A Love Heuristic

I continue to slowly read Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow. I recently wrote a post about the title and how I take exception with it. But no matter that.

Kahneman has written a very impressive book. But his methods and his goals are different than mine, I think.

His goal is to show that humans are systematically biased, always relying on heuristics to guide our thoughts and choices. Moreover, Kahneman is skeptical of the possibility of reconfiguring our heuristics and biases so as to improve our capacity for intuitive judgement. Kahneman, it seems, thinks we should do our best to become aware of our heuristics and biases, and should augment our choices with statistical and other types of knowledge.

Choice, this seems to imply, should not be left entirely to intuition, but should be about the intelligent/statistical evaluation of intuitions.

This makes sense to me. I think that Kahneman is right that we will never be able to completely break down and reprogram our heuristics.

But I don't think that we should give up on the idea of training intuitive judgement. I think that we must strive for the purposeful creation of heuristics and biases. We must work to structure our intuitive apparatus, we must try to purposefully create habits of thought and action.

The one habit that I have worked to cultivate in myself is the habit of love. Loving myself, loving the people I know, loving the people I see around me, loving the world.

The more I go forward with thinking the more I am convinced that Gandhi and MLK had it right. Proper morality, proper politics, must be built on a foundation of love.

All of this has something to with what I wrote about God. Because I've realized that what I'm talking about can be called God, but doesn't necessarily need to be. It can be called oneness, connectedness, or the quantum self or some other craziness like that. But there is something serious going on in oneness, in feeling a sense of connection to everyone around us.

I am in the habit of loving these days. I want to keep cultivating that habit.

Dare to think.

Dare to love.

Absence.

On Friday I'm flying to California.

Nine days or something.

Family reunion.

What up, fams.

What up, Sea Ranch.

No computer.

Cell phone, sure.

Books, def.

Looking forward to disconnecting for a bit.

Excited to reflect for a minute.

Things are good.

I intend to do some substantial work when I return.

Both on my new writing project and on my future.

I Long For God.

I was raised somewhere between agnosticism and aggressive atheism. I am at home with both of these ways of thinking.

But in my heart I long for some conception of god.

Not a god like the Christian god.

Not a god like some sentient being that controls everything and has some awesome plan.

A god like the force, like chi, or like Reiki.

Because I am indeed Reiki trained.

I suspect there are things going on in the world beyond the material.

I believe in matter.

But I suspect the existence of other things.

This is all wild speculation. But I have very little tolerance for hardline atheists.

Atheism simply will not do.

Plus, I love the way Rilke speaks of god.

I share with you:

 In The Book of Hours Rilke writes:

"What will you do, God, when I die?
I am your jug (and I will shatter)
I am your drink (and I'll go bad)
I am your clothing and your calling,
you'll lose all reason, losing me.

With me gone, you'll have no house
where warm words will welcome you.
Without me, you'll have no sandals:
your exhausted feet will wander bare.

Your mighty cloak will fall away.
Your gaze, which my cheek took in
soft and warm, like a pillow,
will arrive here, look, search long–
and finally at the end of sunset
lie down in the lap of alien stones.

What will you do, God? I'm afraid."

Oh fucking christ...

This poem moves me so deeply and I don't understand why.

Partly because I feel like a universe in myself.

What will the world do without me?

Don't you know that I am the keeper and bringer of all these riches and pains?

Don't you know that the world's depths reside within me?

Don't you see that without me the universe would have no way to know itself?

I don't really long for God.

But I might.

Instantaneous Retroactivity, Or, How Being Responsible Means Being a Historian

This post's title is absurd.

Part of me chose the title because I like the absurdity so much.

But I really am trying to say something with that title.

Right now the thing I'm trying to think about is the retroactive elements in responsibility. I want to know, Why is it that responsibility can be claimed days, months, or years after an event has occurred?

How is it that the idea of responsibility leaves room for such retroactivity?

Responsibility contains these retroactive elements because its core, I suspect, is narrative (and history).

Responsibility, in other words, is nothing more (and nothing less) than telling a story in which we are responsible.

But what about those moments in which responsibility is immediately claimed? Because, while responsibility can be retroactive, it can also be instantaneous. We can approach a situation and know fully what we are doing, and claim responsibility for in that moment, with zero retroactivity. Responsibility is fully claimed in the moment, and no (or minimal) retroactivity exists.


But is it possible to fully claim responsibility for an action in the exact moment in which it occurs?


I have two doubts about this.


First, we never know exactly what our actions will do. Perhaps in the short run, in 5 minutes we see the anticipated results. But there will always be unforeseeable longterm consequences. If we never know quite what we do does, then we can never quite assume full responsibility for our actions (unless we do it retroactively). 


Second, I believe that human action only becomes intelligible in terms of narrative and story telling. So, for us to claim full responsibility for an action we must have a full narrative of the action and its outcomes. But that narrative can never be perfect. So I guess this second point is really just an extension of the first point. 


In either case, my conclusion is the same: Responsibility can only be claimed after an action through the construction of an explanatory narrative that renders our own actions intelligible.


We cannot claim responsibility in the precise moment of an action because we never know what we do does.


Responsibility can only be retroactive.

Responsibility can only be a form of historical thought. 


It may be possible that there is such a thing as instantaneous retroactivity, or near instantaneous. Because maybe we have a good narrative that predicts the outcomes of an action, and we can apply that narrative to our actions in a moment with minimal reflexivity.

But, at best, this is a sort of instantaneous retroactivity.

We cannot claim full responsibility for an action until it has been performed. No matter how quickly we do it, it is still a past action that we are claiming responsibility for.


Responsibility is a species of historical thought, through and through.


To be responsible is to be a special kind of historian.

This is the claim I am working on in my latest essay.

This conclusion is sitting more and more comfortably with me, but I don't yet know how I intend to demonstrate it.

The Ease of Anger. The Power of Love.

I can remember a moment.

It was probably early 2007. I was listening to The Smiths. I was walking up a flight of stairs near the University of Maryland's gym.

I remember the lyric: "It's so easy to laugh. It's so easy to hate. It takes strength to be gentle and kind."

Such a bomb that lyric dropped on me.

Perhaps Morrissey is no philosopher and I shouldn't take that lyric too seriously. But I do.

It is easy to laugh, easy to hate, easy to be angry.

For me, at least, it is easy to be angry.

I was angry most of today, most of this weekend.

I had no patience for anything. I was snapping inside.

I, of course, was polite to my customers. I worked hard, I did what I had to do.

But I wasn't happy about it. Not at all.

Yet I need to remain strong. Love takes work. I need to stay strong.

I remember once when someone told me they wanted to see me angry. My answer: 'You wouldn't like me when I'm angry'. Then I turned huge and green and ripped their head off.

Just kidding.

That person never saw my anger.

Most people never see my anger.

I don't want them to see my anger.

I don't want to see my anger.

There is nothing in anger to be lauded. I do not think anger a virtue. I think it a shortcoming. I think it a failure.

Anger is a defense.

To think anger as essential is to fail to see the true origin of our emotions.

Anger is always a defense against pain, against embarrassment, against shame, against what have you.

So why does anger come so easily to me?

Because my emotions are fucking intense, man.

I'm a freak. I'm bursting at the seams at every moment. I can hardly contain myself.

If only I could find the words.

If only.

Hey. Guess what?

I don't need those words.

Because, ugh.

I just know it.

I know that it is easy to be angry.

And I know that Rilke is right when he tells me to trust in what is difficult.

Because life is difficult.

Life, too, might be simple.

But just because it is simple doesn't mean it isn't hard.

In A Moment

My entire mood can change.
I apologize about the egg shells.
I don't know my own strength.

I sat down and suddenly I realized
How much fun I am having and
How much I don't want this life to end.

How much I was lying when
I told them that I was fine and
That I didn't care about them.

I'm better than fine.
I'm the worlds greatest and
I am living the dream.

Tomorrow, I do get to experience
Another day in paradise.

A Delightful Development

I've been so confused about how to develop a concept of historical morality.

But all of this thinking about responsibility and stuff has got it all going like crazy.

I've got this excellent new outline, and I'm really excited about it.

The problem is this.

Modern conceptions of freedom and responsibility typically rely on ideas like thought, will, reason, or consciousness.

Recent psychological research, however, is revealing how limited our self-knowledge is, and how out of control our feelings, thoughts, and actions are. We live far more intuitive lives than we think.

How are we to be responsible, then? If responsibility cannot be identified with consciousness, reason, or will, then what is it to be identified with?

My answer: it is to be identified with history. It is to be defined as a method of telling a story in which you are an agent, responsible for your thoughts, feelings, and actions.

This conclusion, as I noted in an earlier post, seems unavoidable if we ask ourselves, How is it that responsibility can be assumed well after an event? Days, even weeks or years can pass and we still have the option of claiming responsibility for something.

How can this be?

How, in short, to account for the retroactivity of responsibility?

I believe I can resolve this problem by arguing that responsibility is about being a special type of a historian. Specifically, a historian of your own actions. One that fully identifies with feelings, thoughts, and actions. One that sees past actions as expressions of our duty.


I believe that by approaching the issue of responsibility in this way I am making a great stride in my quest to develop a concept of historical morality.

The Symphony and Shared Experience

Tonight I attened the Seattle symphony's performance of Gustav Holst's 'The Planets'.

I almost didn't go.

I went with my aunt.

She called me about an hour before and said 'Riley! We can't get seats together! It is packed! But we could watch it separately, in the same vicinity and meet up after.'

My reaction: Fuck that.

I'm not trying to go to the symphony and sit by myself while I know that my lovely aunt is somewhere in the crowd watching the same thing.

How strange!

Shouldn't I just have been like, "oh, well what is the difference if we sit next to one another or not? We will still be seeing the same performance."

But it isn't the same.

I'm not there just for the symphony.

I'm there to share that experience with a mind that I know and understand. A mind that I love and want to be involved with.

 Thankfully, we ended up being able to get seats together. So we went and it was lovely.

I think this incident to be highly demonstrative of my tendencies.

I love people and sharing things with them.

I love to know that I am feeling what you are feeling, thinking what you are thinking, seeing what you are seeing.

This is the other side of my solitude.

I am a deeply alone person. I always feel solitary, I embrace my solitude. But when I can find a way to share something, I do.

I love to share.

I love to let my solitude approach another solitude.

I love to let my mind share with another mind.

I love to share experiences.

It makes me feel less alone.

It reminds me that there are many solitudes, and that we can love one another.

The Claim

I've begun to outline an essay on the issue of responsibility.

I hope to address the problems that I briefly raised in my last post.

The central claim is this: To be responsible is to be a special kind of historian.

A vague statement? Yes.

The claim arises out of the question: How do I account for the retroactivity of responsibility? How am I to explain the fact that responsibility can be assumed well after a thought, feeling, or action has occurred?

I will put some meat on the bones of these statements soon, I hope.

Responsibility

I want to badly to claim responsibility for my own life.

But there are so many things that are out of my control.

And I don't just mean big things like the year I was born or the weather today.

I mean that my emotions, my thoughts, and my actions, too, often feel out of my control.

I'm never sure why I feel, think, or do what I do.

Yet there must be a way to claim responsibility for all of these things.

I must claim responsibility for not only my actions, but my thoughts and feelings too.

But this is a tough task.

I have decided, however, that it has something to do with self-knowledge.

To claim responsibility for my feelings is to claim that I understand myself.

To claim responsibility for my thoughts is to claim that I understand myself.

But it is a retroactive sort of responsibility.

Because sometimes I do something in a moment and I don't understand it at the time. Then years later I can say 'aha, I understand why I did this. I can now say that I was indeed responsible for that feeling/thought/action.' Responsibility is something that is often claimed after the fact.

Responsibility has something to do with retroactivity.

Thus responsibility has something to do with narrative.

Thus responsibility has something to do with history.

And I suspect that responsibility has something to do with self-creation.

This is a short essay I hope to write: "Responsibility and Self-Knowledge"

'Art, Zen, and Insurrection' In Its Entirety

From September of 2010 until May of this year I occupied myself with a longterm writing project.

It was titled, 'Art, Zen, and Insurrection: Finding Personal and Social Change in an Aesthetic Existence'. The goal of the essay was to argue that aesthetics and ethics needed to be mutually elaborated: that it was worthwhile to conceptualize our lives as a work of art, and that this type of aesthetic life could be a moral life.

The project was inspired largely by Foucault's work in The Use of Pleasure, but was focused more heavily on Collingwood's The Principles of Art.

The project never panned out like I thought it would.

But it was an invaluable exercise. It helped me develop myself intellectually, and, more importantly, helped me become more expressive, more moral, more mindful.

I am happy to let it go and to present it to the internet in its full form.

You can find the document here.

Thanks.

Solitude and Love

I'm still thinking very much about solitude, aloneness, loneliness.

In that order.

I feel solitary in the best way.

I feel alone in a definite way.

I only feel lonely in the most distant way.

I want to embrace Rilke's definition of solitude, "a heightened and deepened kind of aloneness for the person who loves.... a high inducement for the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world in himself for the sake of another person" (Letters, 69).

I don't know who this other person is.

I don't need to know.

Because all I want to do is work on myself.

I just want to become capable of loving.

I feel much love.

For others.

For myself.

But I don't know if I will ever find another solitude, let alone one that will "protect and border and greet" me.

I don't think that should concern me.

Frankly, it does and it doesn't.

The Pleasure of Life's Necessary Business

Dishes.

Laundry.

Vacuums.

Cleaning.

I'm learning to enjoy it all.

People Make Sense.

What is an unintelligible action?

Is it the sign of an irrational, insane being?

Or is it the sign of a mind afraid of how many different ways people can think?

My Problem With Kahneman

I have read about 2/3 of Daniel Kahneman's new book, Thinking, Fast and Slow.

Kahneman is undoubtedly incredibly smart. He has decades of research under his belt, and clearly understands incredibly complex problems.

There is so much to be admired in his book.

I need to finish it, and I will.

There is, however, one serious problem I have with him that he has, so far, failed to adress.

The problem comes from the book's title. Kahneman claims that the mind is best characterized as having 'two systems': system one is fast, intuitive, makes quick judgements and snap decision; system two is slow, deliberate, rational, and logical.

This distinction is fair enough. We all know that our intuitive thought processes are immediate, they happen very quickly. We all know that we know how to think slowly, how to solive a math or logic problem by trying to spell it all out explicitly. On the surface the identification of intuition with speed and logic with slowness is reasonable.

But the story isn't that simple, and this distinction, after some reflection, does not sit well with me.

The best counterexample I can point to is Guy Claxton's Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind. In Claxton's book intuition occupies the position of slow thinking, while rationality occupies that position of speed. Intuition is the tortoise mind, reason is the hare brain.

Claxton's arguments are very persuasive.

Intuitive thought processes, indeed, can take years to complete themselves. Creativity is an example of intuitive thought that unfolds over years. Ideas need to gestate for very long times, and we experience them in this quick 'aha' moment, but it is unfair to say that they are 'fast' modes of thought when in fact it took years and years.

Rational thought, on the other hand, can also happen very quickly. We can spontaneously come up with a rational explanation of something, and we will quickly accept it.

Kahneman does not give credence to the fact that reason can be very quick, and intuition can be very slow.

I need to finish the book and see if he somehow resolves this trouble.

But, frankly, I'm very discouraged by this oversight.

To say that the mind is made primarily of two systems, and that these two systems correspond to the ideas of fast and slow, seems unsatisfactory.

Something ain't right about this distinction between fast and slow.

That is not the double bind that we find ourselves in.

There is something else going on.

All of the problems Kahneman describes are very real, and he has a lot of insights, but I don't think that they can revolve around this distinction between fast and slow thought.

Something about this ain't right.

States and Processes. Ends and Means.

There are no states.

Only processes.

If something ever looks like it has settled, relaxed, and passed into a 'stable state', don't be fooled. Soon it will change again.

It has only entered a new phase in a process.

This truth applies to all reality, but has special implications for the human world.

Human life, unlike the natural world, consists not only of states and processes, but of ends and means. Which is the same thing as saying that the human world is governed by the power of thought in addition to natural forces. An end is nothing more than a conceived state, a thought about a future type of situation. A means is nothing more than a conceived process.

States and processes are to the natural world as ends and means are to the human world.

In my world, I think, the analysis of ends is typically privileged over the analysis of means. We often hear that the ends justify the means. We like to think about what state of affairs we want to bring about, we picture the results of our actions rather than the actions themselves. 


This is one of Joan Bondurant's main concerns in Conquest of Violence, her analysis of Gandhian political philosophy. She insists that Western political philosophy falls short in that it is concerned primarily with ends: with the perfect political model, the perfect social contract, the perfect model of justice and morality. Gandhi's main contribution to political philosophy, she argues, is that he insists only on the analysis of means. Gandhi did not want to tell you what the perfect society would be, or even what society might look like after a particular revolution. Gandhi only wanted to tell you the best way to conduct a revolution: what principles to rely on, what types of action to take, how to organize people. Gandhi did not want to speak about ends, only means. What he wanted was the proper conduct of a process.

I want for this idea to infect me. I want it to become a part of what I am. I so dislike trying to conceive of the perfect future for myself. I so prefer to live in the moment and conduct myself in the way I think appropriate. Some planning is necessary, of course.

If I believe that there are no states and only processes, then a means-focused morality seems like the only possible alternative. I cannot use moral or political philosophy as a way to build a model of morality or judgement. I can only use philosophy to conduct a process better.

There is no end for human life other than living it well.

I believe I can live it best by committing to certain means: thoughtfulness, politeness, kindness, honesty, so on. All that good stuff.

The hope is that those means turn out to be what Gandhi called 'ends in the making', or that those means implicitly contain certain ends (that there are ends that are 'internal' to those means, as MacIntyre says).

The wager is that the ends do not justify the means, because the means contain ends of their own.

Understanding that everything is process, and the implication that morality must commit to means, is a lesson I'm trying to learn.

Everything will always be changing.

I shouldn't hope to ever reach a point in my life in which everything is complete, in which I've accomplished my goals and arrived at my final state. I should hope to conduct the process as best as possible, remaining flexible and being the best person I can be.

"And you wait, you wait for that one thing
that will infinitely enlarge your life;
the gigantic, the stupendous,
the awakening of stones,
depths turned round toward you.

The volumes bound in rust and gold
flicker dimly on the shelves;
and you think of lands traveled across,
women found and lost

And then suddenly you know: it was then.
You rise, and before you
stands the fear and prayer and shape
of a vanished year."

I refuse to let my years vanish in anticipation of some final state.

I won't wait for that end.

I want to live the means, be the process.

Because it is now.

Inspiration!

Is a funny word.

I'm never quite sure what it means to find inspiration.

Mainly because if I ever choose to look for it I never seem to find it. I wouldn't know where to begin looking for inspiration.

It mostly just hits me in the face.

And I think I know how to recognize it when it does hit me in the face.

I seize on it.

I've been doing lots of work lately. Good work.

I finished that long wacky essay (which I don't know how good it is or not).

It felt great. That is all I can say.

I'm working on a new drawing/painting right now.

I'm reading all this Rilke and he is blowing my mind.

I'm feeling 'inspired'.

There is a lot of energy in my heart and a ton of things going on in my life that I really like.

Rilke

I would have painted you: not on the wall
but on the sky itself from edge to edge,
and would have sculpted you, the way a giant
would sculpt you: as mountain peak, as raging fire,
as simoom blasting of of desert and sand–

Of Loneliness, Community, and History

Here it is, notes and all:

“I haven’t said too much, have I? There are things you should keep to yourself.” - Meat is Murder

1. The Story of My Loneliness
2. Loneliness and Solitude

3. Communities, Geographical, Economic, and Organized
4. History, Duty, and Forgiveness

5. Conclusion: Here I Am

1. The Story Of My Loneliness

I live a largely happy life. I am well liked by friends and coworkers. I eat good food. I drink good drink. I work hard to read, write, and stay thoughtful. I even exercise sometimes (throwin’ and catchin that sweet disc in the excellent way that I do).

The only problem is that words like ‘loneliness’, ‘alienation’, ‘nihilism’, ‘pain’, ‘suffering’, or ‘anger’ are never far from my mind. In fact, they are the words that I was raised to have ready at hand. Patersons sometimes have volatile, angry, lonely tendencies. No matter how much we love one another, no matter how much family and affection ease our pain, life’s grim realities are always waiting for their moment to return. Because attention will settle on them again and they will come back to life in a new form. It is very easy for me to feel, think, and speak in those ways, but I try not to. 

So what I want to do now is to tell you about this part of myself. I want to tell you the story of my loneliness. This story, however, needs to be told differently than my normal writing. For I am a philosopher, and my writing is often philosophical. Frankly, I speak most comfortably through references. But this time I won’t be doing that. I almost want this to be a memoir of sorts. I won’t be able to resist citing some philosophers or other thinkers. But largely I will be on my own. Telling you my story.

The story of my loneliness, however, needs to be told in relation to two other stories. 1. The story of my relationship with ‘community’, both in terms of concrete community and in terms of my conception of community. 2. The story of my relationship with history, this encompasses the history of the world around me, my own concrete history, and the history of my relationship with the idea of history.

Thus you can see the sections of this essay. From loneliness, to community, to history. Here I go.

2. Loneliness and Solitude

As I mentioned, the idea of loneliness or alienation is one that has been with me from the start. Aloneness is something that both of my parents openly acknowledged. I swear I can remember them both saying to me at one point or another something like ‘You know, I love you and your sister and your mother/father more than anything, but at the end of the day I know that I’m alone. We come into this world alone and we leave this world alone.’ Further, I knew both of them experienced intense feelings of loneliness and isolation at many point in their lives. I’m not sure what I made of this when I was young, but it has undoubtedly stuck with me. I’ve felt those feelings in me on many occasions. But on the whole I don’t think that I felt lonely for a lot of my life. I always had friends, I loved video games, and girls even liked me sometimes. Life through high school was largely good. Sometimes I was anxious or depressed, and yeah probably felt lonely sometimes too. There is a moment, however, when I can say that loneliness started to play a larger role in my life.

It was the summer of 2006. I had completed a year of school at University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC). In the fall I would be transferring to the main campus, the University of Maryland at College park. My status as a transfer-student, however, left me without on-campus housing. I was young and overwhelmed by the idea of finding a house or an apartment to live in. So I resolved to commute from my parents house, a mere 30 minute drive away. 

The social reality of my situation set in quickly. With very little effort at exploration I concluded that socializing with students on campus while living at home was going to be very difficult. I quickly lapsed into the habit of going to class and coming straight home, or maybe just skipping class altogether. I still hung out with my friends from home, but it pained me to be walking around a college campus full of peers and hardly speaking to any of them. I didn’t even have the nerve to speak to people in class very often. I was so painfully shy. I felt so incapable of initiating a conversation or of expressing myself honestly. Great pain hit me in those days, great feelings of loneliness. 

I can’t really even explain to you precisely what was going on with me. I was going through a lot of difficult personal things: the end of a long term relationship, a round of surgery that put me face to face with a traumatic child hood injury, a new social situation in a difficult housing situation. A constellation of events that really broke my heart. This was the first time in my young-adult life in which I felt seriously lonely and depressed. 

In the spring of 2007 I began working at the campus bookstore. I moved to College Park in the fall of that year. I met a fantastic professor and began to pursue military history, the thing I now intend to pursue as a career. Things were looking up in 2007. So much so that I declared it the year of the woodcat (woodcat being one of my many nicknames, of course). 

Acute loneliness left my life for a time. I was surrounded by coworkers who liked me and wanted to hang out. I was thriving intellectually. I began to mingle with the students and peers who worked in the building I did. But the power of that loneliness that I experienced in 2006 has never quite left me. In fact, I believe that something changed in me that year, and I think that the culture of UMD, combined with my circumstances, has something to do with it. I’ll return to this when I get to the section on community.

My time at UMD was really a great triumph. I lived in two excellent houses with many roommates whom I very much liked and still very much care for. My academic life was an outrageous, totally unexpected success. I underwent an intellectual awakening, learning to truly read and think for the first time. But socially I always felt like I was lacking. I didn’t pursue friendships like I do now, or would if I could do it again. I was too content to hang out with the same people, too hostile to clubs and other forms of organization. I didn’t date as much as I wish I had. I was very insecure. A sense of isolation still stuck with me. My new acquaintance with my intellect, however, gave me new ways of looking at my situation. 

The most substantial intellectual breakthrough that I made on this issue came from the distinction between loneliness and solitude. I was able to ask myself, ‘What is the difference between loneliness and solitude?’ In both instances, one is alone. Yet loneliness has all these connotations of pain and solitude of peace and pleasure. I was finally able to ask myself, ‘Why am I to think of myself as being lonely? What if I am simply solitary? What if I am enjoying my solitude?’ I remember telling my dad about this distinction and how it was helping me feel better.  In many ways, I think learning to think at UMD helped me think myself out of loneliness and depression. Never entirely, of course. But my new mindset, combined with my new friends from work and my intellectual triumphs, loneliness wasn’t a problem in 2007-2009 like it was in 2006. Sometimes I was lonely, but I was also capable of enjoying my solitude. 

In the summer of 2010 I moved to Seattle. I had graduated in December of 2009, and had been traveling and working in College park for the spring and early summer. But I had made up my mind to move to Seattle. I had friends out there, a bit of family. It was time to take a leap in life, move across the country. I knew that much of my life would probably be devoted to seriously scholarly work. So I wanted to spend my youth doing something wild, I wanted to live it urgently. I still want to live life urgently. 

There was also a bit of loneliness driving my move to Seattle. I had become frustrated with the social scene in College Park. I didn’t like many of the people. I didn’t want to move to Baltimore. Too many people I knew were already there. The loneliness I experienced then came from the feeling that there were so many people around me that I knew, but so few who really understood who I was or what I was all about, so few that I felt could really assuage the aloneness that I felt. I think I was misguided in thinking that. In hindsight, there are a lot of people who were around me who may have been able to ease my loneliness. I can now see potential friends, potential lovers, relationships that I didn’t explore because I was too depressed, wrapped up in my ideas of alienation and aloneness. That and a few girls did just simply turn me down. Lol. So my move to Seattle was in some ways about finding new people. New faces and bodies to make me feel less alone. Because the familiarity of my current world, somehow, left me feeling isolated. 

My move to Seattle, I think, was based on a logic that is characteristic of most modern conceptions of free will. At the time, I was thinking that I needed to remove myself from my present (determined) situation, radically break from my past and find a fresh set of circumstances in which I would be able to recreate myself. Modern morality, I feel and have been told, insists that freedom and choice are about breaks with the past, about the assertion of an individual will that is able to transcend personal or historical circumstance. This problem be rendered both in terms of habit and tradition. In his essay “Madness and Habit in German Idealism: Discipline between the Two Freedoms,” Slavoj Zizek argues that our modern conceptions of morality differ from ancient Greek’s precisely on the issue of habit. For the ancients habit was something that could be trained and cultivated, it could be a form of “organic inner rule,” thus an indispensable tool in the quest for freedom. Modern philosophers, like Kant, for example, believed that “freedom cannot ever become habit(ual), if it becomes a habit, it is no longer true freedom” (Zizek, “Madness and Habit in German Idealism”, 1, Google it). Alasdair MacIntyre, too, believes that modern morality characteristically endorses freedom as a break with habit or tradition. MacIntyre argues that modern philosophers like Sartre preferred to reject history and tradition as inauthentic. Instead, the individual alone is authentic, only you have the capability to create your own life beyond the circumstances of your time and place. “Indeed the self’s refusal of the inauthenticity of conventionalized social relationships,” MacIntyre argues, “becomes what integrity is diminished into in Sartre’s account” (After Virtue, 205). This view of freedom as separable from time and place, and as relying on a subject capable of exercising rational choice, is clearly problematic. We are not creatures without time and place. We are historically situated beings, both in terms of our own personal history and the larger history of our time. Nonetheless, I was, I believe, tacitly operating with many of these ideas in mind. I wanted to break from my history, from the traditions and habits that Janus had bestowed upon me.

I think this tendency to reject present circumstances in favor of a sort of rational autonomy can in part be explained by the plethora of narratives that we can use to explain our lives. Modern life is highly segmented. Within our own lives we distinguish between childhood, tweens, teens, young-adult hood and so on. In each of those phases I encounter more situations with more complex distinctions. I can choose my classes at the school I attend. I have to select a major and a potential career path. At each point I am presented with a new narrative about how my life will unfold, a new explanation about my life so far and my life to come. At every point in my life there has always been a narrative ready at hand by that I could emulate and compare myself with. It is this narrative density of our social space, I am thinking, that makes the modern rejection of circumstance and history appealing. I think that I was either overwhelmed by or unimpressed with the narratives I was already embedded in. I wanted this radical break that would offer the beginning of a new story. I am now philosophically opposed to this. The rejection of convention, tradition, and history becomes a weak position if we simply ask, “what would human actions deprive of any falsifying narrative order be like?” (Ibid., 214). What would authenticity beyond a determined social situation look like? In the final section on history I’ll be returning to things like narrative and history. 

When I arrived in Seattle I was too busy to feel lonely. I was living with a family member, I was applying for jobs the first morning I was there. I had old friends to catch up with. Loneliness wasn’t on my mind because I was on the frontier. I was exploring brand new neighborhoods. I was applying for lots of jobs. I was busy busy busy. What a nice and bizarre time it was. I began to have the oddest dreams. I would wake up at night and think I was in my parent’s old house, the one I grew up in and the one they sold. My mind was clearly dealing with a lot of new information. 

On my very first day I went to the University District to meet a friend. I walked up University Way, which from then on I would know simply as the ave. I saw a store, ‘The University Bookstore’. “Oh, of course there is a bookstore. Every college town needs a bookstore.” I had word for UMD’s campus bookstore and fancied myself qualified to work at such a business. I went inside and I asked the concierge if they were hiring. Little did I know, but I would come to know that concierge well. Seeing her many times, toasting many of her bagels. She kindly informed me that there was a barista position open and that I could apply on the third floor. To the third floor I went. The application I filled out. To the interview I went. And the job I was offered. 

I began work at the Bookstore Cafe on September 7th, 2010. I was initially apprehensive. Scared of making coffee and by my new circumstances. Thankfully, I stuck with it. Because now I reckon myself an excellent barista and I very much enjoy my work. 

More importantly to this story, the UBS quickly offered me many social outlets. I told myself that I wasn’t allowed to turn down an invitation, and I rarely did. I went out to many different neighborhoods with many different people trying several different things. I’m not sure how lonely I felt during that time. I can’t really remember. In December of 2010 I started dating someone, and that was nice. I felt less lonely then. We broke up eventually. After that I went through a bit of feeling lonely. I stayed single for quite some time. I was able to recognize what solitude was. I have been able to recognize my solitude. Because the situation I am speaking of is my current one. Pangs of loneliness that seem more minor than the ones of the past. I have many friends now, and I’m mostly comfortable with being single. 

The story of loneliness in Seattle is different from the story of 2006 because it has never been pure loneliness. It has been an aloneness that has intermittently been loneliness and solitude. Sometimes it is a definite loneliness. But that loneliness always retains the possibility of being transformed into solitude at any moment.

My solitude has grown vast during my time here. I wish I had my Rilke in front of me. Because it was only recently that Rilke spoke to me of solitude. And it is only in light of that reading that I am doing that writing right now. Don’t be afraid if part of me wants to drown my solitude by turning to other people. This is quite a normal reaction. It means, however, that there is something deep and vast in solitude. What a shame that I’m not able to recreate Rilke’s words. They made quite an impression on me. Branding my heart.

The story of loneliness and solitude in Seattle cannot be like the story of 2006. For in Seattle I have always had friends, always had new social opportunities presenting themselves to me. I have perhaps been less successful at dating than I would like. But I don’t fault myself for this. I just don’t seem to meet very many people that I like.

The story of loneliness and solitude in Seattle, instead, has to be told in different terms, in terms of the idea of community.

3. Communities, Geographical, Economic, and Organized

Before I begin this part of the story I’d like to make some general remarks about the idea of community. For the sake of thinking clearly I would like to distinguish between a few different types of communities. These different forms of community that I’ll be distinguishing will naturally blur in real life. Still, I find it important to distinguish between geographical communities, economic communities, and purposefully organized communities. 

By geographical community I simply mean that we come into contact with people and get to know them because we live in the same area. I see the same people on the streets, I see them in my apartment building. We begin to know one another simply because we spend time in the same geographical area. Geographical community, however, is inseparable from economic community. That is to say, me and all these other people near me come into contact most often in economic settings or in direct economic exchanges. Many of my exchanges take place in some kind of economic setting: I meet my friends at bars and restaurants where we buy food, I go to my favorite coffee shop and I talk to the baristas and see all the people around me, I talk to all kinds of people while I work. Of course these communities aren’t bounded by their economic background. Conversations still take on a meaning greater than the economic setting. We really feel for our coworkers and even our customers sometimes. But the economic setting still provides the foundation on which those interactions are built. 

Ok so the bulk of my social situations spring up because of geographical proximity and economic exchange. So what? Well, the only thing I want to note is that there is a certain type of community that emerges from the necessary business of life. Even if I just go about my routine of working I will encounter people, I will be friends with coworkers and customers, I will become a regular at certain coffee shops, and with all my new friends probably a regular at some bars, too. Community arises naturally out of my daily routine of work and leisure. This type of community, I will call ‘organic’ communities, (geographical and economic being examples). I in no way mean no imply that other forms of community are inorganic or inauthentic. I just want to be plain that there is a type of community that takes little or no effort beyond routine living.

There is also another type of community. Typically these communities are more purposefully pursued and organized. They are bound by common interests or practices, and not simply on geographical or economic realities. A group of people may get together and form a community, for example, because they like a similar type of music or because they share a common diet. Thus we have communities based on things like bands, vegan diets, or philosophical discussions. While these communities can also be authentic and ‘organic’, they differ in that they are more explicitly pursued and created. These types of communities don’t bubble up as frequently as geographical or economic communities do. The interests that bind these communities are by definition more specific and therefore need to be more purposefully pursued. Thus we find people online networking among fellow anarchists, fellow vegans, or fellow local bands. And we find these people very purposefully pursuing one another. 

These are the two types of communities that I want to distinguish between: organic and organized. (Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, perhaps?). Other than the way that they arise, what precisely, makes these types of community different? I want to argue that one way these types of communities differ is in the range of the references that support them.

Reference, I claim, is the crux of community. We cannot connect with other people and form a community unless we have some common knowledge, interest, or goal that organizes our language. In other words, ever community subsists on a certain pool of references from which its members must draw. In some cases, such as with organic communities, the pool of references is broad and consists of common facts and goals, such as the existence of money and of the practice of purchasing and enjoying coffee. No specialized knowledge is required to engage with these kinds of communities, their reference pools are broad. As a result, however, their reference pools are also very uncertain: we know what we have to say and think in order to order a cup of coffee, but it is not as clear how I am to handle the small talk I make with the barista. The broadness of the reference pool makes it easy to act generically (order a drink) but makes it harder to know how to conduct myself specifically (have a unique brief conversation). Purposefully organized communities, I think, depend on a more specific reference pool. That is to say, when communities are organized around things like diet or a music scene a more specialized knowledge is required to begin to engage with said community. One must understand the complexity of gluten-free or vegan diets if one wants to come into contact with those communities. Or one must understand the different bands in a certain scene. To function in an organized community one must accumulate the proper experience with the reference pool. One cannot move easily among a community unless one moves easily in its reference pool. 

I have little patience for highly specific reference pools (though I frequently indulge). I like my conversations to move strangely from one topic to the next, blending personal points with larger analyses. I also move very easily among certain specific communities. I can talk with other baristas about coffee and we will have a reference point that other people wouldn’t understand. I can speak in philosophical references that many people will not understand. I can talk about certain music in the same way. The list goes on. But in spite of my capacity for specific reference I stand by one conclusion: I must always be capable of engaging with an individual even if it is unclear what our mutual reference pool is. I always wants to be capable of abandoning specific reference and asking someone ‘so what do you do?’ or ‘whats up with you today?’. Because those questions operate at the frontiers of reference. We cannot get much further from specific reference than by asking someone what they are doing with their day.

It can be very difficult, of course, to speak to someone without a clearly delineated reference pool. But I so dislike those moments when you enter a group and no one is capable of giving up the referentiality they are comfortable with. I, for example, have gone and hung out with a group of four different people who all knew one another and knew a big group of people. I was around and none of them made a direct attempt to engage me specifically. They went about their normal referential business, talking about so and so who was joining such and such a band just in time for such and such festival. I remember being very disappointed that this sort of insular reference pool had put me at a distance from these other folks. I, too, have had moments where the size of my reference pool leads me incidentally to exclude someone. If I am talking with a philosophy friend, for example, and another friend approaches, there might be no comfortable way for me to initiate them into the conversation. We will say hello, but unfortunately I cannot welcome them into the world I am engaging in. They simply aren’t versed in the references, or I am not capable of translating the references into understandable language. In short, different types of communities depend on the existence of certain kinds of references, and unfortunately that referentiality is exclusionary for some just as it is unifying for others. 

This reality of reference pools, I fear, makes organized communities harder to get involved in than organic communities. Organized communities often require a more specialized reference pool. They require a certain commitment to a practice or group. Thus people are critical of insular communities. The size of a reference pool has a lot to do with this, I think.

In my life I have often just floated in my life until I encountered some kind of organic community. In high school and early college I just let my life happen is it did: I became friends with kids in my classes, I hung out with my roommate during my freshman year, I joined a few clubs accidentally. I let my wandering guide my socializing, and therefore I never developed any taste for highly specific reference in a community. Not entirely true, because I was the president of MESA. But I had no consciousness of the idea of an organized community that subsists on a certain type of reference. 

I first became aware of the appeal of these organized communities when I came to UMD. To put it more precisely, UMD was the first place that I felt envious of people who belonged to an organized community. There was one community, or constellation of communities, that I was particularly jealous of: I wanted to be at the place where the food co-op, the activism, and the music scene intersected. In that world there was a group of people that dressed a little like me, had tattoos and piercings and seemed to think things. I never quite found my way into that community. The things they cared about didn’t excite me. I was friends with some of those folks, and very much liked many of them, but I never felt a real sense of community. My community existed more so in my group house, in my classes, and at my jobs. I found all of those things a lot more exciting.

I think maybe I never found my way into those communities because I never felt like I adjusted to the reference pools that sustained them. I was never sure what I could talk to them about, interactions felt opaque, and I really didn’t know how to conduct myself. I think I’m very different now. But then I was never able to think along with many of those people in those more organized communities. I just didn’t feel very connected. And more importantly I was convinced that there was a reference pool that I needed to learn. It never occurred to me that I should simply disregard all my presuppositions about what I ‘should’ talk to someone about and instead actually just talk to them. “What do I say?” I once asked a friend. “Hello,” they responded. Ruddy brilliant. Just say hello. I use this move all the time now.

In my home, my classes, and my job, however, I felt remarkably connected to people. This, too, can be explained in terms of reference pools. Me and coworkers have a very clear reference pool that establishes our immediate relationship. When I first meet a coworker there is no uncertainty as to how we are to interact with one another. We need to introduce ourselves, establish a mutual understanding about the work we are going to do together. But from there we are free to talk about whatever we please: there is little to no pretense other than what is expected of us economically. 

I find that at work I am very likely to ask people odd questions, to go out of my way to get to know someone. I have done this many times and I will do it many more times. I am able to do this at jobs precisely because the conditions of my being around someone are purely economic, thus leaving our pool of reference simultaneously specific and vast. Specific in that we know exactly what kinds of things we can talk about: the job, the neighborhood we are working in, basic things about ourselves. Vast in that you can really get to know someone by spending so much time with them in a less determinate reference pool, such as with working or living with someone. Connections formed in this way are, for me, deeper and all the more satisfying because 1. they grew slowly and 2. they grew despite the fact that, on paper, we probably shouldn't like one another. I made many good friends at jobs who I had little or nothing in common with. I thank the work environment. 

In Seattle I have continued to organize my communities through work and living. As I mentioned, the UBS quickly offered me a lot of social opportunities. It is a big store, and working in the cafe meant that I met more people than your average employee. Very quickly, then, the realities of work and food put me into many social positions. A coworker invited me out somewhere, I went with them. That coworker was friends with other coworkers who I then became friends with. Before I knew it a year had gone by and I had many friends in many different departments. All unique people who I liked in different ways for different reasons. The UBS undoubtedly dominated my community for the first year or so I was in Seattle. Even when I left the UBS my jobs continued to organized my communities. Many of my current friends I met through the doughnut shop and the bakery, where I currently work. Work is undoubtedly how I have met most of my friends in Seattle.

Geography, too, brought me into contact with people. This is true both in the neighborhood I work and where I live. I’ve worked in the U-District, in First Hill, and Belltown, and everywhere I have come into contact with all kinds of different people: regulars at the cafes, people who work at surrounding bars and stores, people who walk the streets. It is fun to be able to go into the local bar after work and have the people know that you work down the street. We can talk about how busy or slow we were. We bring each other products, we give each other discounts, we tip each other well. In my neighborhood, too, I have become a regular at coffee shops, have gotten to know employees at certain stores, and have gotten to know a few people who live in the area. 

My communities in Seattle are therefore largely of the organic variety. I spend so much time working, eating, and drinking, that my communities have organized themselves around those habits: I know people largely from jobs, restaurants, cafes, and bars. I like this about my community. There is little or no pretense beyond economic exchange and geographical proximity. 

This doesn’t mean, however, that I haven’t felt the desire to pursue more organized forms of community. Seattle is loaded with people and places that seem like they ‘fit in’ somewhere. There are so many bars, music venues, and other ‘communal spaces’, that have a definite feel to them, that possess a sphere of belonging (and by default, a sphere of exclusion). For example, I live a block from a small music venue that is also a vintage clothing shop. I was at one point very curious about getting involved with this communal space. I quickly found, however, that that community was very loosely organized around a certain sense of fashion and a collection of local bands. When I entered one of their social events I quickly felt like an outsider. Everyone there was already sharing a reference pool and seemed to have very little patience for accommodating me into that pool. There were very few people who stopped and said, ‘oh, what do you do?’, or ‘how was your day?’ People continued to have conversations about this band, this person, these things. When I left, the person who brought me said that they were aware that ‘Riley has no idea who any of these people are.’ Yet they all continued to throw references around like I either knew or they didn’t care whether I knew or not. Good for them. It is nice to be comfortable in a referential world. I know. I have my own.

But at the same time I dislike this failure to expand a reference pool based on the presence of a new person. If I encounter someone new I take very few references for granted. I try to keep things basic, I try not to use words that are too opaque or referential. I simplify my language and I try to approach someone as candidly as possible. But, as I noted above, this is very difficult to do and sometimes I simply can’t do it. So I can’t really blame a big room full of people, already comfortably swimming together, for failing to extend the effort to talk to an outsider. And some of them did and it was an okay time. I don’t want to paint a negative picture of anyone. I am just trying to understand my relationship with the idea of community. 

This is not an uncommon problem, I think. Community inevitably finds itself in this double bind between two needs: 1. the desire to maintain a specialized reference pool (the community’s life blood) and 2. the need to bring in new members (the necessary condition of its continuation). It can be very difficult to initiate new members into a community if the reference pool of the community is too specific, too exclusionary, or simply too annoying. I guess I can say that I have very little patience for specific reference pools unless they seriously interest me. (I love philosophy, after all, so I can’t complain too much about dense reference pools). 

I fear that my attitude towards specific reference pools has prevented me from getting involved in a more organized community. Because Seattle is loaded with different groups of people trying to create alternative spaces, communal spaces, group projects that are focused on the good of individuals and groups. Foucault might say that there are a lot of people in Seattle who are involved in the creation of new subjectivities: new experiences, new ways of thinking, new ways of seeing, new ways of being. And Foucault would applaud this ‘limit-work’ that is going on here. But I just can’t seem to be excited by it.

Perhaps it is just because my daily routine already occupies so much of my time I have no idea how or when I would pursue these organized communities. It is true, there are a few communities that I’ve flirted with but have failed to join. In particular, there are a group of individuals who use the internet to arrange a time to drink and discuss philosophical issues. Drunk philosophy, they call it. I really ought to go to such a meet up. But I have failed so far to go. I don’t know what it is. But man I already feel super busy and socially satisfied with the work and friends I already have. I’m always open to new people and things. But I have a thing I’m doing. That, and my real passion lies in thinking, reading, and writing. Not in a certain type of diet, music, or social issue. The things I truly love to do are solitary things.

This is all I really want to say about community in Seattle. I have largely brought myself up to the present moment. My communities are still organized in the organic ways I described, and I still have failed to click with any type of organized community. At this point I am starting to doubt the validity of the distinctions I have made. Are those organized communities really so different from the ones that have sprung up in my economic and geographical world? I hear that many people in different circles also lack a sense of community, or feel like a little fish in a big reference pool. But I also have heard people speak very seriously of their community, of the connection they feel to people. I think that there are people out there who are having a very different experience of community than I am. But these people very well may have lived in Seattle their entire lives and have spent years accumulating this community. I am willing to admit my ignorance to what is really going on in these different communities, and to say that I don’t know what to call them, ‘organized’, ‘organic’, whatever. 

But there is something else going on in my heart. Some other feeling I have about people, action, and community. This feeling has something to do with history, my history, and my world’s history.

4. History, Duty, and Forgiveness

The thing I continue to work hardest on is a conception of ‘historical morality’. I want my morality to be based not on any kind of rule, or on any kind of analysis about ends and means. I want my morality to be based on my relationship with the past. I always want my choices about the present and the future to be framed by an understanding of the past. This means we acknowledge that in life "We enter upon a stage that was not of our making. Each of us being a main character in his own drama [playing] subordinate parts in the dramas of others, and each drama constrains the others” (After Virtue, 213).  We are always born into a historically determined situation that partially dictates how we live. 

What this means is that historical knowledge is an indispensable element in the quest for free and moral action. If we don’t understand where we come from we will never understand where we are, and we will thus not be in the best position to make decisions. Historical knowledge, MacIntyre claims, exists both as knowledge of individuals and of larger settings: We must consider both our own unique history and the larger history of”the setting or settings to which [we] belong” (Ibid., 208). In my own work I have claimed that we need to think about both of these layers of our history: Our own personal history and the larger history that makes our’s possible. 

Moreover, historical morality overlaps with an aesthetic morality. History, after all, is another form of literature. Many authors (Collingwood, John Lukacs, MacIntyre) have convinced me that there is a deep continuity between aesthetics, history, and morality. To think of ourselves historically is essentially to think of ourselves aesthetically: Life or history is essentially “an enacted dramatic narrative in which the characters are also the authors” (Ibid., 215). Life and history are only understandable if they are expressed aesthetically.

This, in fact, is the main difference between the study of the natural world and the study of the human world: The natural world can be explained in terms of cause and effect, while the human world can only be explained in terms of narrative. The only way to explain action, I believe, is by reference to an individuals thoughts and feelings. This means that if we want to explain an action we need to create a story that renders those actions intelligible. Our capacity for morality thus in some way depends on our ability to construct explanatory narratives, which is really just historical thinking. Moral thinking, it appears, can only be historical thinking.

So, I’m preaching some kind of continuity between morality, aesthetics, and history, whereby we have to use narratives to explain both our own actions and the actions of others. But so what? What does any of this have to do with loneliness and community?

This idea of historical morality is relevant to the rest of this essay because it is the method of thinking that has let me understand and accept why I have the kinds of communities that I do. 

I have often chastised myself for not pursuing more organized communities. I wish that I had rallied behind certain causes in college. I wish now that I made music or had some interest that would connect me with large numbers of people. Coffee, perhaps, could do that for me. It does already. But I somehow feel that the coffee thing has just happened to me. I didn’t mean to pursue this. I’ve wanted to understand why I haven’t felt connected to other communities that I wanted to feel connected to. So how does historical thinking do this for me?

Historical thinking, at the end of the day, is the supreme form of empathy. To think of someone historically is to think of them as a unique individual making unique choices for unique reasons that only they could make at that particular moment. To think historically is to try and understand people’s actions as necessary expressions of their character and their circumstances. The historian understands that people do what they must do, that people act dutifully. 

This conception of duty does not mean that people are acting in relation to some rule. On that contrary, as R.G. Collingwood argues in The New Leviathan, “A man’s duty on a given occasion is the act which for him is both possible and necessary: the act which at that moment character and circumstance combine to make it inevitable, if he has a free will, that he should freely will to do” (17.8, author's italics). Duty, then, is a way in which we view our own actions: we regard them as necessary outcomes of our circumstances and character, what we did was what we had to do. Duty and history, moreover, are identical in the way they approach action: both try to explain action by reference to the uniqueness of character and circumstance. Duty and history differ, however, in that duty is a form of practical reasoning (by which we explain our own actions) where as history is a form of theoretical reason (by which we explain the actions of others). As Collingwood argues, “The idea of action as duty, as we have seen, is inevitable to a person who considers it historically.... The more a man accustoms himself to thinking historically, the more he will accustom himself to thinking what course of action it is his duty to do, as distinct from asking what it is expedient for him to do and what it is right for him to do; and the more he will accustom himself to thinking in the same way of other people’s actions explaining them to himself not by saying ‘this person did this action in pursuit of such and such an end’ or ‘in obedience to such and such a rule' but 'because it was his duty' (The New Leviathan, 28.9). We can now see how historical thinking inevitably leads to a certain moral attitude. To think historically is to approach other people’s actions with the greatest understanding and empathy possible. To explain action in this way is to think dutifully. This is, without a doubt, the approach I want to take to myself and others. As I’ve been saying for years, forgive everyone for everything (even if you still punish them).

For many years I have been trying to be a sympathetic historian of my own past. I’ve been trying to forgive myself for everything wrong I’ve done. When I reflect on what I’ve done, the choices I’ve made, I try to unconditionally forgive myself. Because I’ve done things I regret, I don’t feel good about everything I’ve ever done. But I don’t want to say ‘oh well I was being stupid’ or something like that. There were reasons that I did what I did, and I want to do my best to really understand and forgive myself for what I’ve done.

So if I haven’t come into contact with more organized forms of community, I want to be okay with that. Further, I don’t want to blame people who are in organized communities by saying they are pompous or arrogant or cliquey or this or that. I want to be able to understand and accept someone even if they don’t want to give me the time of day. Sometimes I still get pissed off, and rage out over this customer or that jerk. But at my best I try to understand everyone in the most forgiving way possible.

What that means is that I try to give people the benefit of the doubt by trying to imagining a narrative that paints their actions in the most forgiving way possible. Sometimes this takes some real effort, because people do such stupid things. To explain someone’s actions in a forgiving light is a serious task, and one that is so easy to avoid. It is so easy to just call people stupid and move on. 

Boy, I get overwhelmed by the challenge of thinking this way. I love to do this, to try and forgive everyone for everything. I try to understand everyone historically. I try to explain everyone’s actions in terms of duty. But it is hard. As I said, it takes a sort imaginative effort, a mental exertion. One that, I think, is aesthetic. Everyone conversation, every interaction, is an opportunity to create something, to act in a way that expresses your duty, to understand another person as acting dutifully. A conversation is an aesthetic-dutiful collaboration of sorts: “a conversation is a dramatic work, even if a very short one, in which the participants are not only the actors, but also the joint authors, working out in agreement or disagreement the more of their production” (After Virtue, 211). This is the way I want to think of myself and others: as unique people collaborating on our lives, embracing the constellation of circumstances and characters that brought us to that unique moment. Sounds all silly and exciting, yeah? 

5. Conclusion: Here I am

So this is where I find myself these days: trying to think historically, dutifully, empathically. I’m not lonely, and I have a diverse community that has been built piecemeal through living and working in this city. I don’t feel inclined to pursue organized forms of community, and I don’t feel any hostility towards those that enjoy organized communities. I understand why my life has gone this way so far, why I relate to community the way I do, and I want to (and might) understand why other people do indeed belong to communities in the way they do. It is an expression of their duty. And my life has been an expression of my duty. My character and my circumstances made it inevitable that I freely chose what I did.

Notes:

- History, duty, and forgiving myself for having the kinds of communities I have.

Well, what it really has to do with is the notion of duty in it’s non-regularian sense. 

- I fear that organized community is anti-historical in that it attempts to create something new without reflecting on what we are making something out of. It pushes into the future without regard for the past. Rather than forceful creation, raw choice, I think that reflection on the past can lead to something new.

UMD as first encounter with highly specific reference pool and also intense loneliness. Intense loneliness = response to the intensity of the images and reference pools around me. A loneliness so intense can only exist in relation to a community that doesn’t actually exist, a simulacra of community, creating a simulacra, intense loneliness. GOTTA INCOPROATE ALL OF THIS UP THERE

 say something more about people not being able to engage with a stranger and just engaging with the ingroup. Something about how moreover it is my duty to talk to people even if they are excluded from the reference pool.

From there 

- Community in Seattle has to do with the fact that I am very social, generally well liked, have had some success with women, and that I still feel this alienation, this isolation, that I hope community could solve. But so far it cant. 

• Something at some point in the history section on narrative understanding and human self creation

- COMMUNITY AND REFERENT! With geography, economics, there is a central referent, but one that is loose and can be quickly shed if one knows what they are doing. Other communities, however, don’t always lose their referent so easily. 

• *** ALSO! Very important: Something about history and particularity and community. Something about Kahneman and psychology not teaching that kind of appreciation. Something about Cairo and psychology appreciating generality. 

Of history will be plainly stated

I will casually and with minimal reference describe the major tenants of what I’m working towards.

Of History

- I fear that

- The main point of this section will be the feat that organized communities discourage historical thinking. Organized communities thrive on specialized reference pools. Specialized reference, according to Hedges and Berry, makes us disconnected from your everyday person, makes it hard for us to appreciate what is unique and novel in the world. It gives things a sheen of normalcy or classifiability. History, on the contrary, is about the appreciation of the individual, about action as duty. I, of course, cannot avoid the conclusion that in order to understand these people who are tacitly embracing antihistorical forms of thought are also acting out of duty. I must give into the temptation to think of them historically.

I. Art and History

Both of them containing ‘organic’ qualities, we do it because we must, both in art and duty and history

II. Narrativity in life

- Narativity and morality. SOmething about morality in relation to the size of the reference pool. For if one exists in a small, dense reference pool then one has less options for creating unique narratives, and thus a rare chance for morality. 

Art and history

A Lonely Essay

I've written almost all of an essay on loneliness, community, and history.

But I can't seem to write the last section on history.

This keeps happening to me.

I can't seem to write about the philosophy of history.

I simply don't know enough.

I have some experience with historical research.

But I don't have enough.

Oh well.

Right now I'm going to sloppily write on history.

Then I'm going to post the damn essay.

Coffee

I've incidentally become a skilled barista and I don't know what to do about it.

I love coffee.

I love to drink it. It tastes amazing.

It can taste like so many different things. Someone once said something to me about coffee containing more than 200 or 500  or 800possible flavor notes or something absurd like that. I believe it. But I always wonder. Are those notes really there? Or are they just metaphors or comparisons that help us understand what we are tasting? I'm not sure. But by asking that question I am asking nothing less than 'What is the relationship between language and reality?' Clearly a question far beyond my reach. Either way, I have loved getting to know different kinds of coffee, learning to understand nuances.

I still doubt my understanding of espresso. I really don't know how to taste or judge espresso. I think this is largely due to lack of exposure. I want to get doppios at all the different cafes in Seattle. Try all the different roasters. (Why wouldn't I walk in there with the biggest smile?). I should go to cuppings.

The stimulation coffee provides is also a huge boon. Caffeine feels good. It makes me feel alert, awake. Stimulated. I quite like it.

The thing I excel most at, without a doubt, is milk steaming, texturing, and pouring. I am an excellent latte artist. I really really really enjoy latte art. It gives me enormous pleasure.

Coffee gives me enormous pleasure.

I intend to keep drinking it for the rest of my life.

I do not know, however, how much of my life will be professionally devoted to coffee.

But god do I love it.