Fog Fog Fog

My mind feels different than it has before.

It feels foggy. Super foggy. It feels like it doesn't know how to think anymore. This happens to me sometimes. I just lose my ability to express myself in a coherent way. Intellectually I lose my ability to express myself. I become clouded.

It typically happens after a large bout of expression. And that is basically what all of August was. And that I capped the whole month off with my essay on 'The Genealogy of the Modern Mind' seems like quite a big deal. Quite a big bout of expression. I had forgotten, or it had not been entirely clear to me, that theory of mind was my central concern. Although that is what seems to be the case. Also, I hadn't been able to articulate that the proper domain for theory of mind was the study of minds. Just like Clausewitz's theory of war can't be separated from the study of military history, is the theory of mind inseparable from the study of minds? Is the humanities really the study of other minds? The answer to these questions seems to be yes. But I'm still struggling with these types of conclusions.

Also I just have so much more reading to do to really make these things sit well with me. To make such rash and large conclusions about something like theory of mind seems unsettling at this point. It seems like I shouldn't be making such large and bold conclusions.

But seriously, how can a theory of mind really be a theory as we think of scientific theories? How can it be useful? Doesn't it need to be turned towards improving intuition in the relations of minds? Shouldn't it be contributing to Foucault's project of changing the way that minds relate to one another?

Theory of mind and education. Aren't these people talking about this? Almost certainly. Like I said, I just have so much literature left to get into. So much more to figure out, so much more to ground myself in. But I suppose that is the forever conclusion.

Whatever. Enough reflection. I'll be moving onward with this project sooner or later in some form or another. But right now I'm intellectually lost.

A Prolific Month and A Bizarre Nightmare

So the month of August has been a shockingly productive month for me. I was actually anticipating that I would not be producing quite so much. I moved across the country in the middle of this month, I went off in search of jobs hardcore, and managed to find a job.

I was honestly very concerned that my writing was going to take a back seat. I really thought I would be writing less. But no. I wrote more reflective posts than normal, and I also wrote more substantial essays than normal. I produced around 200 pages of essays alone this month. Reallly wild stuff. Finished like 120 pages of the 'Society's Implicit War' series, which was chapters 2-6. I also wrote two smaller essays, one on tacit theory and one on mental modeling and mindfulness. Then yesterday I finished my essay 'The Genealogy of the Modern Mind' which is very exciting to me. I write another middle sized essay called On Creativity, and another one on military history. So I guess I really produced about 4 medium sized essays, 1 big stand alone essay, and the 5 big essays of the SIW series. Jeez. About 10 substantial essays this month. I also produced a smaller essay on mindfulness and thoughts about time.

Basically I have produced a ton of stuff this month. Lots of essays and lots of reflections.

I also wanted to blog about a nightmare that I had last night that was insane. Totally insane. I don't usually have nightmares. And this one woke me up it was totally bizarre. I'm not going to go full blown into it because it was a little bit too strange for full disclosure. But I want to give the gist of it.

Basically I think it started with me and my friend Rob at a monastery of sorts. It was night time when we arrived and I have no idea what we were doing at this place. But then I was sleeping in this monastery and I remember being freaked out because you could see people walking outside. It was night time and the room I was in was a big stone room with large windows with metal frames. The people walking around outside I had identified as 'night porters' but I'm not sure if that is really what they were. They would approach the window and take away the chamber pots. Some trap door would let them take these buckets, these buckets that were bathrooms in this monastery. But that was the general discomfort I first felt, these people, these weird rooms where I was lying down.

Then I ended up meeting up with Rob somehow and we were walking around outside. I think at some point I approached some outdoor bathroom that was a big wood shack of sorts. I opened the door and there were two guys in it. They should have locked the door and I remember thinking why didn't these people lock the door? Then as I was walking away from this place one of the guys in the outhouse, who was a big fat guy, started running after me trying to fight me. Really this guy wanted to attack me. So I fought him. I remember that in this dream I was being verbally aggressive to the max, telling this guy I was gonna wreck him and to stay away from me. I ended up hurting this guy, really hitting him a lot and screaming about him. I won the fight basically. Then me and Rob went inside and were sort of talking about how weird that was and what to do next.

Then while we were preparing to leave the monastery weird things were happening. I think I was bleeding from my nose or mouth or something, and I think Rob did it somehow. I don't remember. But I was pacing or something and was bleeding and we were getting ready to leave this place. We grabbed some brooms that had broken in half because we were expecting to have to fight these guys again on our way out. So we left the monastery together and we did indeed see these guys on our way out. There was a third person with them, and weirdly it was someone from my past, a guy that I don't know well at all. A guy that I had run ins with in middle school. They all had nerf guns. Rob started attacking them and I was like 'Whoa! Rob! We don't need to fight them we just need to get past them!' Cause they weren't attacking us explicitly we were just going past them and they may have let us pass. They did eventually, but this guy from my past shook my hand and said 'Nice to meet you'. Which was totally bizarre because we had met in the past. But I knew what he meant. He meant that in middle school when we fought we were totally different people. That we were effectively meeting each other for the first time because middle school was a totally different time and we were totally different people.

Anyways when we left the monastery I think we ran down some stairs into some garage and we got into my car. The car that I sold, my red Volkswagen. As we were walking towards it all these people started chasing us. They were right on us. I got good ground on them and made it to my door no problem. But Rob had a harder time getting in because his door was slammed directly up against a wall. And I remember thinking 'there is no way Rob will fit in that space'. He started squeezing himself up against this door and the wall and all of a sudden POP was inside the car. It was like magic or something. And at that moment all these people, some of which were friends from the past, slammed against the car. And one of them actually managed to pop inside the car too somehow. But we told him to get out and he did. So me and Rob drove away together.

Then we went to a different place. We went to a tall and weird dilapidated sort of apartment building that had weird spiral stairs. Somewhere on the way or something I saw a weird thing in a window. It was this big cardboard outlet that was a halloween costume of mine from a number of years before. It had a phone number written on it and it was the wrong phone number. It had fallen apart some. Apparently I had given it to Elliott Bay Book Company as my phone number or something. And they were giving me a hard time about 'well why did you give us this thing with the wrong number on it'. It was totally strange to see this paper outlet in a window, peeling and with the wrong number on it.

But anyways then me and Rob were at this big messed up tower apartment building. We were walking up the stairs to buy something. Some of our friends were there, and we talked to them some. My friend told me I owed him 15 dollars but I told him I'd already payed him. There was some cat in this tower too. But we left this place eventually and then we got in Rob's car. I don't know where my car went. Perhaps these were two different dreams. But any way, Rob was making a left turn onto I-95 as we were leaving this tower. He took the turn so wide that we he just side swiped the right wall of the highway. As soon as he hit this wall he just started swerving like crazy all over the road. I said to him hey its okay just even it out. He couldn't stop swerving and he said to me 'Oh man you don't want this, just go home with your parents when we get back.' Which is so weird. Because I knew we weren't going to make it back and I had no idea why he was so out of it or was driving so badly or so insanely, or had accepted his own death so much.

Then he drove off a bridge. Right before he drove off the bridge he said 'This music is so repetitive'. We had been listening to the new Killers album. Even though it doesn't exist, I knew thats what it was. But apparently the music was boring and distracting him. I think he was sickly, had sores on his face or something. I could feel the car moving so fast downward and I knew I was going to die. I knew I wasn't going to be able to go to grad school or do anything I want to do in the future. I said to Rob 'My seatbelt isn't on', and he said 'Neither is mine, but thats okay'. I tried to get my seatbelt on in mid air. I almost got it clicked, but there was a shirt in the way, and I knew that I wasn't going to be able to do it and that I was going to die. I woke up as the car hit the ground, and I woke up reaching for my seatbelt. I was lying in the dark and I reached over my shoulder in the bed and tried to find the seatbelt.

This dream really scared me. All kinds of weird things happened, these fights, these weird places, this weird car crash. Really really scared me. But hey, whatever, what an end to a weird month of living and a weird month of writing. I suspect it has something to do with moving across the country and missing Rob and feeling weird about family and life and habits.

Oh well. I wonder what the future will bring in terms of living and writing. I hope that I will dream more, because I never dream. This is the only dream I remember having in the last years. In all of 2010 I have no idea what dreams I've had.

Rabble Rabble Rabble, and My Next Project?

So today was a pretty good day. I bought three pairs of pants. That is nice. Need some new pants so I can hopefully look good for my interview with the Elliott Bay Book Company. What a delightful job that would be. What a nice place it would be to work. Then I could get an apartment in Capitol Hill and live totally close to work and feel good about all that stuff.

But I am also in a sort of interesting frame of mind from having finished my 'Society's Implicit War' essays. In sum total all six essays total 143 pages. I am glad that I ended up publishing them serially. I think it helped me segment the work on them.

The whole project took about 2-3 months from reading Discipline & Punish to the writing of the essays. I read D&P from May to June. Then finished the outline on June 13th or so. Then finished the writing a few days ago. So it was about a month total of writing in fits and bursts. It was fascinating because it coincided with my move to Seattle. I'm not reeling from them as hard as I've reeled from some of my other large writing, like 4/30 and 6/13. But it is still something that I'll have to figure out how it sits in my mind exactly.

I am pleased to have reconnected my thinking with military history. Pleased that Foucault had such a strong interest in war at one point. I also finished reading the Society Must Be Defended lectures that he gave from 75-76, just before D&P was published. Gives me even more understanding of how it is that Foucault thought about war. Good stuff. War and politics. Politics and war. What the heck is up with those things? Hopefully I will continue to think about them.

I think so. I recently bought John Gray's Enlightenment's Wake. John Gray is an exciting thinker to me. I look forward to reading more stuff by him. Interesting to be exploring some political philosophy that is anti-liberal. Not that I believe it, but I def need to explore it.

But my next writing project, I think, is going to be an essay called 'The Genealogy of the Modern Mind'. In these SIW essays I was able to explore some interesting connections between Foucault's work and simulation theory of mind. Also, the element of neuroplasticity that I explored has some interesting bearing on this new essay. The general idea is to pick up with Foucault and Nietzsche and try to use history to expose precisely what is going on with us. But for me I see philosophy of mind as such a central thing. I also see history as a fundamental part of philosophy of mind. And based on all that I have read about neuroplasticity it seems like history would have to be a fundamental part of philosophy of mind. If brains are plastic then our brains are totally different from brains that existed in the past. So, it seems like philosophy of mind has to be an incomplete and practical project, just like Foucault's genealogy of the modern subject. Because the brain is plastic a philosophy or theory of mind has to be an open and continuous project that can never be predictive or prescriptive. Theory of mind, just like Foucault and Clausewitz's 'theories', must be considered a tool kit of sorts that can enable mindfulness. Yikes. This essay could be super potent. I need to note this stuff now in that in the works blog. ONWARDS.

You Gotta Fly Like an Eagle... Not Be Like a Turkey

So I'm getting ready to move across the country. Lots of packing. Lots of weird things happening. My parents are moving the day after tomorrow. Then I'm off to do other stuff in Baltimore. I fear that I am in trouble. But I'll be fine, I guarantee it.

My last post was pretty interesting. It is a topic I know somewhat well, military history, but on a scale that I am incapable of properly handling it in. But Foucault generalizes so heavily, and I am simply doing my best to grasp his arguments. Hopefully I'll be able to produce chapters 2-6 on the plane, or on vacation right before I get to Seattle.

But hey, just checking in. Just worried I am not working enough, that I am letting my tasks get behind me. But I'll get it done. I have no choice.

But my writing, my reading. It is tough to not be able to do it. To have to put it on the back seat. To treat it like the secondary priority that it really is. It is a little bit tough, a little bit weird. But I'm eager to make this move successfully.

Rapid Expression and Identity Crises: Reflections on my Posts of 4/30 and 6/13

So I am really grappling with my post of 6/13 in a lot of different ways. First, and less importantly, it is a major statement of my thought that is prompting tons of new questions and has me thinking about my next step in my writing.

Second, and this is what I really want to talk about in this post, is that it shakes up my identity.

Following my 34 page post of 4/30 and the 69 pager of 6/13 I feel totally wiped and scattered. In many ways I feel a sort of blankness that is strange. Especially because it is mixed with more solid and deep intuitions.

I feel my thinking isn't stopping or slowing down in any way after these enormous expressions. It just thrives on these connections that I have tried, or managed, to articulate. For example, I have two quite major posts in the works (one in 5 pages of writing and one mentally), that expand and refine all the ideas I have expressed so far. It is brand new ground for my thinking.

But what is it that is strange in terms of identity? Why does expressing my thought so substantially make me feel so disconnected from my thinking?

Well for one thing my writing is often uncertain. In rereading my recent post I see paragraphs where I conclude one thing, only to firmly conclude the opposite at the end of the paper. I won't revise it. I want to maintain the raw state of my expressions on this blog. For the most part at least.

Another thing is the uncertain connection all this writing has to my future academic work. I undoubtedly will enter a PhD program at some point in the next few years. So it is kinda unclear how I am going to be working with all of these ideas in graduate school. What is gonna go on with my graduate work. Beats me.

But the most important thing, I think, and that I want to talk about, is how very quickly I write some of this stuff. And how the rapidity of the expression leaves me feeling disconnected from what I have just produced.

At one point in my last post I said "Yikes. This is a bit much for me....I have been brewing these ideas for quite a long time." That is really the issue here. To follow this metaphor of 'brewing,' imagine that my mind is a french press and I have been pouring all of these coffee grounds and hot water into it (i.e. books and thoughts as coffee/water), and then I waited a few years and then I poured it all out. Suddenly I have this product that I have created that is somehow of my doing but has been created in a vessel that doesn't feel like me? Am I the coffee? What part of me is responsible for this product? Am I this product? Is this product me? What part of me does it represent or come from?

I really feel like most of this writing just 'pours' out of me. It just comes out. It just happens.

Most of the things that I do I am simply compelled to do. I probably believe in choice or free will (especially in the form of attention), but I honestly find it easier to identify with compulsion and determinism. But that doesn't help me very much in my identity in relation to my writing.

Anyways, I think the bottom line is that it has to do with the speed of the expression. I feel like I tap into something other than myself and I just roll. It just flows. It just comes out. Every paragraph just prompts the next paragraph and I do my best as I go. Vague structures often present themselves to me and I write them down as a note I end up adding more sections because I remember certain things. This is not systematic work that I am putting up. This is free form work that builds and coalesces as I go. It feels strange.

But I mean I have been thinking about this stuff daily for the last 2 or 3 years. The idea of reenactment, which I can now identify with simulation theory of mind, has literally permeated the majority of my thinking. It happened pretty quickly after learning about it. Foucault's writing, definitely permeates a lot of my daily thinking. ]

Writing these things so fast they have a certain novelty to me when I read them. I read things and I am surprised. I wrote a lot very quickly, didn't do much proofing. So sometimes I read something and I say nice, that is good.

So I guess I feel like I have to go through a process in which I fully incorporate these large writings into my general identity.

I produce them very quickly and they jar me. They just make me feel confused.

But once I read them and I get to know them better as coherent things I can feel more comfortable with their existence. Not that I think my writing is super coherent. I think I am very much locked in the technical terms that I like. But to me there is definitely a sort of internal logic that builds. There are things I want to talk about and they settle into some kind of order that at least I can feel.

Anyways, I will spend a bit more time reading these posts. I'll get to know them a little better. I think it's true, it is about the rapidity. Sometimes we say things when we are drunk and we feel like it wasn't us. Right? Maybe this is the same thing in some way.

Also, I think a part of this is that I feel very personally invested in the descriptions of thought that I am attempting. When I write about the a priori imagination I am very much trying to get a grasp on how my mind works. I really think my mind works in terms of imagination and simulation that unfold a priori. For example, I was driving home and I was about to park on my street. Deciding where to park I thought about one spot, but quickly realized that if my friend were to come home later tonight he would have nowhere to park. So I parked in a different spot so he could have room. This unfolded as a flash hypothetical imagination of my friend coming home and seeing where my car was and that there was no space. I imagined his perspective and made a decision according. Felt like the a priori imagination to me. So in short, despite how abstract this may seem I definitely feel like I am trying to describe my own thinking.

Spin Town

So my last post was a monster.

It ended up taking a long time and getting far longer then I thought it would.

I feel good about it I guess but I also feel extremely confused.

It was a big push to get all that written.

And since I wrote it my mind is still popping pretty hard about a lot of things. I still have lots of ideas that I want to explore that are being prompted by this writing.

I have lots more questions.

I also feel very much pulled towards realer living because I need to start thinking about where to move. For real.

But anyways, I typically have a sort of rapid mental expansion/contraction crisis after I write these huge things.

My brain runs and spins and is confused.

But I already have another essay in the works that is very much related to my last post.

I also have like 7 titles that I need to explore and write. Just vague ideas.

I have no lack of writing to do, no shortage of ideas to work with. But I don't have it in me right now.

I'm still reeling. In a good way.

Thoughts on my last post

My lost past feels a little overwhelming in my mind right now. I feel very excited about what I wrote, and about how I wrote it. The order I wrote it. Sorta. I'm not sure.

It feels strange because the more I keep reading the more I feel like my interests are coming together. I want to figure out what my dissertation project could potentially be. Most of the programs I am interested are interdisciplinary and want you to have some sense of that.

And what I just wrote about, (informing [historical] simulation theory of mind with a historical ontological perspective as a way to re-conceptualize the humanities around the concepts of simulation, synthetic experience, and intuition), feels like something that I could pursue in a dissertation length work. Most of my posts already correspond to it in one way or another, and would play a certain role. That excites me. I should perhaps start compiling them in a word document that is segmented to be elaborating for more than 100 pages. I think I have that much material by now.

So much more research to do in the future.

One thing i am considering, however, is attempting to change the direction I am taking. The last number of books I have been reading have been really close to my favorite ideas. Collingwood, Foucault, a book on self directed neuroplasticity, Goldman's Simulating Minds, all of it pertains extremely closely to simulation and synthetic experience and historical thinking and all of that.

I am considering reading The German Ideology by Marx and Engels I think that is what I will read next. It is pretty far removed, in a sense, from my direct interests. It might be a little related since I have heard Marx utilizes a sort of historical sociology. I really don't know much about Marx, it's a shame. Jeffrey Herf told me not to finish undergrad without reading Marx. I suppose I should read it now then.

I also want to finish my major edits on my expanded version of my Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde paper. I am close.

I also want to read/am reading The Landscape of History. And I want to read David Shield's The Thing About Life is That One Day You'll Be Dead. I liked Reality Hunger.

The bottom line is that I am reeling a little bit from my last post. It is so large. And it marks such a major connection for me to make and express. I have been contemplating an essay on combining Clausewitz, Collingwood, and Foucault for quite some time now. Then at some point, I forget how actually, the connections solidified and I had to write it.

It feels like such a large and substantial expression of the core of my thought that I feel exposed.

I am not sure what direction to take next with my reading and writing because I feel like I have just expressed something so massive for me that I'm not even sure what it means in the much bigger picture (of a potential dissertation, or something like that).