Reality and Theory

What I want is reality.

Much of my thinking and writing is very abstract. I am adept at abstraction. I know how to read (some types of) philosophy. I know how to move comfortably in the world of human/social theory.

Yet what I want is reality.

I have no patience for theory in itself. Theory must always make a return to reality.

Clausewitz is perhaps my ultimate teacher in this lesson.

I can think of no one who has attempted a more elegant rapprochement between theory and practice. Even Collingwood's attempted synthesis between theory and practice, between subject and object, falls short of the Clausewitzian project.

It is, I think, Clausewitz's emphasis on pedagogy, on teaching and learning, that makes his thinking so powerful.

The conclusion: theory is only useful if it aids in the accurate observation of reality. Theory shall never seek to stand in for reality. It can only aid our engagement with reality, buttress our observations, aid our judgements.

I had a slight breakthrough tonight in my attempts to write my graduate school personal statement. And this relationship between reality and theory is intimal to that breakthrough, and to all my thinking.

Father and Son

skip, twirl and curtsey

the object of desire

dances leaps escapes

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

this heart moves and shakes

another fit of this love

oh please, just once more

War and Love

I watched an interesting and troubling documentary last night: "The World Without Us."

The question of the documentary is: What would happen if the United States were to withdrawal all of its military troops from around the world? We have dozens of bases in dozens of countries. What if we gave them up?

What would that mean for international order?

The documentary drove home a startling claim: The current world order depends on the United States having troops abroad. From South Korea to Kuwait to Tawain, without U.S. troops there are all kinds of potential invasions and wars waiting to happen.

I am very troubled by the argument of the documentary. I watched it with someone who asked 'Why does the world have to be like this?'

I answer, 'This is a bad answer, but because the world is like this.'

It is true, the world is what it is.

But does it have to be that way? Can it change?

I want to know what the appropriate place for non-violence and political love in the modern world.

How can we take what Gandhi said, take what MLK said, and somehow repeat it for the present day?

I don't know.

I'm scared.

But one thing I know is that I am committed to love and the pursuit of peace.

What to do?

I'll be honest and tell you that the documentary reminded me of a song by Cassie featuring The-Dream.

The song: Keep on Lovin' Me.

The chorus:
"There's nothing wrong with you

There's nothing wrong with me
There's something wrong with the world
Just keep on loving me"
I don't know what else to do with this world other than try to keep loving.

Emotions.

This blog is not currently an outlet for my thoughts.

My thoughts are muddled. I don't understand many things these days.

But I do feel many things.

I need a source of emotional expression.

This blog can't do that for me either.

I'm suffocating inside myself these days.

I have all these thoughts and all these feelings.

But I find myself unable to express them.

Eep.

Irrationalism.

I am more and more persuaded that Collingwood was right when he said that the English world was being overrun by an irrationalist epidemic.

People are more and more hostile to thought. From the Texas GOPs explicit rejection of higher order thinking to anti-vaccination movements to the purposeful attack of the university system: America is hostile to thought.

The irrationalist epidemic has created "in the body politic a demand that scientific thinking should be put down by force.... Academically, by creating in the specialized organs though which society endeavours to further science and learning a feeling of hostility to that furtherance. This feeling of hostility to science as such may be 'rationalized' through an obscurantist philosophy which by sophistical arguments pretends to prove that that advances which are actually being made are in fact no advances. Sophistical, because reactionary: based on the assumption that the superseded views are true, and thence proceeding to argue that the views which have superseded them must be false because they do not agree with the view they have superseded. The partistans of such an obscurantist philosophy are traitors to their academic calling."

Can't Blog.

I can't seem to write on here lately.

I'm working really hard on getting my graduate school personal statement rewritten.

It is really taking it out of me mentally.

I find it exhausting.

I miss the thinking and writing that I've been doing for the last few years.

I love asking, Am I living an artistic life? Am I creating a beautiful existence?

And I stumble upon all kinds of answers.

Most recently I have been thinking about how excellent it is that Schiller defines beauty as a composite concept: something that describes a harmonious unity of morality, emotions, intellect, and so on.

I thought about how the contemplation of beauty is so important because what it really is the silent appreciation of all of those different factors.

Human perception is incredibly loaded. We don't just perceive things in simple ways. We perceive things as expressing thoughts, expressing emotions, expressing morality, expressing insights. There is so much going on in even the simplest glance at an object.

I have also been thinking about the way that thought and emotion are mutually intensifying: as we think more clearly or differently about things we create new emotions for ourselves. Our intellect colors our emotions, and our emotions color our intellect. They support and intensify one another to give rise to this intense artistic experience.

This is why Collingwood defines art as the imaginative expression of emotions yet locates Man's aesthetic capability in thought. Man is not artistic because he is an emotional being, but because he is a thinking being. It is the existence of thought that makes possible the complex and rich emotions that Man then expresses in art.

Oh to live an artistic, expressive life.

Oh to build this fire within myself.

Oh to capture it in an expressible object.

Oh to set the fire free again.

Oh to let it consume my life once more.

Flaming streets flaming tress flaming hearts flaming minds.

Yet I cannot pursue these questions right now.

I must direct my attention to other questions.

The question I have for my graduate work is this: Why is democracy failing in America?

I intend to answer this question historically by asking: What were the institutional relationships that made democracy possible in the first place? What is this historical linking of citizenship, military service, and democratic participation? Does the failing of democracy in America have anything to do with the fact that we have successfully disentangled democratic participation and military service? Is it significant for democracy that now we just pay people to fight our wars? What has this decoupling of military service and the electorate done to democracy?

How are we to be sure that the government will act in the people's interests if the military is now a economically driven tool? If the people were the ones carrying out the States business, and not just a group of employees, would the States actions not more carefully reflect the peoples best interests?

Would the reinstitution of mandatory State service not be a viable form of choice architecture that may help reinvigorate the democratic spirit in America?

Is this country too far gone, too wrapped up in money?

Who knows.

But this is what I'm trying to do with myself these days.

I have no time for the questions that have been occupying me for the past 3 years.

It is time I ask the questions that I know I need to ask.

These, so far, are the most important questions that I can muster about my age.

I Am What I Do.

I have been attempting to fully identify myself with my actions.

There is a modern tendency (MacIntyre and Zizek would have me believe) to claim an identity that is separate from the actions that we regularly perform.

A businessman, for example, may feel that his 'true self' lies in his loving relationship with his family, and that his cut-throat business dealings are superfluous, not to be considered a part of his true identity.

In other words, for us Moderns there is always a deeper, truer self that is not defined merely by what we do.

I, for instance, could claim that I am really a philosopher, an artist, a thinker, and that my working life is somehow secondary to this true self.

This is not the case. I am a barista. I am a slinger of doughnuts. A purveyor of baked and fried goods. A fattener and caffeinater of Seattle.

How interesting, this decoupling of identity and action.

Most problematic, I think.

Because now people can claim to be good people without acting like good people.

How many of use philosophies of compassion and love to justify prejudice and hate?

How many of us claim an identity even though we don't live it?

We are what we do.

Mind is what mind does.

'Be careful what you do', I say to myself.

'You are what you do', I tell myself.

I shrink at the implications of that conclusion.

Because I have done bad things.

I continue to do bad things.

And I cannot, and should not, attempt to preserve some image of myself that lives beyond my actions.

Because my being can only live through my actions.

My being can never live through my thoughts alone.

I am what I do.

I must therefore live my thinking.

Kahneman, You Cheeky Bastard.

Today I finished Thinking, Fast and Slow. 


An impressive book.

I still have a problem with the title.

But I now understand more precisely what Kahneman wishes the book to do.

He hopes that it will further discredit standard economic theories depictions of individuals as fully conscious, rational, logically consistant beings. Individuals are always biased, always use heuristics, and need to be guided in order to make proper decision.

Kahneman's analysis of biases and heuristics is ultimately to be used as a way of creating social and economic policies that will encourage people to make the right kinds of choices.

He unleashes all of this in the conclusion.

I am embarrassed to admit that I failed to read between the lines.

At the end of the book it is so obvious that this is how his work should be approached.

But I was foolishly looking for it as a guide to the education of my own judgement.

Even though I knew that Kahneman does not have much hope for the elimination of biases and heuristics.

Finally, a bit of clarity on what Kahneman really wants his work to be used for.

Major reflection on this book is now possible. I will spend some time with it in the coming weeks and months.

But now I intend to finish reading Niall Ferguson's Civilization: The West and The Rest.

How exciting to be reading two giants of contemporary thinking.

August.

Oh boy.

I don't want to do much writing right now.

I'm closing in on the end of Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow.

I've also read about half of Niall Ferguson's Civilization: The West and The Rest, which I am finding very impressive so far.

All these essay ideas about responsibility as fundamentally about storytelling, about historical morality, so on.

I don't have the patience for it right now.

I signed up to take the GRE on September 25th. I need to get my ass in gear to get graduate school applications in.

But so much is going on.

My heart and mind are so active.

I'll get them in. I know I will.

I'm just trying to get a grip on myself.

I've only just returned from vacation, for god's sake!

Well, it was Sunday I got back.

Gosh, only four or five days.

I'll be back in the swing of things soon.

Savagery and civility!

Never barbarity!

Over and out.