I hope to try and write an essay soon.
The claim is simple: We will make better decisions if we use our mental energy to understand than if we use it to plan.
What exactly this means, I'm not sure.
Why exactly it is important, I'm not sure.
The starting point, however, is Heidegger and John Gray.
Both of them believed that Modern European/Western culture had been overrun by the scientific impetus to dominate and control nature, and that this scientific drive had essentially hollowed out Western culture, destroying its foundations.
My notes.
I share them with you:
10/31 - 11:23 am
- Felt narrative vs. Thought narrative
- Mindfulness essay about the role of consciousness
- The task is to use consciousness properly. That is, to understand and not to plan.
- Said narrative is more planned, more willfully willed, demands to be created. While felt narrative demands only to be understood.
2:05 pm
Thesis is simple: Good decisions come from accurate understanding, no good plans.
- Just as Dwelling precedes Building, so to understanding precedes planning.
- This finds its expression in Collingwood's philosophy. History 'understands' while science seeks to dominate.
- We free ourselves from a feeling by narrating it accurately.
- This goes against what Heidegger calls out as Western thought's tendency to understate the thing - The overstatement of subjectivity and the skepticism towards reality.
- Support for all this comes from art, from zen, from history. From Collingwood, from Heidegger.
- The whole thing can be situated with John Gray and Heidegger's concerns about science, technology, and nihilism.
- History, Art, and Zen all orient themselves towards another way of thinking, another way of willing.
- This writing is about getting closer to that other way of thinking.
End notes.
I will begin trying to tease all of this out.
What kinds of statements must it involve?
Clearly it must involve claims about modern misconceptions about mind: IE I must try to show that mind does not make rational decisions, but that we have such faith in rationality because of our political-cultural inheritance (The Enlightenment, etc). I will have to discuss the need to pull ourselves out of these misguided ways of thinking.
What I'll essentially have to do is begin with Heidegger and Gray, justify their claims that we are living in a time in which Western culture's misguided attitude is ruining itself, and then propose Collingwood's 'historical morality' as a way out.
In June I intended to write an essay on historical morality and I never got to it because I stressed myself out by not wanting to apply to graduate school.
Perhaps I can now return to that work. I have a bit more reading to draw on since then, thankfully.
I miss essay writing.
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Monday, October 29, 2012
Thinkers and Lovers
Clausewitz and his wife loved each other dearly. They shared everything, she said. Thoughts and all.
Today I picked up my copy of John Stuart Mill's On Liberty.
He includes a dedication:
"To the beloved and deplored memory of her who was the inspirer, and in part author, of all that is best in my writings – the friend and wife whose exalted sense of truth and right was my strongest incitement, and whose approbation was my chief reward – I dedicate this volume. Like all that I have written for many years, it belongs as much to her as to me; but the work as it stands has had, in a very insufficient degree, the inestimable advantage of her revision; some of the most important portions having been reserved for more careful re-examination, which they ar enow never destined to receive. Were I but capable of interpreting to the world one half the great thoughts and noble feelings which are buried in her grave, I should be the medium of a greater benefit to it, than is ever likely to arise from anything that I can write, unprompted and unassisted by her all but unrivalled wisdom."
This dedication causes me great sadness and tremendous emotion.
To think!
To love!
I now intend to read Mr. Mill's work.
Not only is he a famous and respected philosopher, but he was clearly a lover. He was clearly someone who felt powerful things for those around him.
Today I picked up my copy of John Stuart Mill's On Liberty.
He includes a dedication:
"To the beloved and deplored memory of her who was the inspirer, and in part author, of all that is best in my writings – the friend and wife whose exalted sense of truth and right was my strongest incitement, and whose approbation was my chief reward – I dedicate this volume. Like all that I have written for many years, it belongs as much to her as to me; but the work as it stands has had, in a very insufficient degree, the inestimable advantage of her revision; some of the most important portions having been reserved for more careful re-examination, which they ar enow never destined to receive. Were I but capable of interpreting to the world one half the great thoughts and noble feelings which are buried in her grave, I should be the medium of a greater benefit to it, than is ever likely to arise from anything that I can write, unprompted and unassisted by her all but unrivalled wisdom."
This dedication causes me great sadness and tremendous emotion.
To think!
To love!
I now intend to read Mr. Mill's work.
Not only is he a famous and respected philosopher, but he was clearly a lover. He was clearly someone who felt powerful things for those around him.
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Monday, October 22, 2012
Everything Is Within The Cloud
When he woke the room was shrouded in a sharp floral orange. He was dissatisfied with the state of the process and had resolved to move through it as quickly as he could.
The taste of the past still came quickly to his tongue. He remembered when the cloud was red, when his life was saturated by an incomparable sense of desire, warmth, and love. It hadn't been very long. The doors of his mind had barely begun to creep shut.
This day would begin like most. He would go to the same place he had gone, and the cloud would render it new once more. How will the familiar people and places appear through the sharp, floral orange, he wondered.
"What do we look like today?," his friend asked.
"I'm sorry, I've just woken up" he said.
"Aha!" the barista said, "twelve ounces of press will have to do, then."
"It will do perfectly," he said. "I'm trying to get this orange to become something else. Something of my choosing this time."
"I don't follow," the barista said.
"Oh, I'm sorry," he said, "I'm trying to take control of my life. For a long time I thought I had it under control, but it turns out I don't. Different sensations are constantly flowing in and out of one another, pooling and dissipating around me at all times."
"I feel you. My life largely just happened," the barista said. "I never thought corporate training would transform me into the reckless business owner I am. My life has become a steadily rotating rainbow, the smell of rain and all. I like your sensual metaphors, I thought I'd give them a try," he concluded with a smile.
Our hero appreciated the barista's sympathy. He had been speaking in this sensual way for so long that he didn't question it anymore. People often commented on it, remarking on his ability to identify each moment with a color, a smell, a taste, a sound, and a feeling. But the complexity of his moments had very little to do with originality or creativity.
He had literally experienced life from within an ever shifting cloud.
As far as he knew the cloud had always been there. His sensuousness had always threatened to swallow him. He feared he would forever be gawking at the abyss inside him. He feared that someday he would endlessly tumble inward, breaking bones and puncturing skin on objects distilled from lust and wont.
The cloud changed as he went down into himself.
The cloud was thick and misty. Yellow. Tart. Arousing.
A period of blank free fall. Quiet sobriety with a hint of pale blue.
Another layer of mist. A bright purple, a subtle sweetness, a dank human aroma, intense frustration.
Purple fades to red. Feelings of warmth overwhelm him as he begins to taste blood, smell citrus, and hate himself.
In his life he saw two paths. Down one path he could go deeper and deeper into himself. He could go down into himself forever, into an endlessly changing sensuous free fall.
The other path was darker. It contained more people. It contained less sensuousness and more relationships.
He set out from the cafe, heat and energy in hand, bright green mist following him. It was time to perpetuate the routine that he knew someday would end. He wasn't sure what green meant this time. Often green came, surprisingly enough, with feelings of inadequacy and intimations of bravery. Unfortunately, however, there was never a clean correlation between color, sound, taste, smell, or emotion.
He could recall times when a bright orange-red came along with the most intense lust and the taste of burnt metal. But metallic tastes could also come along with greens and blues. Reds could come with sadness, thoughts of death, the most intense fantasies, the most vivid tastes.
There was no pattern to the cloud, no stability, no trace of cause and effect to be found. Just a forever shifting set of sensations.
Today the walk to work came with a cloud of bright green that coincidentally tasted of green apple, smelled of spinach and broccoli, and felt like grass. He hoped the coincidence somehow signified a new unity in his life, the beginning of a more stable pattern.
But he knew it was just chaos again, just another accidental alignment that would quickly fade once more into meaninglessness.
The taste of the past still came quickly to his tongue. He remembered when the cloud was red, when his life was saturated by an incomparable sense of desire, warmth, and love. It hadn't been very long. The doors of his mind had barely begun to creep shut.
This day would begin like most. He would go to the same place he had gone, and the cloud would render it new once more. How will the familiar people and places appear through the sharp, floral orange, he wondered.
"What do we look like today?," his friend asked.
"I'm sorry, I've just woken up" he said.
"Aha!" the barista said, "twelve ounces of press will have to do, then."
"It will do perfectly," he said. "I'm trying to get this orange to become something else. Something of my choosing this time."
"I don't follow," the barista said.
"Oh, I'm sorry," he said, "I'm trying to take control of my life. For a long time I thought I had it under control, but it turns out I don't. Different sensations are constantly flowing in and out of one another, pooling and dissipating around me at all times."
"I feel you. My life largely just happened," the barista said. "I never thought corporate training would transform me into the reckless business owner I am. My life has become a steadily rotating rainbow, the smell of rain and all. I like your sensual metaphors, I thought I'd give them a try," he concluded with a smile.
Our hero appreciated the barista's sympathy. He had been speaking in this sensual way for so long that he didn't question it anymore. People often commented on it, remarking on his ability to identify each moment with a color, a smell, a taste, a sound, and a feeling. But the complexity of his moments had very little to do with originality or creativity.
He had literally experienced life from within an ever shifting cloud.
As far as he knew the cloud had always been there. His sensuousness had always threatened to swallow him. He feared he would forever be gawking at the abyss inside him. He feared that someday he would endlessly tumble inward, breaking bones and puncturing skin on objects distilled from lust and wont.
The cloud changed as he went down into himself.
The cloud was thick and misty. Yellow. Tart. Arousing.
A period of blank free fall. Quiet sobriety with a hint of pale blue.
Another layer of mist. A bright purple, a subtle sweetness, a dank human aroma, intense frustration.
Purple fades to red. Feelings of warmth overwhelm him as he begins to taste blood, smell citrus, and hate himself.
In his life he saw two paths. Down one path he could go deeper and deeper into himself. He could go down into himself forever, into an endlessly changing sensuous free fall.
The other path was darker. It contained more people. It contained less sensuousness and more relationships.
He set out from the cafe, heat and energy in hand, bright green mist following him. It was time to perpetuate the routine that he knew someday would end. He wasn't sure what green meant this time. Often green came, surprisingly enough, with feelings of inadequacy and intimations of bravery. Unfortunately, however, there was never a clean correlation between color, sound, taste, smell, or emotion.
He could recall times when a bright orange-red came along with the most intense lust and the taste of burnt metal. But metallic tastes could also come along with greens and blues. Reds could come with sadness, thoughts of death, the most intense fantasies, the most vivid tastes.
There was no pattern to the cloud, no stability, no trace of cause and effect to be found. Just a forever shifting set of sensations.
Today the walk to work came with a cloud of bright green that coincidentally tasted of green apple, smelled of spinach and broccoli, and felt like grass. He hoped the coincidence somehow signified a new unity in his life, the beginning of a more stable pattern.
But he knew it was just chaos again, just another accidental alignment that would quickly fade once more into meaninglessness.
Thursday, October 18, 2012
A Mental Disturbance
The other day I made a short post on my reading. Heidegger, John Gray, and Rilke.
These are my boys right now.
Especially Heidegger talking about Rilke. I just finished the essay 'What Are Poets For?'. I don't understand it entirely.
But Heidegger's answer has something to do with the fact that Modern Western man has been caught up in an unwilled willing of sorts: We are trapped in a culture in which we use language to objectify the world so that we can assert ourselves, and manipulate the world, changing it into something of our own making. This unwilled willing, this self-assertion, somehow leaves us unshielded in the world, it leaves us vulnerale in our Being.
Only by coming to some different kind of willing, a more venturesome willing, can Modern man rescue himself from this unwilled will to dominate nature. For this unwilled willing leaves us in a sort of technological nihilism, in a position in which our culture has no ground upon which to rest.
In other words, the spirit of our age leaves us standing before the Abyss, gawking at the meaninglessness of the world we have created.
The task of Modern man, Heidegger claims, is to turn away from the Abyss, to find a way to be more comfortably. We must turn to what Heidegger calls the Open. We must embrace the world not as a collection of objects, but as a harmonious whole, as the fourfold of earth and sky, divinities and mortals. As a simple, unified oneness to which we belong.
This turn to the Open, this appreciation of the simple unity of the fourfold, Heidegger claims, must be accomplished by some Beings that are more venturesome than others. Moreover, this turn must come through language, since language is the 'house of being', the ultimate foundation of human existence. Poets, then, are the more venturesome beings that can reach into the Abyss, expose the nature of our age, and aid modern man in his quest to turn away from the Abyss.
The Abyss, I think, has plenty to do with scientific materialism. It has a lot to do with all the things I'm reading about in Gray's The Immortalization Commission.
Either way, my mind is deeply disturbed, in a good way.
I feel all these tentative connections to Collingwood.
There is something happening in my mind right now.
For the first time in a long time I feel like I'm really ruminating on my reading.
Interestingly, it is because my reading has once again become largely philosophical and poetic.
Sigh.
How will I ever figure out how to think for a living?
These are my boys right now.
Especially Heidegger talking about Rilke. I just finished the essay 'What Are Poets For?'. I don't understand it entirely.
But Heidegger's answer has something to do with the fact that Modern Western man has been caught up in an unwilled willing of sorts: We are trapped in a culture in which we use language to objectify the world so that we can assert ourselves, and manipulate the world, changing it into something of our own making. This unwilled willing, this self-assertion, somehow leaves us unshielded in the world, it leaves us vulnerale in our Being.
Only by coming to some different kind of willing, a more venturesome willing, can Modern man rescue himself from this unwilled will to dominate nature. For this unwilled willing leaves us in a sort of technological nihilism, in a position in which our culture has no ground upon which to rest.
In other words, the spirit of our age leaves us standing before the Abyss, gawking at the meaninglessness of the world we have created.
The task of Modern man, Heidegger claims, is to turn away from the Abyss, to find a way to be more comfortably. We must turn to what Heidegger calls the Open. We must embrace the world not as a collection of objects, but as a harmonious whole, as the fourfold of earth and sky, divinities and mortals. As a simple, unified oneness to which we belong.
This turn to the Open, this appreciation of the simple unity of the fourfold, Heidegger claims, must be accomplished by some Beings that are more venturesome than others. Moreover, this turn must come through language, since language is the 'house of being', the ultimate foundation of human existence. Poets, then, are the more venturesome beings that can reach into the Abyss, expose the nature of our age, and aid modern man in his quest to turn away from the Abyss.
The Abyss, I think, has plenty to do with scientific materialism. It has a lot to do with all the things I'm reading about in Gray's The Immortalization Commission.
Either way, my mind is deeply disturbed, in a good way.
I feel all these tentative connections to Collingwood.
There is something happening in my mind right now.
For the first time in a long time I feel like I'm really ruminating on my reading.
Interestingly, it is because my reading has once again become largely philosophical and poetic.
Sigh.
How will I ever figure out how to think for a living?
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Chair
I really like this song.
I heard it on the radio at work once.
I actually like a number of the songs from their album.
Part of me hates it.
Lyrically.
Lyrically I hate it.
Because it makes me sad.
Thinking about friends, lovers, embarrassment, pain, unrequited love.
I like the song a lot.
You don't trust me.
I heard it on the radio at work once.
I actually like a number of the songs from their album.
Part of me hates it.
Lyrically.
Lyrically I hate it.
Because it makes me sad.
Thinking about friends, lovers, embarrassment, pain, unrequited love.
I like the song a lot.
You don't trust me.
.
A wise man
Advised me: turn
Away from the Abyss.
Think of the spaces,
The people and places.
Think of all you'll miss.
Advised me: turn
Away from the Abyss.
Think of the spaces,
The people and places.
Think of all you'll miss.
Monday, October 15, 2012
Some Thoughts on My Reading
My reading feels harmonious right now. I'm reading The Immortalization Commission at a healthy pace, and I'm also reading some of Heidegger's essays from Poetry, Language, Thought. I've read 'Building Dwelling Thinking' (twice), 'The Thing' (once with 0 comprehension), and I'm almost through 'What Are Poets For?'.
Heidegger is definitely a great was to compliment my reading of John Gray. Gray has cited Heidegger in other works, and definitely owes him a debt. Better yet, a good portion of 'What Are Poets For?' is devoted to the analysis of Rilke's poetry. Rilke is my boy.
I have also made some connections between Heidegger and Collingwood. Both have a problem with our so called scientific civilization.
Something about technological nihilism.
Something about poetic modes of thought being a way out.
Something about logocentric culture and objectification.
Something about Being and representation.
Something about re-enactment/simulation theory and bridging the subject-object divide.
Something about Being and Simulation.
A piece of writing for the future, perhaps.
Heidegger is definitely a great was to compliment my reading of John Gray. Gray has cited Heidegger in other works, and definitely owes him a debt. Better yet, a good portion of 'What Are Poets For?' is devoted to the analysis of Rilke's poetry. Rilke is my boy.
I have also made some connections between Heidegger and Collingwood. Both have a problem with our so called scientific civilization.
Something about technological nihilism.
Something about poetic modes of thought being a way out.
Something about logocentric culture and objectification.
Something about Being and representation.
Something about re-enactment/simulation theory and bridging the subject-object divide.
Something about Being and Simulation.
A piece of writing for the future, perhaps.
Sunday, October 14, 2012
Dwelling With John Gray
Bah! I love reading John Gray.
The Immortalization Commission is arousing all the perfect emotions in me. These stories about lovers in the late late Nineteenth and early Twentieth century, grappling with the newly realized finality of death.
We are going to die. Fair enough. But is there any hope that we can learn to rationally direct this finite (read doomed) human life? Is there any hope for thought? Is there any hope for love and hope and choice? Unlikely.
This is exactly the problem I am having with my life.
I had a plan and that plan no longer feels viable.
The hole in my heart is not a graduate school shaped hole.
So how can I rationally direct my life? How can I begin to make choices when I'm so overwhelmed by my emotions? By my desire to be involved with people? Where is my freedom? What choices am I to make?
Reading about H.G. Wells, F.W.H Myers, Arthur Balfour, and others, is really helping me cope. These men dealt with these same problems. They were dealing with Darwinian anxiety, the stress brought about by the conclusions of scientific materialism.
But they were dealing with it as a brand new conclusion, as an unprecedented intellectual reality that compromised their deepest emotional convictions.
At least I was raised as a scientific materialist. At least these conclusions weren't thrust upon me in my adult life. I struggle with them to this day. I can't imagine what they would do to me if I had learned of them in the time and place they did.
Heidegger, too, is helping me deal with these questions.
I tried to read his essay 'The Thing' and it didn't make any sense to me. But 'Building Dwelling Thinking' made a bit more sense to me.
It gave me a sense of comfort in Being. It made me feel okay with just Being. It makes me feel okay with accepting the state of my Being. If I can just learn to dwell, on the Earth, in my life, then my life will take care of itself.
If I can just relax and release, I will build my life organically.
The plan has collapsed. The plan is not viable.
Relax.
Let dwelling take care of your building.
This morning I spent a bit of time in a coffee shop, drinking coffee, and reading Gray.
I intend to spend a lot of this fall and winter posted up in coffee shops.
Dwelling, thinking, being in public, building my life.
The Immortalization Commission is arousing all the perfect emotions in me. These stories about lovers in the late late Nineteenth and early Twentieth century, grappling with the newly realized finality of death.
We are going to die. Fair enough. But is there any hope that we can learn to rationally direct this finite (read doomed) human life? Is there any hope for thought? Is there any hope for love and hope and choice? Unlikely.
This is exactly the problem I am having with my life.
I had a plan and that plan no longer feels viable.
The hole in my heart is not a graduate school shaped hole.
So how can I rationally direct my life? How can I begin to make choices when I'm so overwhelmed by my emotions? By my desire to be involved with people? Where is my freedom? What choices am I to make?
Reading about H.G. Wells, F.W.H Myers, Arthur Balfour, and others, is really helping me cope. These men dealt with these same problems. They were dealing with Darwinian anxiety, the stress brought about by the conclusions of scientific materialism.
But they were dealing with it as a brand new conclusion, as an unprecedented intellectual reality that compromised their deepest emotional convictions.
At least I was raised as a scientific materialist. At least these conclusions weren't thrust upon me in my adult life. I struggle with them to this day. I can't imagine what they would do to me if I had learned of them in the time and place they did.
Heidegger, too, is helping me deal with these questions.
I tried to read his essay 'The Thing' and it didn't make any sense to me. But 'Building Dwelling Thinking' made a bit more sense to me.
It gave me a sense of comfort in Being. It made me feel okay with just Being. It makes me feel okay with accepting the state of my Being. If I can just learn to dwell, on the Earth, in my life, then my life will take care of itself.
If I can just relax and release, I will build my life organically.
The plan has collapsed. The plan is not viable.
Relax.
Let dwelling take care of your building.
This morning I spent a bit of time in a coffee shop, drinking coffee, and reading Gray.
I intend to spend a lot of this fall and winter posted up in coffee shops.
Dwelling, thinking, being in public, building my life.
Saturday, October 13, 2012
Death and Love
I'm reading John Gray's latest book, The Immortalization Commission: Science and the Strange Quest to Cheat Death.
It is breaking my heart.
The book focuses on two moments in history in which science was used to either 1. find proof of the afterlife, or 2. overcome death by reanimating the dead and making them immortal.
The first story belongs to late Victorian England; the second belongs to the early years of the Soviet Union.
So far I'm reading the section on Victorian England. It is breaking my heart.
FWH Myers, a Victorian thinker, is one of the major figures of the story. He was adamant that science could be used to find proof of life after death. Gray argues, however, that Myers' quest was ultimately the result of the premature death of the only woman that ever infatuated him. Myers and had some kind of love affair with this woman, and Gray claims that the "last quarter century of Myers' life was driven by his need to contact a woman he could not acknowledge during his lifetime" (63).
There are other heartbreaking moments. Before he died, Myers had promised his friend William James that he would send a message from beyond the grave, that James would just have to hold a pen in his hand and serve as his medium. After Myers died, James attempted to receive Myers' message: "he sank down on chair by the open door, his note-book on his knees, pen in hand, ready to take down the message with his usual methodical exactitude... When I went away William James was still sitting leaning back in his chair, his hands over his face, his open note-book on his knees. The page was blank." (11).
Imagine being a member of Darwin's generation. Imagine being the first group of people capable of imagining the world as a meaningless march of speciation and extinction. I am personally haunted by the conclusions of Darwin and his contemporaries. Deep time, evolution, extinction, cosmology. Oh, so painful.
Why is it so hard to live and love knowing that we are all going to die and never be in contact with one another again?
This book is making me imagine what it would be like to bear the implications of Darwinism for the first time. I can hardly take it. The pain is so great. Myers, James, Balfour, all the characters of this book, seemed to have been experiencing such profound existential pain.
How can one just accept the implications of Darwinism and remain jolly and dutiful?
I'm enjoying the book immensely.
I'm finding it painful and cathartic.
Very painful.
Hopefully equally cathartic.
It is breaking my heart.
The book focuses on two moments in history in which science was used to either 1. find proof of the afterlife, or 2. overcome death by reanimating the dead and making them immortal.
The first story belongs to late Victorian England; the second belongs to the early years of the Soviet Union.
So far I'm reading the section on Victorian England. It is breaking my heart.
FWH Myers, a Victorian thinker, is one of the major figures of the story. He was adamant that science could be used to find proof of life after death. Gray argues, however, that Myers' quest was ultimately the result of the premature death of the only woman that ever infatuated him. Myers and had some kind of love affair with this woman, and Gray claims that the "last quarter century of Myers' life was driven by his need to contact a woman he could not acknowledge during his lifetime" (63).
There are other heartbreaking moments. Before he died, Myers had promised his friend William James that he would send a message from beyond the grave, that James would just have to hold a pen in his hand and serve as his medium. After Myers died, James attempted to receive Myers' message: "he sank down on chair by the open door, his note-book on his knees, pen in hand, ready to take down the message with his usual methodical exactitude... When I went away William James was still sitting leaning back in his chair, his hands over his face, his open note-book on his knees. The page was blank." (11).
Imagine being a member of Darwin's generation. Imagine being the first group of people capable of imagining the world as a meaningless march of speciation and extinction. I am personally haunted by the conclusions of Darwin and his contemporaries. Deep time, evolution, extinction, cosmology. Oh, so painful.
Why is it so hard to live and love knowing that we are all going to die and never be in contact with one another again?
This book is making me imagine what it would be like to bear the implications of Darwinism for the first time. I can hardly take it. The pain is so great. Myers, James, Balfour, all the characters of this book, seemed to have been experiencing such profound existential pain.
How can one just accept the implications of Darwinism and remain jolly and dutiful?
I'm enjoying the book immensely.
I'm finding it painful and cathartic.
Very painful.
Hopefully equally cathartic.
Sunday, October 7, 2012
Withdrawing, Writing, Wreading
I feel myself stepping back from my social world. Temporarily, of course.
I also feel myself stepping towards thinking and writing. I don't know what to write, though.
I don't understand poetry enough to really write it unless it just pops into my head. I'll get fixated on a word of a phrase or an image and I'll just run with it. But I don't have any of those words or images right now.
I don't know that I can write about philosophy right now, because I'm not reading that much philosophy.
I don't want to write about history. I'm very slowly beginning a new book, America's Army: Making the All-Volunteer Force. Beth Bailey. Historian at Temple. Obviously very smart. The book is well written and addresses some interesting questions with good frames.
I read about half of a novel, Miss Me When I'm Gone, by some dude. Philip something. It didn't hold my attention. I dunno why.
I'm just not sure where to direct my mental energy.
Frankly, I think I need to direct my energy at understand why graduate school is so confusing and why I can't seem to muster the energy to study for the GRE or take preparation seriously.
I think I need to work on understanding myself and my resistance to the plan I had set for myself.
It doesn't feel right.
It is too wrapped up with other ideas.
Hmph.
I've got this forever alone narrative and graduate school is a part of it. I'm a lonely person and I fear that I'll become a lonely scholar. Always reading and writing, never to be read or loved.
I also feel myself stepping towards thinking and writing. I don't know what to write, though.
I don't understand poetry enough to really write it unless it just pops into my head. I'll get fixated on a word of a phrase or an image and I'll just run with it. But I don't have any of those words or images right now.
I don't know that I can write about philosophy right now, because I'm not reading that much philosophy.
I don't want to write about history. I'm very slowly beginning a new book, America's Army: Making the All-Volunteer Force. Beth Bailey. Historian at Temple. Obviously very smart. The book is well written and addresses some interesting questions with good frames.
I read about half of a novel, Miss Me When I'm Gone, by some dude. Philip something. It didn't hold my attention. I dunno why.
I'm just not sure where to direct my mental energy.
Frankly, I think I need to direct my energy at understand why graduate school is so confusing and why I can't seem to muster the energy to study for the GRE or take preparation seriously.
I think I need to work on understanding myself and my resistance to the plan I had set for myself.
It doesn't feel right.
It is too wrapped up with other ideas.
Hmph.
I've got this forever alone narrative and graduate school is a part of it. I'm a lonely person and I fear that I'll become a lonely scholar. Always reading and writing, never to be read or loved.
Saturday, October 6, 2012
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Sensitivity and Fragility
In The New Leviathan Collingwood argues that a person "liberates himself from a particular desire by naming it; not giving it any name that comes at haphazard into his head, but giving it its right name, the name it really has in the language he really talks" (13.42).
I remember that I found this idea hard to swallow. How can naming a feeling or desire free us from that desire? Especially given man's unique relationship with language, how can we be sure that in attempting to name a problem we are not actually creating that problem? This is certainly a question Foucault or Roger Smith would ask.
Yet, my own experience is starting to confirm Collingwood's claim. I believe that I have been able to properly name one of my tendencies. I've often spoken of my sensitivity, of my capacity for strong and intense emotions and thoughts.
But sensitivity isn't the problem.
Fragility is the problem. I can't handle the intensity of my thoughts and emotions.
But what is this 'I' that is separate from my thoughts and feelings? A rawer consciousness? I'm not sure.
Either way, I'm trying to reflect on this new name I have for my tendencies. I need to reflect on it.
I need to ask, why couldn't my emotions have a proper name? Why couldn't there be a rhyme or reason to my thoughts and emotions that has a proper name? Why, as Heidegger asks, am I tempted to "understate the nature of the thing," tainting my observations of myself with the fear that they were merely "afterward read into it" (Building Dwelling Thinking, in Poetry, Language, Thought, 151). Why do I doubt that some labels/narratives are better than others?
Because there are indeed labels and narratives that arrive closer at my emotions, closer to truth. I'm working on finding some of those. Life is confusing, man.
I remember that I found this idea hard to swallow. How can naming a feeling or desire free us from that desire? Especially given man's unique relationship with language, how can we be sure that in attempting to name a problem we are not actually creating that problem? This is certainly a question Foucault or Roger Smith would ask.
Yet, my own experience is starting to confirm Collingwood's claim. I believe that I have been able to properly name one of my tendencies. I've often spoken of my sensitivity, of my capacity for strong and intense emotions and thoughts.
But sensitivity isn't the problem.
Fragility is the problem. I can't handle the intensity of my thoughts and emotions.
But what is this 'I' that is separate from my thoughts and feelings? A rawer consciousness? I'm not sure.
Either way, I'm trying to reflect on this new name I have for my tendencies. I need to reflect on it.
I need to ask, why couldn't my emotions have a proper name? Why couldn't there be a rhyme or reason to my thoughts and emotions that has a proper name? Why, as Heidegger asks, am I tempted to "understate the nature of the thing," tainting my observations of myself with the fear that they were merely "afterward read into it" (Building Dwelling Thinking, in Poetry, Language, Thought, 151). Why do I doubt that some labels/narratives are better than others?
Because there are indeed labels and narratives that arrive closer at my emotions, closer to truth. I'm working on finding some of those. Life is confusing, man.
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