Can't Build Mud - Can't Break it Either

Imagine a big watery handful of dirt and sludge, and imagine some poor kid trying to build a sand castle with it. He tries to make a tower, but in the end he has a muddy puddle. He tries to shape an arch, but he gets a muddy puddle. This kid is not going to be able to pull off any of his architectural endeavors... unless he decides to aspire to a muddy puddle.

At the same time, that kid's asshole brother is never going to be able to smash his castle.

Throughout the world there are a lot of therapeutic philosophies that boil down to some form of simplification. They tell you to loosen your connection to the world, not to get too tied to the ebbs and flows of life, give up desire and give up your love of this world. These philosophies exist because they work: try to build nothing and you can never have what you built destroyed. Store up treasure in heaven, lest the moth eat your suit and the rust sully your treasure.

This is an opting out of the pain of life by surrendering the pursuits of love and ambition. Despair requires a will that can be denied. Not only this, but the simple man automatically has greater claims to wisdom. He is not failing at anything; he never even bothered to try. He can dispense sage advice because what failed endeavors can you point to as evidence that he does not know what he is talking about.

He opted out of pain and failure. All he had to do was opt out of life first.

For living is repeated failing. Repeated frustration. A wrestling match with God via your struggles with his creation. If a man isn't failing, how much living is he doing?

What then does one do with this option? You might choose to take it and live as some version of a monk; you might start learning not to try. Alternately, knowing full well what you are subjecting yourself to, you might try to live all the same. You may not appear wise, you may lead a life of struggle, but you are choosing to live.

As with most things, I imagine that the best course of action is the essence of one option tempered by the wisdom of the other. Choose life, I say, but know that failure is despair and that life must be made simpler if it is to be managed. Do not just be water, have grit as well.

Like damp sand. Perfect for building a sandcastle... even if your asshole brother decides to come up and smash it later.

The Absence of Love

In the absence of Love, one will do whatever strikes the highest balance of ease and stimulation. Without Will to compel us to chase or seek after something, we will turn to what we already have that is able to keep the boredom at bay.

In short: find something to pursue or settle in for a life of binge eating and masturbation.

In the Beginning Was the Life

In the beginning was the life.

This cannot be emphasized enough. Philosophical types - perhaps scientific types too, for that matter - should have this written on their walls. Tattoo it on the backs of their wrists. Write in on chalkboards one hundred times daily. Scream it out at the moment of sexual climax.

The reason being that once one spends a length of time thinking philosophically about human behavior - that is, thinking deliberately about human behavior - one tends to forget that life was being lived prior to any theorizing or philosophizing. And if mass illiteracy were to suddenly sweep over humanity and if all language was reduced to grunting "food, fuck, bed" with varying tones of urgency, life would continue being lived although any heights of philosophy would have slipped out of reach.

Consider ethical philosophy. Consider Kant's categorical imperative and the system of morals that can be derived from that primary starting point. Now consider the utilitarian calculus used to determine the best possible action. Think to Aristotle's works on ethics and virtue. Now remember that people still found a way to make society work and found a way to behave decently toward one another prior to all of these philosophical projects. In the course of living their lives people had to work out ethical ways of living.

Which came first? A theory of ethics or ethical behaviors? Like most things I imagine that they exist in a kind of loop. One does a little theorizing which leads to a little more behavior which provides more data to be theorized about which leads to more refined behavior and so on. It seems to me that determining which one came first is a bit like finding the starting point in a circle. I mention this only so that there is no confusion that I am offering a theory about which came first - I do not care whether ethical behavior or ethical theory has chronological primacy. What I am saying is that deliberate philosophical systematic theorizing comes about after a way of life already exists.

In this way, I think we can see philosophy as a kind of refinement of natural human living. Perhaps we could say that it is life with art applied to it: an artistic rendering of what we were already doing. So ethics, for example, could be seen as taking the morality and concepts already guiding human behavior and chiseling away what had become useless and providing metaphysical groundings for what remained valuable so as to lend it power in debate and legitimacy in the face of disagreement, most importantly it allowed for the reaching of ethical heights which we never would have touched just living the way that came naturally. Epistemology too is just a matter of creating methods of thought that refine our natural more instinctual behavior pertaining to sorting reliable information, bullshit, error, and irrelevance.

Philosophy, then, is a kind of height, a luxury. We also see a way in which it can be evaluated. If the philosophy provides a method that allows us to live better than our instincts do, then we have encountered a philosophy that we help ourselves by living by. On the other hand if a philosophy provides a method that makes our lives more difficult, then we have found something that does not rise to the level of our instincts and cannot supplant or supplement them. Like someone trying to improve on a cupped hand by baking clay in a rounded shape with several holes in the bottom: we're better off with a cupped hand until you seal the holes.

Resisting the System

In the past all I wanted was to weave all my thoughts and theories into one big, coherent system that explained my fundamental views on the world and invited (read: coerced) others to come live in that system. Today I think my thinking is more sophisticated than it has ever been, but I also find that it resists systematization. I think in remarks, I think in isolated games and relations, I oftentimes relate those relations to one another, but they do not have their proportions worked out. I don't have a hierarchy, I don't have a scale for those games in relation to one another.

Sometimes I want to sit down and build that system, but I resist that urge. Why?

To get the baser reason out of the way: because not trying ensures that I won't fail. For the more fundamental reason, though, I have come to distrust systematic thinking.

I find relations to be more personal than nouns. When we observe phenomena we tend to observe them in largely the same way - that is when we talk about them we don't seem to spend much time squabbling over, say, the blueness above us or the greenness beneath us. We don't squabble terribly much when we observe common relations, like the being-on-top spatial relation between a cat and a rug or the prior-to temporal relation of Abraham Lincoln to Barack Obama. But we do notice increased squabbling around the point where we discuss relation, like discussing the similarity relation between a given lasagna and a given pizza. We are left in dark and confusing territory when we begin discussing causal relations, like bad parenting, destructive culture, genetic predisposition, and mental disorder in relation to a given committed crime. Then we enter into full-on war when we discuss the proportional relations like the balance of strength and speed in successful martial arts strategies.

We find some relations which rely heavily on common, public appearance and phenomena, like spatial relations. Then we find relations which seem to be based largely on personal intuition and seem to be perceived much differently depending on the one who perceives. Sometimes these latter relations can be cast in a way that can be publicly measured, sometimes they cannot.

In terms of system building, it seems inevitable that much of the scaffolding will be made of these personal relations. Perhaps to me we have to start with the absurdity of human existence, or perhaps we have to start with the question of what can be known, or we can ask how we follow God in a modern age, or we can ask what is the Good. Perhaps I say that this starting question (whichever one I choose) has a primacy relation to all other questions, my question must be asked first. Of course there is no appearance that we can measure to see if this is true, and there is no shortage of people submitting alternative questions that they claim has a primacy relation. The system becomes deeply personal, less and less available to other people living their lives.

Or, to put it in a another way: perceived abstract relations contain something personal to the speaker. The bigger the relation, the more personal it becomes. The more personal it becomes, the more alien it is to other people. So whereas my little isolated relations and games contain a little that is personal and offers itself to other people as eager, helpful tools, if I were to turn them into a large system it would taste so much like me that only those who happen to like my flavor would be able to thrive living by my system.

Air so Thin You Can't Breathe

The difficulty of philosophy is that it consists, at least in part, of chopping the world into tiny atoms and then contemplating very simple relations. It all comes back to the basic sentence: xRy. We may suppose that when we engage in this kind of activity we are putting life under the microscope. We are looking at the world very closely to slip past all the messiness and complexity so that we can see the underlying order and simplicity. The presupposition is the world is simple and orderly and that life only perplexes us because there are so many simple and orderly relations sitting atop one another that it creates the illusion of chaos.

Yet, something has bothered me ever since my failed attempt at studying philosophy in college. In philosophy the air is so thin you can't breathe. The more complexity you strip away in the course of forming a picture of some aspect of the world, the less and less that your picture resembles the world. We philosophical types are the ones who have some defect of the brain that compels us to wrestle with these pictures and try to make them into something that we can live by; talk to someone who is struggling to get through an obligatory Intro to Philosophy class and note the way that the pictures being presented to them are utterly void of content for them. They find philosophy to be like offering someone a photo-realistic sketch and then handing them a stick figure.

Of course, stick figures just consist of lines on paper. Philosophy boasts an incredibly expansive vocabulary, esoteric word usages, mountains of primary texts next to ranges of secondary texts, and people who can sit down and actually speak in philosophy. From this the non-philosopher gets the impression that philosophy is deeply sophisticated, so the non-philosopher devalues himself by saying that he just can't understand it. He treats philosophy as something beyond him and comes to hate it bitterly.

What the non-philosopher does not understand is that philosophy is beneath his world. The pictures offered by philosophy are simplifications - that is - fictions. If the pictures bother you, it is probably because you realize you can't live in a world so small.

Even in my own writing this is something I am ever aware of. In my last blog I talked about loving the world deeply. As I re-read it I realized that it was entirely useless information for anyone other than me. My description is small, anyone reading it will picture a small world, no one could breathe that kind of air. Of course the ideas that preceded the blog mean the world to me; they have a deep significance, they are something that I can try to live my life by. The words themselves, though, are a kind of byproduct of a way of life. To someone living differently in a different situation with different values, my words have to be meaningless, it is the only way we forge our own individual lives is by being capable of not feeling the significance of every sincerely held worldview.

If you ever read a worldview that seems so small that you do not see how a person could actually live in that kind of world, one need only remember that someone is, in fact, living their life while espousing it.

Life is not Art

When I read The Duty of Genius, I came away feeling as though a real saint had lived in the not-too-distance past. I'm getting mushy and sentimental, but the world seemed better for having had a man like Wittgenstein as an example of the kinds of heights and depths a man could reach. His commitment to improve those around him likewise arouses in me a desire to improve those around me in some way.

In what way is this desire mine?

Why did I not have this desire prior to reading the book? Or if I did have it, why was it so anemic until I read the book (this is not to say that it is not still anemic, only to say that reading the book strengthened something)? How can I say that this is my desire when it was aroused by my environment?

But then, my environment could not produce the desire without me as a factor. So it is not as though I could say that it is the environment's desire and then consign myself to oblivion. I am there. I am a part of this.

However, when I read the book I did not read it for the purpose of arousing this desire. I read it wanting it to work some good on myself, but I did not know what good it would be. Like going to a surgeon and saying, "I've heard good things about you, why don't you knock me out and do what seems right to you!" Yes, I took a step in the process, and yes both the book and surgeon have to work with the material I provide them with, but it is not I that built myself into anything. I simply arranged the interaction.

When I see the world this way, I am more of a theist. Because I do not deny that I am there, but I do deny that I am sufficient for life. I can not view my life as a work of art; there is too much that belongs to the world for me to claim myself as any kind of ordered and intentional work. I hold out hope for a kind of determinism that would allow me to call the world God and would allow me to call life a wrestling with God.

Mr. T, a Tall Height, and a Wide Horizon

I have wondered before which is better: devoting your time to one pursuit and reaching a height, or devoting your time and effort to several different directions so as to be a well-rounded person. I usually choose not to provide an answer to the question and try to always affirm that both possibilities are desirable and that the key lies in finding a balance between them.

Well, today I read this.

A T-shaped man has two characteristics. First, he has a depth of knowledge and a focused expertise in one skill or discipline. This characteristic is represented by the vertical stroke of the T. Second, he has an interest in and a willingness to use a broad range of skills and disciplines outside his area of expertise. This characteristic is represented by the horizontal stroke of the T. A T-shaped man is, in short, a jack-of-all-trades, but a master of one. (See what I did there?)

This is one possible balance to strike when considering which direction to go in. He advocates (putting it into the terms that I typically use) reaching one height and then having a familiarity with the surrounding landscape. This allows for mastery and versatility at the same time: ensuring that you can collaborate easily with others but also ensuring that you have a valuable skill that you can be considered an expert in.

At the Crossroads of Dissatisfaction and Sloth

There exists a particular kind of despair in the world: not a very intense one nor (usually) a very long lasting one, but one that crops up from time to time in life. That despair is the feeling of lacking the energy to do anything challenging or requiring ones attention, but also being unable to get any significant stimulation or satisfaction from the old and familiar. Moments of this kind of despair are moments of the most pathetic feeling boredom: you're bored because the old stuff ain't interesting and you can't be bothered digesting any new stuff.

I'd like to offer a reasonable solution to this problem: perhaps the answer is to muscle through the lack of energy and force yourself to learn something new (this has never worked for me); perhaps the answer is to take a deep breath and put on an old movie and force yourself to appreciate what you already know (again, this has never worked for me). Frankly I've never found a solution except to wait until either the jadedness passed or you get some vigor back.

Art and Life

If we say that art is a reflection of life, how can we avoid saying that life lived is superior, more substantial, than art appreciated?

Here I do not advance anything factual or ask for an intellectual judgment. Instead I ask, don't you feel that the living of a life to be a more momentous thing than the appreciation of works of art?

In practice perhaps we see the greatest works of art and our participation in them to be a reason for continuing to live; there may be times when we see in art a kind of a salvation and a kind of purpose around which we can organize our lives. I too sometimes feel this way. But when I cut down to the central notion, I always find that I can not place art above the genuine article. 

Digestion of Media

I have noticed as of late that whenever I cycle through my phone to choose music to listen to, I invariably tap the "Recently Added" button and choose from among the first ten or so songs. I have also noticed that whenever the player moves beyond my most recent additions, my finger starts pressing the skip button.

I remember being in early High School and getting excited whenever Sublime's Wrong Way or Date Rape came on the radio. Then I remember later in High School listening to Nirvana songs over and over again. Then I entered college and began listening to Rammstein's singles. Rarely will my music player land on a Sublime, Nirvana, or even Rammstein song without my ears itching to hear something else.

I wonder if my interest in a song, or more properly my boredom with a song, has nothing to do with the traits of the songs themselves and more to do with the novelty of the song. Perhaps what keeps my attention is the extent to which the song lies outside what I am used to, the extent to which the song has not been already digested.

Imagine it in this way. You encounter a new sound, a new arrangement of instruments, a new combination of tone, accent, and emotion in a voice, and if it has an initial appeal to you, you begin playing it in your head if not playing it through speakers. You begin wrapping your mind around it, you begin making it more and more familiar to yourself. This may take a long time, it may only take a few weeks, but in time you find that whatever it was in the song that fascinated you begins to fade.

I submit that the fascination arose because there were characteristics in the song that stood outside of you. The song left impressions that were unfamiliar, perhaps only a few unfamiliar impressions in otherwise well-traveled territory. If those impressions struck you as lovely, then you are driven to consume them. Paradoxically you want to end what makes those elements interesting: the fact that you have not already made them a part of yourself.

Fascination, in this conception, is the feeling one gets when they find something outside themselves that they want to add to themselves. Contempt, then, in the usage of "familiarity breeds contempt" is the feeling one has when one encounters something with nothing new to chew on.

Ambition Tempered by Apathy

Let apathy encompass your life and you will be a nihilist, everything will be equally worthless as everything else and it will be impossible to love or pursue anything in life. On the other hand, let ambition encompass your life and you may find that there is so much that is worthwhile and so much that is lovely that it will likewise be impossible to pursue anything because your love is spread so thin. If no roads are worth walking or if many roads are worth walking, you remain standing still staring at the landscape.

So you let your ambition run wild; you wander around collecting things to care about, ensuring that you stave off nihilism with will and desire. Then you look at your mere twenty-four hour day coupled with an anemic seven day week and your growing collection of fetal projects that just lack the nourishment to make it to term. Then you've got to turn around and go in the other direction: pruning, burning, chiseling. You are going to have to drop some hopes and smother some ambitions so that the others have enough resources to survive.

Remember: You are mortal, therefore finite, therefore particular. You can't be everything; every moment you spend carries a cost.

Repetition Repeated

Because even leaving the whole concept of writing behind, we have to repeat ourselves to maintain any kind of stability in ourselves. We need rituals, we need habits, we need traditions that bring us back to our past. Without this kind of repetition, our present self lacks ties to our past selves and will be equally alien to our future selves. We will constantly spin off in whatever direction seems most lovely at any given time, we will lack anchors to ground ourselves and bring us back to familiar points of view. It is in this way that we have something like a persistent self.

That is why we should not fear redundancy. This is why we should be okay with repetition. This is why we should embrace covering old ground. This is why it is desirable that we should do the same thing again and again.

- Me

You cannot always control the course, and sometimes you veer off in a direction you did not expect. Not necessarily in a dramatic sense, sometimes it is just an arrangement that keeps you from doing what you think you ought to be doing, and in all cases one must work with what is in front of you.

But when the environment is conducive to being rebuilt the way you like it, though, you've got to look back and start repeating yourself lest you lose that past. Go back to what has already been built; return to your past territory. Then go on building and expanding again.

The Fragility of Productivity

This is presumptuous of me to say, since I'm not a writer (except in the sense of these blogs and the, uh, Batman story I've devoted my present life to), but I have come to the conclusion that the writer needs one of two things to pursue his activity: solitude or a close circle of exclusively supportive and understanding people who endorse the writer's desire to write. Naturally the writer can not expect the entire world to support his endeavors, but his close circle, the people he interacts with daily in his free time, must support his endeavors.

The reason I say this is that productivity is easily disrupted; even if the will to write is healthy, distractions derail the process or increase the flaws in the products. To minimize distractions requires an environment where the collective will of the people occupying the space is in agreement that distractions ought to be minimized. Even a single rogue will can lead to disruption... especially since the invention of the TV.

So which is to be preferred? Solitude? Or support? I will not make a judgment here as I do not think that this is a case of worse and better, but a case of different heights and different flavors being produced by different conditions.

But, then, one can not stop being productive simply because conditions are not ideal, but it is always tempting to do so. This is a case of cathartic bitching.

Sacrifice of Time and the Importance of Variation Revisited

In July of 2009 I wrote two blogs entitled Sacrifice of Time and The Importance of Variation. Sacrifice of Time used sacrifices as a metaphor for the fact that every activity we want to do in life requires that we give up moments of our lives that can never be retrieved or respent. The Importance of Variation comments that excessive free time makes it impossible to spend our moments productively because we always feel as though there is always more moments we can spend and therefore there is no urgency that compels us to expend energy right now.

That was over three years ago. At that time I had almost unlimited free time. At this point I tend to feel as though I get only wisps of free time here and there (I feel that way, but of course a busier man would say that I have plenty of free time. To try to look at it objectively, I am probably not that occupied at all, compared to the rest of productive society), which caused me to think back to these blogs. They seem all the more true when seen from the other side.

Whereas boredom defined my existence back then, it has all but been erased from my existence now. There is always more to be done than time to do it in. It is always a scramble to cobble free minutes together to put toward some goal or project I have. For the first time I can experience the resentment that people tend to feel when someone has wasted or is wasting their time. For the first time the Sacrifice of Time carries urgency for me; when I have to choose what to spend my free time on, I am aware of the fact that I am spending moments that I will never get back and moments that can only be spent on one thing.

I find that the danger in such a situation is diversity in desire. Desire itself is not the problem, in fact, desire is very much the thing keeping you alive. Rather it is diversity in desire, wanting too many things that have to compete for the same moments to be a part of your life. Pursuing one goal allows you to chase with all your energy and focus; pursuing two allows you to chase your primary goal with most of your energy while refreshing yourself chasing after the other; any more than that and you begin spreading yourself so thin that all you are doing is being interested in various hobbies. You never reach any kind of height.

The other danger is the danger of obligation and responsibility. When one has the structure of obligation to dictate most of the time you spend in a given week, it becomes tempting to just give up doing anything difficult with one's free time. You drift and allow obligation to make its demands upon you, the rest of your time is spent escaping challenge. This is very tempting, but unsatisfying, at least initially; I imagine it does not take very long to quiet that impulse that compels you to try to accomplish something outside of your obligations.

In a way, though, I suppose this was just a long way of explaining why I only had two blogs posted in October.

Pearls Before Swine

“Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces."

-Matthew 7:6

I could never understand this verse within the context of Christianity, because within Christianity we regard the gospel as true and we regard it as something that must be shared, distributed, and proclaimed. I, and many others that I knew of, took this as a verse advising against sharing the holy message of the gospel with at least some kinds of people - the dogs and the swine who could not appreciate it. But if the gospel is true, then it should not be defended through secrecy, it should be capable of overcoming any presented opposition by virtue of the fact that the truth will always be able to show itself superior to falsehood in a debate. That made this verse into one of those verses that you imagine has some deeper, more mysterious meaning that you do not yet understand.

Outside of Christianity, and with a healthy skepticism about humanity's ability to come to Truth, I think I understand the passage.

Pigs were unclean, they were reprehensible to the Jews. Dogs were common, wild, traveled in packs, and could turn vicious toward humanity. Neither of them have any appreciation for pearls. But a man does; a man can love pearls, he can regard them as precious, he can value and treasure them, and he can share them with those whom he loves. But if a man shares his pearls with dogs or swine, he is sharing them with those who are incapable of regarding them as he does, and he puts both the pearls and himself in danger.

This is the meaning: only share what is or what can be commonly loved, because it is a common trait of humanity to trample what is loved by few but not loved by many. The most important and defining things in life are often private in some way - unique experiences or unique blends of emotion that one will never find in another person. In this way, the experience can not be communicated, any other person will lack the vocabulary to understand you. Some will love you for having something that they can not share, but there are many who will seek to flatten you out, many who will devalue what you love simply because it is their nature to be amused by doing so.

Whatever you love dearly can not be shared too openly. Whatever is special and particular to you must be hidden except to those that you know will have some kind of appreciation for it. Because we are social creatures, and when we see what we love being trampled it is a challenge to our love. We can not make them see that whatever it is that we value deserves to be valued - because it doesn't - we love it because it is our nature to love it but it may not be their nature to love it. But when we see what we love being mocked and ridiculed, the social aspect of our nature will want to be reconciled to those who mock and ridicule and it presents us with a prompting to abandon some of our particularity and individuality for the sake of being reconciled with the crowd. On the other hand, instead we may cling more tightly to what we love and thereby come to hate the crowd who can not appreciate it.

By keeping what is particular to ourselves away from mockers, scoffers, dogs, swine, and crowds who loathe what is not a part of themselves, we avoid this challenge altogether. We avoid the experience of having what we love trampled - and the consequent challenge to our own identity. We also avoid the prompting to shut ourselves off from people to preserve our individual character.

I can scarcely imagine a more important lesson for the internet age.

Reputation

Crime and Punishment is great literature, containing beauty, truth, emotion, and a perspective on some aspect of the world. Pop Goes the Weasel is something James Patterson cranked out to keep the money train rollin', it might be fun for a few hours, but you're not really missing anything if you skip it.

I agree with both of these (very simplified) assessments, but I also know that someone told me that Crime and Punishment was great prior to me reading it. Would I have agreed that it was a great book if I didn't sit down to read it with the understanding that it was a great book? If Crime and Punishment were published today and did not have an established reputation, would I regard it as highly as I do now?

Or, suppose that Wittgenstein was never heralded as the greatest 20th century philosopher (which is certainly not a universal claim). Would I be able to see his greatness just from reading his work? Certainly not. He is too high above me, when I read him I read him to try to climb up and become better through his influence. If it weren't for the fact that I was told he was great, I might have supposed that he just had a knotty mind and a knotty way of expressing himself. I wouldn't have given him the time needed to see what was great in his work - and even now I only see dimly.

We all want to see ourselves as brave and independent thinkers, but being a brave and independent thinker is like being a father. You need to be brought up yourself before you can bring anyone else up. Independence is an excellent thing, but it must be earned by a period where you allow the established to bring you up. Of course then you run the risk of living your whole life as a disciple.

Wasted Brain Time

There is something that I have discovered the last week or so - if you do not have some idea or concept that fascinates you, your brain is going to go to some stupid places for stimulation during the busy times of the day. Old browser games I'm never going to play again, situations I'm never going to encounter again, jokes I told that weren't that great even when they were fresh; I find my mind playing them over and over again. Mental masturbation.

If you imagine thought as being like a geography, then contemplating new ideas and new perspectives is like adding territory to your estate, contemplating old ideas that have not been fully explored and that continue to inform your life and philosophy is like surveying and improving your territory, contemplating old ideas that were never important is like counting tiles in your house.

To What Extent Am I Responsible for Motion

If you do not grow, then you are stagnant. Stagnation is basically conscious death. You go nowhere, but you continue to feel what it is like to go nowhere.

But there is a midpoint between growth and stagnation. Stillness. Basking in being what one is at this very moment instead of rushing on to become something else.

Maybe Stillness and Stagnation is the same thing - just approached with a different attitude.

All the same, I have to wonder, to what extent must I propel myself forward and to what extent will fate, my environment, and my nature carry me? Is it acceptable to just continue being what I am until some kind of motivating pain or motivating situation occurs? Or is that indicative of laziness? Reverse it all - is there something wrong in being too quick to change into something else? Is it our responsibility to spend a little time experiencing what it is like to be what we are?

All this talk of responsibility is, of course, disingenuous. Does the question make sense without that kind of talk? No, not as a question, so instead I can say it like this:

You can sit and wait for something to happen that causes you to change and evolve, or you can try to force the change yourself. Neither is correct; neither is wrong. But it is the way life is.

An Effective Method?

I read, but I don't understand. My eyes scan all of the words and I flip through the pages and eventually I come to the end, but I spent the whole time skating along the surface. All of the words were read and have their opportunity to be represented in my brain, but I do not understand them. I can not explain them to you. Its okay, I did not expect to understand.

So I keep reading. I keep consuming more words, but only skating along the surface. And the depths of the writing still eludes me. I can not follow the author in twisting and stretching and exercising my mind the way he has. But I still don't get it.

And as I keep reading, slowly, I begin to notice patterns. I cannot deny the value that secondary works have in this, not because they tell you what the work means, but because they are an additional perspective that is using similar material for different ends. This makes the patterns stand out more.

And I think back to the books I have read and I realize how little I understand. I realize how the bulk of the book was lost on me. But it is different now, because knowing what I did not know implies that I am now capable of knowing it.

Is this an effective method of learning? No, probably not. It would certainly be a pisspoor way of approaching programming, biology, or history. But it is an appropriate way to approach poetry, I think. Literature as well. These should not be "learned" they are to be experienced. Repetition with minute changes - perhaps along with the occasional sudden breakthrough - this seems to be the proper way to approach literature and poetry. Skating, enjoying, absorbing as a full man instead of cramming information in like something distilled to just reason.

I think this method is an essential step in learning. Skating familiarizes you. Then at some point, you have to start digging down into the material, or all you will ever have is a skater's understanding.

What About the Non-Philosopher

On occasion I get into the tendency of seeing philosophy as very important, similar to the way that I used to (well, still do) see religion as very important. If I could not go on philosophical and religious investigations, my life would deflate, it would just be work, sleep, and aimless Googling. And sometimes I forget that this is the way the world works for me, but not for everyone.

The human species is such that anything can be lovable and anything can be loathsome to us. The human species is also such that no matter what is loved there is going to be someone else who just does not care that much. No matter what philosophical perspectives or religious heights we might pioneer, frankly, most of the world is simply not going to care.

It is best to just accept the fact that diversity dictates that your life will not fit correctly on another person's shoulders.