than this on here.

I do want to talk about what brought me back. There were three things.

1) A good friend. I'm not much for sentimental *explicative*. However, in this situation, the "ear-to-listen" that this friend embodied certainly was and still is appreciated. More than that, this friend pointed me to the things that matter in this life, the things that truly matter. All it took was directing me toward a picture, toward a memory captured, toward a history of a friendship, wrapped up into a plainly framed moment. Simple, yet shining brightly.

2) music. I'm not sure I will ever have the first clue as to how music is able to affect me the way it does. I have always been fond of music. Over the past 3 years, I have grown to love it though and as a result, it has become a part of who I am. But last night, music had an even more meaningful impact on my life/personality/thoughts. It motivated me. It kicked me in gear. It grabbed me, and pushed me forward.

3) philosophy :) Did you really think I could discuss this post without bring philosophy into it? There are pros and cons to philosophy [enter the audience's gasps of shock here]. As much as I would like to say that it is always good, it does have its drawbacks. I personally tend to equate it with and define it as "the questioning spirit" (that is just my view). And similar to the questioning spirit, where you are led can be disheartening and unfulfilling. You can either not find an answer, which can, but shouldn't always, be troubling, or you may not be comforted by the answer that is your result. Either way, the result of philosophy/"the questioning spirit" can be scary and very real.

But how did it help me on the last day of April? Well it wasn't a general aspect of philosophy but rather a specific thought (One huge upside to philosophy is the reality that pretty much everything ever has a philosophy and has been discussed intelligently, or perhaps not so, by someone somewhere). Last night I recalled a quote by Richard Comstock. He said, "If a person were to believe that the cosmos is moral, then one would attempt to behave morally, and thus [help] confirm their thesis." This was an example of a "truth requiring antecedent belief", which I actually critiqued James' use of them in my paper, but in this instance, I agree wholeheartedly.

To conclude this rather lengthy post, I'll state the thought in my own words: "If you believe the world to be moral, you first must act accordingly." Ponder that piece of prose people!

Memphis Undergraduate Philosophy Conference 2009

2009-04-21T21:56:00.004-04:00

I've been wanting to post a blog about my trip to Memphis, and in light of wanting to put off necessary reading, I decided this would be an appropriate time. I've spoken to quite a few of you about it but there are others out there who I haven't informed so hopefully this isn't too redundant for those of you I have discussed this with.

I left at 245 A.M. Friday morning along with my friend and colleague Brian. We arrived at Loveless Cafe. just outside of Nashville, TN, around 730 or so. Dr. Weinberg from IU had recommended it for its excellent fresh biscuits, and I've very glad he did. From the time I got done eating, until I ate sushii at 9 P.M that night, I only ate a bagel around 1. That was one heckuva meal!

The keynote (presented by a professor) was a new perspective on philosophy for sure. It dealt with the epistemology and metaphysics of MLKJ and Malcolm X and how their views, which only differed in slight ways, affected their equally (in)famous, yet variant, responses to violence. Oh and as a sidenote, he basically said that 99% of whites were (and most still are) morally deprived (himself included) due to how they treat Blacks and their personhood. After his talk, it was tough to disagree.

There were 10 undergrad presenters. Each one was in an area I had little to no prior knowledge/background in. That was my favorite part. I came away from the conference with a whole list of topics/philosophers that I want to look further into! I also met a lot of cool people in the short time too, from Arizona, to Missouri, to Arkansas, to Tennessee, to South Carolina, to Pennsylvania! I ate some good sushi Friday night, and BBQ grilled tofu in a black bean chip dip for dinner Saturday night. Needless to say, I packed a ton of experience into about 48 hours (of which, was about 16 hours of driving).

As far as my presentation itself, I was pleased with it. I don't think I deserve an award, but I was happy with how it went and there know major or attention-detracting faults. I had a couple good questions, one of which, I'm going to have to look into to see how it affects my paper. But that positive is only small in comparison to the people I met and the topics I became aware of for further study.

But I think what I take away from the short weekend is the overall experience. Like I said, I was not gone from Muncie, IN, for more than 50 hours, but I still came away from it with a ton! Most significantly, I further solidified my desire to continue on my present path and stay in Philosophy. Ever since my first class I had fallen in love with the subject, but there is a distinction to be made between loving philosophy and loving the professional/academic side. This weekend proved I love both aspects.

I got back at 5 AM Sunday morning, took a short nap, did some homework, and then was fortunate enough to have my family in Muncie to enjoy the afternoon with! It was a great 3 days to say the least!

The Masters

2009-04-12T14:39:00.003-04:00

Every year, I become entranced. The question is: "Why". I do not watch golf any other weekend out of the year except maybe twenty minutes of a Sunday final round of the US Open or another major if its a close finish and I happen to not be busy. For the Masters this year, I've followed Thursday and Friday, watched a good amount with it muted Saturday, and I've been watching since it began today.

I surely hope it is not the horrid advertising that somehow grabs my unconscious (because I consciously hate those ads). I'm not sure I've heard more wimpy, agonizingly-nostalgic narrating for a sporting event than Mike Turico and Jim Nance on those commercials. "The masters, a tradition unlike any other..." and that sickening piano music they play when they show the scoreboard.... *wince* They even have 114 year-old Pat Summerall for some of the 3 second ads when they come back from the commercials. Thats it, just 3 or 4 three second ads... Thank you Pat Summerall.

But then again, maybe it is the fact that the Masters is hyped up like it is. Maybe all the attention it receives makes me want to pay attention.

In any case, I'll watch the rest of the day to see if Phil continues his Birdie-fever and catches the leaders or if Tiger can catch fire by feeding off of Phil's pace. Or maybe one of the leaders will stave both of the superstars and win their first green jacket. Either way, I'll be watching, and who knows why.

Different World-Views and Different Rationales (sp?)

2009-04-04T21:25:00.004-04:00

At philosophy club last fall, we discussed a summer field-study of a small handful of philosophy students who traveled to Professor Kalumba’s home country of Uganda. The goal of the field-study was to see if there was any truth to the claims of an anthropologist who dwelled with a tribe of Africans for almost 30 years, and published a book, in 1959, on his view of their philosophy. But for this post, it doesn't really matter what he concluded, I was more shocked by their experienced way of going through life.

The Bantu are a tribe with very traditional beliefs. To this day, they belief that your ancestors and (their idea of) gods are influencing factors on almost every event in their life. For instance, they belief that if one were to get bit by a mosquito that there were two causes. The first cause, would be the mosquito biting them, but the final cause would be either god or an ancestor inflicting this upon them. They believe that for every event, there is a reason behind it, viz. there is a supernatural power manipulating the natural world. They see the current events in their life as directly resulting from either a past trespass or good deed done to the gods or their ancestors. When there is an ailment, they go to a type of witch-doctor who prescribes some actions that would appease their ancestors or god and wash out their previous trespass.

Recently, a cousin of professor Kalumba was sick. She went to a M.D. and found out she had cancer. Then she went to a witch-doctor and the doctor told her to do so and so. 2 months later, she died. But this is not a problem for the tribe. The blame is put on the cousin. The witch-doctor didn't fail, because he simply has to say that the cousin didn’t do all he prescribed.

But here is the rub, this doesn't bother them. They have no concern that there could have been another result. They don’t use experience to try different methods of curing. They have no knowledge of the scientific method (or similar methodologies). They ‘know’ their beliefs are the right ones, and that there is no other way. The witch-doctor certainly doesn’t keep records of who he saves and who he kills. What happens was meant to happen.

But don’t they realize that there may be other ways of achieving their goals? The answer is no. Their world-view completely directs their beliefs. It simply is what there is. They have no reason to question it. We feel that the reasonable thing to do is to get medical help, but to them, the rational thing is to go to the witch-doctor and do what he says. Their world-view dictates reality and what is rational.

This has been a huge eye-opener for me. Its simple, but has had a profound impact on me. To me, it shows that what is rational, is subjective, and relative to the individual subject and their social location. Rationality isn't this objective ideal, but rather a personal approach to life. For some, that may be a no-brainer, but it certainly wasn't to me. As a result, this story has dramatically affected how I tend to view the different situations I'm presented with.

Quick post: Pictures of Reality

2009-04-02T07:40:00.003-04:00

Busy and exciting day today! Professor Jonathan Weinberg from Indiana University will be coming to give a presentation on "Armchair vs. Experimental" philosophy. Yesterday we realized the room we had reserved was not a "smart room" with a projector and computer. So we scrambled around to find a projector and then spent forever trying to make sure it was in working order. Things should be good to go.

I know I've linked this before but you all seriously need to subscribe to this picture blog from the Boston Globe. They post new photos about 2 times a week and they are usually quality, but there are some weeks where the pictures just grab you. This week's post is one of those posts. Enjoy!

Lastly, I just found out this morning that I was accepted to give a presentation of a paper I had been working on. It will be in the undergraduate part of the Midsouth Philosophy Conference taking place April 17th and 18th in Memphis, TN. I'm looking forward to seeing what people think of my work as well as hearing what everyone else is working on, at the undergrad, as well as professional level.

Misc. Post

2009-03-23T22:10:00.006-04:00

Well I said my next post would be light-hearted, so this will be that.

First, I'd like to point out that I just noticed how many labels (at the bottom of my posts) I put on all of the posts and that only 3 of them have been repeated. This means two things: (1) - my blogs haven't had very many related themes and (2) - the three repeats are what matter to me most. I believe (2) is exactly right. "Human beings" and their "value", and "philosophy" are the most important things in my life right now.

Second, does anyone know why we have to quotation marks outside of punctuation? (See the last sentence of the previous paragraph as well as all of the quotation uses below) I understand following the rule when it pertains to dialogue, but why should that rule follow when you're just referring to a short phrase that you want set off by quotations? It has nothing to do with the sentence as a whole, so why should the punctuation have to fit inside of the quotes?

Third, earlier I mentioned that I had 3 labels which had been tagged two times. Here's the catch, I'm going to label (appropriately so) those three things for this post considering I mentioned them in this post. So as I typed it in the 1st paragraph, was incorrect for me to say the proposition that "those labels have been tagged 2 times"? I guess as I typed it, it was not, but as you read it, it is.

abstract form: I say, "A", followed by "this line contains one "A".

How can I form a statement over time when the very statement I'm trying to say defeats itself? My 2nd statement is true when I form it, but after it is formed, it becomes false.

Does this have ramifications for everyday life? Maybe and maybe not. Any ideas out there? Time and knowledge is a possibility for one of my papers coming up here so that is my particular interest in this subject right now.

Follow-up to Previous Post

2009-03-21T13:15:00.004-04:00

I asked my readers to respond to the last post concerning certain African churches and their treatment of what they call "witch" children and I am very pleased with all those who took the time to contact me! That being said, I need to apologize for the immaturity that pervaded the last post. I homogenized an entire religious stance in one paragraph. It was simply unacceptable.

I tried to show that whatever you believe, this should affect you. But what came out was, "If you're Christian, you're wrong, and if your secular, you need to show Christians that they're wrong."

In regards to me putting words into Christian's mouths, that was uncalled-for as well. My whole point of that bit was to say that, when I was a Christian, those were things I heard which I found to be unacceptable. Now, they seem even more so. So what I was asking for was a response that went above and beyond the common phrases that were thrown around before. It did not come across as such, and again, I apologize. All the responses I did receive did count as being more than those simple phrases.

Before I received all the responses I did, I was actually planning on coming up with a new post. I noticed a majority of my blogs come across as 'religion-bashing.' We all know there are plenty of those, and I did not want this to be a space for that. And my last post went above and beyond all my others in its anti-religion statements. So I wanted to say I do not want this blog to be only concerned with religion and that I will keep it much more balanced as this blog evolves.

Almost speechless

2009-03-18T22:04:00.004-04:00

This video is... well I can't find appropriate words for it. [original link is no longer available, try youtube. it breaks it up into 9 parts but it should still work]

I just ask that you watch at least the first 7 to 10 minutes, but I think the full time of the video is most impactful. Also, if you do only have time for the first ten minutes, you must also skip to 31 minutes in and watch the clips of the evangelism video created by an African church.

I will give a few of my reactions as best I can, while at the same time trying to not effect how you view this video. So I would suggest first watching it, to get your own views, and then read my personal thoughts below.

- I do not care what you believe, this raises problems for your belief structure.

If you're religious (Christian especially since Jesus' name is being evoked in this video), well... I'm sure you can justify this is some off-hand way or just say that we cannot understand the ways of the spiritual, but I will NOT accept those accounts. If you take that route, you must have more meat to your argument than "the will of god is unknowable" because this horrendous experience deserves way more consideration than that.

If you're secular, we have only ourselves to blame and this call to action is urgent. We cannot keep on mutilating our society like we do. Superstitions and myths have dominated our race for far too long. (I'm not saying Christian doctrine is useless but the Old Testament certainly discusses ostracizing wayward children and stoning delinquents, punishments not unlike some of the appalling occurrences shown in this video.) But more importantly, action is required if we have only humanity to blame. We cannot fallback on saying things will work out in the end. We have to take a stand and bring about this change ourselves.

- This reminds me of the witch trials of Salem as well as the Dark Age period where the church had ultimate authority and could account for any aberrant behavior as evil and demon-like.

- I'm simply disgusted.

The Good and Bad of Movies

2009-03-11T23:45:00.003-04:00

Movies are dangerous. In my opinion, they are the most expressive of the possible mediums we as humans have at our disposal. By being able to combine both the oral and visual transmissions of ideas, movies mirror reality more closely than any of the other forms of expression such as books/novels/poems and paintings and songs. Don't get me wrong, I find all of the latter to be great vehicles for communicating thoughts and feelings from one to another, but movies, due to the reasons I mentioned above, are able to have a much more drastic and direct effect upon us.

Often times, I will catch myself doing something that I would only have seen in a movie. Certain facial expressions, catch-phrases, mannerisms, all from movies. I know for a fact that the first time I ate after watching the Dark Knight that I licked my lips like the Joker. Its cheesy, odd, and yet I found myself subconsciously mimicking the character (a villain no less) I saw on the big screen. Sometimes I'll even think of how I'm supposed to react in certain emotional situations based on some scene I can recall from a movie.

The dangerous aspect of movies lies in the fictitious and doctored-up storylines and acting (its called 'acting' for a reason) found within almost every single movie. While some movies more closely mirror reality, they almost always alter some portion of the narrative so that the story becomes movie-worthy. If movies were nothing but accurate representations of reality, there would be no problem or worry, but this is not the case.

But like I mentioned before, movies are, for me, the best method of portraying the various troubles and highlights of humanity. And personally, I love movies. I can watch a movie and spend hours discussing the quality of the movie, from the writing, to the movie-sets, to the themes found within the story; but sometimes I wonder if we are creating a false reality for ourselves by bombarding our mind with all these impactful scenes and stories, that for us, are so real, but in *reality* are merely 'fit for hollywood.'

Why Time Flies

2009-03-10T00:15:00.005-04:00

First off, I hate when people look back on a week and say, "Man that week flew by" or, "Ugh! This week will never end, it's going so slowly!" Unless the earth slowed down on its trek around the sun, the days and weeks still went by at the same rate. And yes I am somewhat aware of relativity, but as long as none of us were going light-speed, I believe we were all going about the same speed as we stayed attached to the earth. (That being said... I can't help but say it sometimes)

I'm going to present two ideas, none of which are mine, but that do seem to provide likely answers as to why we get these feelings of time 'flying' and why we always have to let everyone else know that it is for us.

I read this one awhile ago, but I can't recall where I read it. Its simple, yet makes complete sense. After one year of life, that past year was 1/1, or 100%, of your experience. After your twentieth year of life (of which I am about 4 months from completing!!!), the previous year was 1/20th of your experience. So each year, since we are unable to expand our brains, causes the percentages of our brain to get reconfigured. While this does seem too simple, and it probably is, it does make sense and is most likely correct to an extent.

This one comes from Jeff Hawkins (creator of the PalmPilot) in his book, On Intelligence. One of the main subcategories to his overarching theory is that the brain's neocortex has a hierarchy of cells. Thus, there are lower levels and higher levels to it. The lower level take in basic sensory experience and then relays this up to the next level. At the next level, those cell's input is comprised of the various neuron firings from the lowest level. As this level recognizes patterns, it relays to a higher level where they see a pattern and begin to do different things with it. This a very poor reconstruction of his argument but I think it will do for this.

Now when these patterns are something we've seen before, they follow a certain path and this pattern fits the previous path and so we recognize it (from memory). When it is new, it does not follow a common pattern. So while we see a person and we recognize (from memory) that it is a person on one of the mid-levels of the hierarchy (because all our low-level inputs show a pattern consistent with the inputs a person has normally given us), that is where it stops and we cannot associate a name with the person (which would be a higher-level task). So when a new series of inputs fits a pattern we've already seen, it is 'recognized'. If an experience is completely new, our neocortex takes notice of it and it goes all the way up the chain to the Hippocampus, where it is stored (in a sense).

Now how does this relate to why time flies???? Well Hawkins suggests that over time, and after more and more experience, we see less and less 'new' things. So while we may see 500 baseball games, they start to blend together because not a lot of 'new' experiences are occurring. We remember our 'first baseball game at Wrigely,' but we most likely won't remember the 73rd one, unless it happens to be the game the Cubs win the World Series (which would certainly be 'new' for us!!). In his diagram then, as a pattern is familiar, it will follow similar paths that we already have. If nothing new results, then it doesn't make it to the hippocampus. But if a guy spills his beer all over you in the 8th inning, that is most likely a new experience and it makes it all the way to the hippocampus to be stored. So while you may not be able to tell a friend how many strikeouts Zambrano had, you will certainly remember that spilled beer.

Again, I seem to avoid the question! But here is what it comes down to. As we experience more and more, less and less becomes 'new', because we have all this background that our brain is able to relate to the current situation. I think Hawkins uses the quote, "The more you experience, the less you remember." So in regards to the passing weeks of our life, as we experience less and less new information, it tends to not make it all the way to the hippocampus and as a result, we do not remember it. So weeks where we do 'the same old thing' are not the 'memorable' ones and our brain aptly 'discards' them.

another good example is people's names. Lets say you meet a new person and their name is generic, like Sarah. If you know 50 Sarah's that is most likely going to be tough to remember. But if her name turns out to be Jerra, it will most likely be foreign to you and you'll comment "Wow, that is a different name!" and you'll most likely remember that person and their name. While this is something we've all experienced, I'm still amazed at how Hawkin's theory is able to explain it scientifically and anatomically.

Side note: On Intelligence has become one of my top 2 or 3 books of all time. I've read it in two days and am disappointed it is over with. At the beginning of the book Hawkins says that when people read his book, they find themselves nodding in agreement with the things he says and how they can relate it to their lives. What is brilliant about his book is that it takes all these different aspects of our lives (on the scientific as well as social levels) and provides a theory of the brain that explains almost every part of them! While reading it, I did just what he said people usually do and thought back to all these instances that have occurred in my past that this theory explains. Now, after reading it through, I experience something and immediately think back to his book and how it perfectly explains what just happened (like with why people say "time flies").

I strongly encourage everyone to read this book! I know people always bombard you with these different books that they think is the greatest book ever, but seriously, this will change how you view your every-day life. I'm not saying you're going to quit your job and divorce your wife, but it will provide insight into why we do things we do and why we experience different things the way they do.

Tuesday Morning Thoughts

2009-02-24T10:04:00.002-05:00

A very good aspect of my studies of interest is that they allow me to do a lot of thinking. A very bad aspect of my studies of interest is that they allow me to do a lot of thinking...

As a result, I end up with somewhat unproductive mornings (academically speaking) like this. I begin to read a chapter of a book, I begin thinking about the contents of the chapter (which is what I'm supposed to do), and then my thinking begins to drift. This is not an unconscious wandering, but a thoughtful trail of thoughts. All too often I am nowhere near the original themes of the book and I end up with thoughts like these:

I believe we all have ridiculous beliefs. Some of us, have them and don't know it. Some of us have them, know it, and don't care. And then there are those of us who have them, realize it, and subsequently try to rationally dig ourselves out of them. But I feel that any attempt to rationalize our old beliefs or construct new ones will ultimately lead us to equally absurd positions; these positions are just more thought out. I think, to an extent, that this is what philosophy is. It's an attempt to rationalize our belief systems and the world around us. But the complex, if not crazy, results we are left with just go to show how inadequate we truly are at understanding our existence and the world we inhabit.

A simple example is the fact that we have gotten all the way back to questioning how/if the mind and body relate. As a result, you have Malebranche and his idea of occasionalism: that every time you want to make an action, god necessitates it. That was his explanation for how, when our 'mind' wants our body to do something, our physical body does it. Even more shocking are the metaphysical attempts to prove/disprove identity. We aren't even sure if there is an "I"!!!!!!! Hume gives us yet another example of an, on the face of it, absurd idea that matter can be infinitely divided. Mathematically we can't refute it, yet it simply seems nonsensical.

In the end, whose to say the more complex, and perhaps more thoughtful answers are more tenable than the inital, perhaps irrational, thoughts that we start out with?

Both Hume and James (I'm sure there are many more, but these are pretty much the two that I've studied at any depth thus far) are philosopher's that my preceding statement seem to line up with. Both point to the fact that even seeking truth (whether through reason, science, or something else) is just another belief we have which we are impotent to validate against any other.

Well I am one who champions the search for truth, whatever that may be and in whatever form it may take, but I can't prove to you that my position is any more rational than any other.

And now off to Epistemology, where we will be discussing whether it's possible to construct a structure of knowledge such that we can ever truly know anything....

Life Captured by Photo

2009-02-04T16:06:00.003-05:00

The Boston Globe has a picture blog they update at least once or twice a week. I cannot get enough of it. This week revolves around Bolivia and their new constitution. I'm not sure I've seen pictures that are able to capture the moment, the scenery, and all the emotion behind the people that are photographed. Who knew one still-frame picture could say so much about the people it is capturing.

I highly recommend checking out the archives too. But beware! It's addicting and you may spend the next 5 hours going through them.

Enjoy!

Revitalization

2009-02-04T08:33:00.004-05:00

Revitalization: a constant construction of an end as a conscious or unconscious realization of the lack of a final one.

It's seen everywhere: sports, church, school, video games, running, education, and in every goal we create. In every event, we *create* the end (or the final event). But the fact is, they all come to pass.

Sports:
The championship happens again the next year (or in four years for the olympics). But what does this final goal (of a championship, or perhaps a lesser goal of a .500 record) require of us? Concentration and commitment. Conscious time, effort, and devotion, It's something that gives us a reason to keep struggling through life.

Video Games:
Now, with the advent of the avatar and Gamer-Ranks, all those meaningless single-session games (whether football or halo) are now valuable. Creating these final ends, we are making our little tasks that we go through day-to-day worth something. And as a result, we have addiction. People are addicted because they have to play more and more games to *improve* their character on WoW, their EASports tag in Madden and their team slayer rank on halo. But there is no end, just the opportunity at improving your character.

Church/Religion (this one might be touchy):
I was always confused as to why we had to keep having retreats and conferences and special events at church (why can't the love of an all-powerful god sustain us without having to fully submerse ourself in and with fellow believers to boost our *faith*-bank). The answer back then was that the devil (or society) had been dragging you down, slowly draining you. I agree that we slowly become worn out from living, but I no longer believe there is a devil on the other end. I also disagree with having to go on a retreat to get revitalized. So in this sense, these conventions are a way to drill in to your head that there is some final end, and that, as a result, all this living is going to be worth something in the end.

Running/exercise:
This became my baseball and my religion. What do you do? You sign up for a race 4 months down the road and suddenly you have a purpose for those 4 months. But then the race comes and goes, and what are you left with? A sense of accomplishment sure, but what do we almost invariably do? We sign up for another one, because a sense of accomplishment does little for our life down the road.

Conclusion:
I think life is a series of small goals, constructed in such a way as to keep us moving forward. What about all those people working for the weekend or getting through the last months of school for their spring and summer breaks? (I don't think this is a new concept but) what about mid-life crises? You get through high school to get to college. You get through college to get a good job. You keep working hard to get promotions. Now what? All of the sudden, we realize all the goals we've created for ourselves have gotten us to this point, but they're ends have come and pass. We are constantly unsatisfied with some aspect of our current selves, so we create a goal to improve ourself, and so it goes

What happens if we no longer create goals for ourself? Desire, the essence of human existence, is expunged and leads to apathy and nothingness. But I don't want to be depressing on this hump-day. I don't believe there has to be a final end. Perhaps, if we continue to have goals to aim for, a final end is not necessary. Surely a life of constantly striving for our goals is one that will be *meaning*ful and show us that a final end is not needed to have joy in this life we've been given. We must also live in the present,but that is for a whole other post or 5.

Well this is far too long, and although I feel that I could write on this forever, I have some homework to do... so I can do well in this class... so i can get a degree... so I can get into grad school... so I can get a good job, make money, and retire young.

Lucky for me, there is a lot of knowledge at the end of my rainbows.

Dangerous Philosophy

2009-01-24T11:44:00.000-05:00

Monique D. Davis (D) representative of the 27th district of Illinois criticizing Robert Sherman, an atheist activist, in front of a Government committee: "I’m trying to understand the philosophy that you want to spread in the state of Illinois. This is the Land of Lincoln. This is the Land of Lincoln where people believe in God, where people believe in protecting their children.… What you have to spew and spread is extremely dangerous, it’s dangerous... dangerous to the progression of this state. And it’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists!"

"land of Lincoln":

Lincoln never explicitly expressed a religious belief, and certainly never joined a church nor pushed beliefs upon another (Lincoln's religious beliefs are disputed by historians. Wikipedia has a page with references to multiple books discussing them). So the "land of Lincoln", while having relevance as a motto for democracy, freedom, and equality, is a phrase that does not appear to have any religious significance.

Freedom:

Lincoln emancipated thousands upon thousands of human lives with his presidency and set a precedent for taking a stand on the belief in the value of human equality. What is Ms. Davis calling her state to do? Repress ideas, perspectives, and values of one type, while force feeding and indoctrinating values of another. I am not a Lincoln biographer... but I highly doubt this is something Lincoln could side with.

Dangerous:

What is dangerous? The spreading of information and diversified perspectives? The belief that human beings have intrinsic and inherent value? The belief that children, while being young and thus impressionable, are nevertheless valued human individuals and consequently should be presented with multiple viewpoints such that they may begin to form their own values, rather than become a mirror of ignorant ideology which suppresses views that conflict with that ideology?

I for one say that what is dangerous is exactly what she is imploring of her fellow statesmen. She is calling for the suppression of ideas and the rejection of varying perspectives. These varying ideas say nothing more than the following: we as humans can think for ourselves and determine our own values based on the diverse viewpoints we are presented with; that this life is beautiful; that each human matters in themselves; that we do not need a judge in the sky to make us moral. If these ideas are *dangerous*, then consider me a daredevil.

Philosophy:

I myself will continue to be a daredevil, spreading my ***dangerous philosophy*** which seeks nothing more than the liberation of human value and perspective. Such dangerous philosophy has germinated in the Land of Lincoln. The land of Lincoln being not just Illinois, but these United States of America which he left behind. "The land of the free..."