*&^% is happening to me? I have been in Korea for eight months, and the amount of mental rupture and rebuilding that has happened in that short amount of time strikes me as somewhat unbelievable.
The things that I have held to be gospel seem to shift almost as rapidly as the weather. To be perfectly honest, perhaps nothing would make me happier than to know that I have managed to so attenuate myself to nature that my mind and body go through seasons that directly coincide with the seasons of the earth, but I know that’s not the case.
While I am no doctor (I might have to ask my doctor friend about it though), I think that what I am experiencing is a psychological un-rest the likes of which I have heretofore not been acquainted, and it’s all because I am trying to deal simultaneously with the past, the present, and the future—which, for me, is a lot to juggle. Generally, I live my life from day to day (on a budget of $35 a day) and deal with things when they come up; however, because my present situation is becoming tenuous due to the fact that my work contract is nearer to being finished than it is to its beginning, my mind naturally turns toward that almost impossible question: what next?
For me, tomorrow is today, and today is yesterday, and yesterday is tomorrow. Floating seems like an appropriate metaphor. I’m up above the clouds, floating through the atmosphere as a cloud and thinking about what’s underneath the cloud cover.
What is most peculiar is that I am comfortable here. It might be upheaval, but what I know from experience, and the reason I feel so calm during what I know is change, is that these are the fundamental moments of any particular life. These are the times that define who you are going to be. These are the transitional moments from who you were to who you are becoming.
Focus is changing, and I just noticed that there are so many –ing verbs here, and that makes me extremely happy, because any time you are –inging, it means that you are, right now, in motion.
You know what?
That’s it for now.
That’s all I wanted to say.
Well… that was all I wanted to say.
But, just as I was about to post this, I realized (saw) that this is my one-hundreth post, and that means something.
Okay, I’m not sure exactly what it means, but “something” seems reasonable.
I started this blog because I was unhappy and needed a place to vent. Then, it became a venue for me to work through all of things that don’t quite fit together in my head—one of the beauties of writing is that when you are engaged in it you are engaging one of the most fundamental aspects of humanity: the ability to create meaning. And what happens when you do this? Jigsaw puzzle pieces suddenly start fitting together.
Generally, I have no idea what I’m going to write about when I sit down, but I have found that when you just let the fingers do their thing and turn off the consciousness, the sub-conscious seems to spill itself all over the page, such that when I return to it I understand myself more fully.
At my current teaching position here in South Korea, I teach an essay class, and the most difficult part about the entire class is getting the kids to actually forget about content and simply do the writing. I have for a long time maintained that the only important thing about writing is that it’s done. It is done to a higher or lower degree of accuracy in some cases, but that only barely matters. The ability to use complex symbols on a field an almost distinctly human attribute, and the more involved we are with our humanity, the more we understand ourselves. Korea is a funny place because people here don’t really want to understand themselves. Rather, to be more specific, they are taught that it doesn’t really matter to understand their selves because everybody is essentially the same. Now, Korea is one of the most homogenous cultures on the planet, and it is certainly interesting to see a society functioning based on the fact that everybody is pretty much the same and it is only our age and our title that distinguishes us, but it doesn’t jive very well with my western conception of the individual.
Apparently, there was no Enlightenment in Korea.
I can’t decide if there is a better. Koreans don’t care, AND it doesn’t matter to them because they have been raised to not care. So, Koreans walk around being super-Korean, and it’s easy to predict what everybody’s going to do.
(In an interesting side note, this has an adverse affect on their ability to learn English because when you are attempting to learn English, you necessarily have to get involved in the culture—language is not a tool, it’s something that we exist, something that we are, something that defines us. They can learn vocabulary and use the vocabulary, but it isn’t until they begin to understand the culture of individualism that they can truly grasp the language.)
On the other hand, western people are so unpredictable, that you have millions of people walking around doing whatever the hell they want, and it sometimes goes way too far. All one has to do is look around the public school systems in America right now to see what too much individualism will cost you, and in my humble opinion the price is dear.
So here I am, writing blog number 100 about God-Knows-What and I’m staring at my books that will have to find their way back to the USA soon and I’m drinking coffee that hasn’t been prepared from an instant coffee-creamer-sugar mix and I’m wondering whether or not I will be able to learn the skill of hunting when I get back to the states and I’m dreaming of the home that my friends and I plan on having together with the crops we plan to grow and I’m thinking about whether or not justice is a natural or artificial virtue then coming to the conclusion that it seems more artificial than natural to me and I’m thinking that it’s no wonder Ernesto Guevara turned out the way he did after seeing the things he saw and meeting the people he met and I’m trying to figure out what kind of songs I should put together for the show next week—new songs, old songs, some kind of mixture…--and I’m thinking about the worthless, cheating girlfriend I had when I first came to Korea and I’m thinking about the incredible, worthwhile girlfriend I have now who will have to be given up—not something either of us are looking forward to—and I’m thinking about a double digit number that seems kind of incredible given that it was three or four for so long and I’m thinking about the fact that one of my classes is finishing their book today which means I will buy them pizza and I’m thinking about how to make the future tense in Han-gul and I’m thinking that earlier this morning I conducted an entire banking transaction entirely in Korean and I’m thinking that becoming a writer is probably the best idea I have every had and I’m thinking about the weekend and I’m thinking about the sound of my air conditioner and I’m thinking about thinking and I’m thinking about you.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Thought Nuggets
A recent trip to the aquarium inside COEX mall in Seoul put me onto thinking about the diversity of life and adaptation. A quick look at the diversity that makes up the life that lives in the waters of the world, and it shouldn’t be a far step to understand the diversity that is possible, not only simply on the surface, but within the character of each individual as well.
There are fish out there that look astoundingly like rocks, and you would have trouble distinguishing them yourself if you weren’t assured by a little placard just off to the side insisting that there is a fish in there—and then it actually moves.
I think about camouflage in both the literal and physical sense. There are insects that camouflage themselves so well that you can literally step on one and be none the wiser. Furred animals have adapted the color of that fur to better suit their surroundings—simply look at the red fox and the arctic fox (not to mention scores of others). People use camouflage in warfare to keep the enemy unaware of their presence for absolutely as long as possible. Finally, people camouflage themselves when it comes to their feelings and emotions and true selves. How many times have you gotten to know somebody, and after a while you realize that the person you met at first was very different from the person you know now?
(I want to point out that this personal, metaphorical camouflage is by no means a “bad” thing, but rather something that almost every human being in the world makes use of in order to accomplish goals. It is a reality rather than something that ought to be judged. The use some people make of this human characteristic can be questionable, but by and large we ease people into deeper knowledge of us.)
There are fish that actually go fishing. The anglerfish has a strange fleshy growth that sticks out from the top of their head and acts like a lure. Other fish would do what is more properly called hunting. The bigger predators (sharks, whales, dolphins, etc) are obvious, but there are other fish that use camouflage and lie in wait (flounder and other flatfish).
Once again there are parallels in the world on land that extend to both the physical and mental realms. In the physical world, fishing is a term that means both the physical act of going to a body of water and putting a line in it and the metaphorical sense of things like “fishing for compliments” or “fishing for answers” or “fishing for approval.” Essentially, any time you are using a lure (either in words or physically) you are doing the act of fishing. Hunting is in much the same category. I grew up in the Midwest, and let me tell you that hunting is quite an ordeal in that particular area of the country. Guns, bows, scent killer, tree stands, licenses, birds, deer, and whatever else can be brought down. It could be said that any time you set a goal, plan the work you have to do, work the plan that you’ve set down, and then attempt to accomplish something you are hunting.
There are animals that have managed to develop a method for needing both the land and the water. Imagine a penguin that was entirely landlocked. Without the ability to fly, that penguin would be in an absolute world of hurt. Thought about another way, the fact that penguins can stay on land keeps them out of the jaws of some fairly hungry whales that are probably swimming around. Frogs, snakes, walruses, seals, and many others have this ability to traverse the treacherous realms of land and water.
Man is at the top of the food chain precisely because he has the ability to be a predator in both realms of land and water. While he might not frequently go into the water to catch fish (although it is possible and happens), he has the ability to float on it and to use it to his advantage, and perhaps that’s the nut: man has the ability to use both the land and the water to his advantage. In the realm of the mind of man I think we could definitely liken this to the distinction between possibility and the world of the senses. All those things that are simply believed without having been proven is the world that lives in the water:
“Based on these and other observed patterns, conservative extrapolations suggest as many as 2,000 or more coral-reef fish species await discovery on deep coral reefs throughout the Indo-Pacific.” --The Marine Technology Society Journal. And that’s just on coral reefs. What about the depths? The land is what we can see, what we can experience, and what we can feel with our own two hands. Man is perpetually caught in this whirlwind of that which he believes and that which he knows through experience and understanding. It is land and water.
Finally, there are anomalies. Excuse me, but what the fuck is a seahorse? Where did this character come from? What kind of madness did this species go through to develop to this point? What’s the point of a jellyfish? The moon jellyfish reproduces both asexually and sexually, while also going through something that resembles a plant stage. Exqueeze me? Just look at a blobfish. Look at this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DvdcrcihBA&feature=related
or this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vX90r12ANjY&feature=related
and you will have no problem saying that there is some diversity among aquatic creatures.
What could be more obvious that the diversity among the species on the surface. There are about 900,000 different kinds of insects, just for starters. Take this and add to it all the other varieties of birds, amphibians, reptiles, arachnids, mammals, and (the big kahuna of them all I think) plant life, and you start to get an understanding of diversity that borders on incomprehensible. Finally, if you take all of this apply it to the scope of the human mind, what becomes possible? The physical diversity of the aquatic scene (if we can trust our previous examples) is probably capable of being mirrored in the human mind, and that (if I may say so) is mindblowing, shocking, and eye-opening. Think about the way you think, how and what. Think about the number of things your mind does every second that you don’t have to think about, the number of things your mind is conducting in a day, and the number of thoughts that controllably or uncontrollably race through your head. If you can think about these things and find that you are not suddenly standing in awe of all that is right here in front of you, possible for you, available for your investigation, then I’m afraid you might be missing it.
The difference between man and the animals is something huge, and yet it is nothing at all. One of the major differences is that man provides for vast quantities of others, instead of just for himself. Man has formed societies and created a leisure industry (can you imagine anything more laughable to a cat?). We pay for our time off with money, instead of work. That distinction seems unimportant, but it wholly separates us from animals. When you’ve hunted, eaten, and protected yourself, you’ve earned a rest. Remember to watch the way the world is and appreciate what you’ve got. Work hard. Appreciate diversity. Calm down. Other people are probably just different from you.
There are fish out there that look astoundingly like rocks, and you would have trouble distinguishing them yourself if you weren’t assured by a little placard just off to the side insisting that there is a fish in there—and then it actually moves.
I think about camouflage in both the literal and physical sense. There are insects that camouflage themselves so well that you can literally step on one and be none the wiser. Furred animals have adapted the color of that fur to better suit their surroundings—simply look at the red fox and the arctic fox (not to mention scores of others). People use camouflage in warfare to keep the enemy unaware of their presence for absolutely as long as possible. Finally, people camouflage themselves when it comes to their feelings and emotions and true selves. How many times have you gotten to know somebody, and after a while you realize that the person you met at first was very different from the person you know now?
(I want to point out that this personal, metaphorical camouflage is by no means a “bad” thing, but rather something that almost every human being in the world makes use of in order to accomplish goals. It is a reality rather than something that ought to be judged. The use some people make of this human characteristic can be questionable, but by and large we ease people into deeper knowledge of us.)
There are fish that actually go fishing. The anglerfish has a strange fleshy growth that sticks out from the top of their head and acts like a lure. Other fish would do what is more properly called hunting. The bigger predators (sharks, whales, dolphins, etc) are obvious, but there are other fish that use camouflage and lie in wait (flounder and other flatfish).
Once again there are parallels in the world on land that extend to both the physical and mental realms. In the physical world, fishing is a term that means both the physical act of going to a body of water and putting a line in it and the metaphorical sense of things like “fishing for compliments” or “fishing for answers” or “fishing for approval.” Essentially, any time you are using a lure (either in words or physically) you are doing the act of fishing. Hunting is in much the same category. I grew up in the Midwest, and let me tell you that hunting is quite an ordeal in that particular area of the country. Guns, bows, scent killer, tree stands, licenses, birds, deer, and whatever else can be brought down. It could be said that any time you set a goal, plan the work you have to do, work the plan that you’ve set down, and then attempt to accomplish something you are hunting.
There are animals that have managed to develop a method for needing both the land and the water. Imagine a penguin that was entirely landlocked. Without the ability to fly, that penguin would be in an absolute world of hurt. Thought about another way, the fact that penguins can stay on land keeps them out of the jaws of some fairly hungry whales that are probably swimming around. Frogs, snakes, walruses, seals, and many others have this ability to traverse the treacherous realms of land and water.
Man is at the top of the food chain precisely because he has the ability to be a predator in both realms of land and water. While he might not frequently go into the water to catch fish (although it is possible and happens), he has the ability to float on it and to use it to his advantage, and perhaps that’s the nut: man has the ability to use both the land and the water to his advantage. In the realm of the mind of man I think we could definitely liken this to the distinction between possibility and the world of the senses. All those things that are simply believed without having been proven is the world that lives in the water:
“Based on these and other observed patterns, conservative extrapolations suggest as many as 2,000 or more coral-reef fish species await discovery on deep coral reefs throughout the Indo-Pacific.” --The Marine Technology Society Journal. And that’s just on coral reefs. What about the depths? The land is what we can see, what we can experience, and what we can feel with our own two hands. Man is perpetually caught in this whirlwind of that which he believes and that which he knows through experience and understanding. It is land and water.
Finally, there are anomalies. Excuse me, but what the fuck is a seahorse? Where did this character come from? What kind of madness did this species go through to develop to this point? What’s the point of a jellyfish? The moon jellyfish reproduces both asexually and sexually, while also going through something that resembles a plant stage. Exqueeze me? Just look at a blobfish. Look at this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DvdcrcihBA&feature=related
or this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vX90r12ANjY&feature=related
and you will have no problem saying that there is some diversity among aquatic creatures.
What could be more obvious that the diversity among the species on the surface. There are about 900,000 different kinds of insects, just for starters. Take this and add to it all the other varieties of birds, amphibians, reptiles, arachnids, mammals, and (the big kahuna of them all I think) plant life, and you start to get an understanding of diversity that borders on incomprehensible. Finally, if you take all of this apply it to the scope of the human mind, what becomes possible? The physical diversity of the aquatic scene (if we can trust our previous examples) is probably capable of being mirrored in the human mind, and that (if I may say so) is mindblowing, shocking, and eye-opening. Think about the way you think, how and what. Think about the number of things your mind does every second that you don’t have to think about, the number of things your mind is conducting in a day, and the number of thoughts that controllably or uncontrollably race through your head. If you can think about these things and find that you are not suddenly standing in awe of all that is right here in front of you, possible for you, available for your investigation, then I’m afraid you might be missing it.
The difference between man and the animals is something huge, and yet it is nothing at all. One of the major differences is that man provides for vast quantities of others, instead of just for himself. Man has formed societies and created a leisure industry (can you imagine anything more laughable to a cat?). We pay for our time off with money, instead of work. That distinction seems unimportant, but it wholly separates us from animals. When you’ve hunted, eaten, and protected yourself, you’ve earned a rest. Remember to watch the way the world is and appreciate what you’ve got. Work hard. Appreciate diversity. Calm down. Other people are probably just different from you.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
What do you do…
when this is what’s floating around your head?
--The efforts which the mind makes to surmount the obstacle, excite the spirits and enliven the passion.
--People have (with the help of convention) oriented all their solutions toward the easy and toward the easiest side of the easy, but it is clear that we must hold to what is difficult.
--‘Tis impossible that reason and passion can ever oppose each other, or dispute for the government of the will and actions. The moment we perceive the falsehood of any supposition, or the insufficiency of any means our passions yield to our reason without any opposition.
--All those who love know exactly the limit they are prepared to go to. They know exactly what is required.
--To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.
--We speak not strictly and philosophically when we talk of the combat of passion and of reason. Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.
--How keen everyone is to make this world their home, forgetting its impermanence. It’s like trying to see and name constellations in a fireworks display.
--For this reason (love being difficult) young people, who are beginners in everything, cannot yet know love: they have to learn it. With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered close about their lonely, timid, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love.
--Morality is not an object of reason… vice and virtue are not matters of fact.
--But learning-time is always a long, secluded time, and so loving, for a long while ahead and far on into life, is—solitude, intensified and deepened loneness for him who loves.
--When the mind pursues any end with passion… by the natural course of the affections, we acquire a concern for the end itself, and are uneasy under any disappointment we meet with in pursuit of it.
--Love… is a high inducement for the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world for himself for another’s sake, it is a great exacting claim upon him, something that chooses him out and calls him to vast things.
--The pleasure of study consists chiefly in the action of the mind and the exercise of the genius and understanding in the discovery or comprehension of truth. If the importance of the truth be requisite to complete the pleasure, ‘tis not on account of any considerable addition which of itself it brings to our enjoyment, but only because ‘tis in some measure required to fix our attention.
My world consists these days in the maelstrom of love, passion, understanding, human nature, and truth. I’ve thought about it for a bit, and I’m totally fine being thoroughly unable to accurately define any of those terms in a relatively small space. Then, I think about the fact that those things are swirling together, and defining them while attempting to overcome the contiguity they share with other ideas and impressions, the causes and effects of their existence or absence, and the resemblances they have to the constant stream of my impressions, and I wind up in awe at the state of the human character.
I understand why people drink.
I understand why people do drugs.
When you let the mind run free and wild, it overwhelms itself… easily.
Most people learn to curb this complete mental freedom that we all have through their training as children—and you’d better believe that everything that happens to you in school and at home is training. They learn to focus on certain things. They are taught that some things are important while some things aren’t. They are shown what it means to love every day they watch their parents interact. Passion is illustrated through the media, the relations, and the relationships that are seen every day. Understanding is reached whenever I am told it has been reached, whether that’s a test score, a light bulb moment, or a goal being reached. Human nature is constantly being monitored, constantly updated, and it is in our nature to be nurtured while nurturing our nature—that whole argument is stupid… not ignorant: stupid. Truth is the combination of individual theory and practice (and I’m going to leave it there because it would take a lot more space to try to define it), but it is seen and felt periodically enough to not give up on it completely.
Currently, I am teaching English as a second language in South Korea, and I have had the unique opportunity to observe some cultural phenomena that are highlighted by similar phenomena in the USA.
Korean children are taught to abhor failing. This cannot be stressed enough, so I will illustrate it. When I first arrived here, I would give a test or quiz, and fifteen minutes later check up on how things were going. Sometimes, if a Korean child doesn’t know the answer to number 1, they stop, having failed, and will not simply skip it and go to the next one. Any inability that they have is an automatic failure and they get that deer in headlights look we are all so aware of because they know they are in the process of failing.
American children are taught that sometimes it’s okay to fail, which always registers as: failing is fine. We lower our standards so that they’re not failing, but this is a backhanded way to say that failing is acceptable because we can always change the standards by which we’re held. You have only to see the educational standards of the United States stacked up against the rest of the first world—what an awful denomination, and I have no doubt that you will see what I mean.
The problem, as I see it, with both of these systems is that the focus is entirely wrong. In the first place, it teaches students that failure exists. Failure can only be the unachieved goal set for a person by somebody who is not that person. When I set a goal for myself, it’s a want. When somebody else sets it for me, it’s an external expectation. When I don’t achieve somebody else’s goal, I don’t get them what they want. When I don’t achieve my goal, I don’t get what I want. That’s it. I haven’t failed anything.
Doesn’t that sound a lot like: the only failure is not trying?
Yes.
That’s because (with a slight modification): in every genuine attempt involving legitimate effort, progress is always achieved, even if it looks like a regression. Attempt to love, attempt to feel passion, attempt to understand human nature, and attempt truth.
--The efforts which the mind makes to surmount the obstacle, excite the spirits and enliven the passion.
--People have (with the help of convention) oriented all their solutions toward the easy and toward the easiest side of the easy, but it is clear that we must hold to what is difficult.
--‘Tis impossible that reason and passion can ever oppose each other, or dispute for the government of the will and actions. The moment we perceive the falsehood of any supposition, or the insufficiency of any means our passions yield to our reason without any opposition.
--All those who love know exactly the limit they are prepared to go to. They know exactly what is required.
--To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.
--We speak not strictly and philosophically when we talk of the combat of passion and of reason. Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.
--How keen everyone is to make this world their home, forgetting its impermanence. It’s like trying to see and name constellations in a fireworks display.
--For this reason (love being difficult) young people, who are beginners in everything, cannot yet know love: they have to learn it. With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered close about their lonely, timid, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love.
--Morality is not an object of reason… vice and virtue are not matters of fact.
--But learning-time is always a long, secluded time, and so loving, for a long while ahead and far on into life, is—solitude, intensified and deepened loneness for him who loves.
--When the mind pursues any end with passion… by the natural course of the affections, we acquire a concern for the end itself, and are uneasy under any disappointment we meet with in pursuit of it.
--Love… is a high inducement for the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world for himself for another’s sake, it is a great exacting claim upon him, something that chooses him out and calls him to vast things.
--The pleasure of study consists chiefly in the action of the mind and the exercise of the genius and understanding in the discovery or comprehension of truth. If the importance of the truth be requisite to complete the pleasure, ‘tis not on account of any considerable addition which of itself it brings to our enjoyment, but only because ‘tis in some measure required to fix our attention.
My world consists these days in the maelstrom of love, passion, understanding, human nature, and truth. I’ve thought about it for a bit, and I’m totally fine being thoroughly unable to accurately define any of those terms in a relatively small space. Then, I think about the fact that those things are swirling together, and defining them while attempting to overcome the contiguity they share with other ideas and impressions, the causes and effects of their existence or absence, and the resemblances they have to the constant stream of my impressions, and I wind up in awe at the state of the human character.
I understand why people drink.
I understand why people do drugs.
When you let the mind run free and wild, it overwhelms itself… easily.
Most people learn to curb this complete mental freedom that we all have through their training as children—and you’d better believe that everything that happens to you in school and at home is training. They learn to focus on certain things. They are taught that some things are important while some things aren’t. They are shown what it means to love every day they watch their parents interact. Passion is illustrated through the media, the relations, and the relationships that are seen every day. Understanding is reached whenever I am told it has been reached, whether that’s a test score, a light bulb moment, or a goal being reached. Human nature is constantly being monitored, constantly updated, and it is in our nature to be nurtured while nurturing our nature—that whole argument is stupid… not ignorant: stupid. Truth is the combination of individual theory and practice (and I’m going to leave it there because it would take a lot more space to try to define it), but it is seen and felt periodically enough to not give up on it completely.
Currently, I am teaching English as a second language in South Korea, and I have had the unique opportunity to observe some cultural phenomena that are highlighted by similar phenomena in the USA.
Korean children are taught to abhor failing. This cannot be stressed enough, so I will illustrate it. When I first arrived here, I would give a test or quiz, and fifteen minutes later check up on how things were going. Sometimes, if a Korean child doesn’t know the answer to number 1, they stop, having failed, and will not simply skip it and go to the next one. Any inability that they have is an automatic failure and they get that deer in headlights look we are all so aware of because they know they are in the process of failing.
American children are taught that sometimes it’s okay to fail, which always registers as: failing is fine. We lower our standards so that they’re not failing, but this is a backhanded way to say that failing is acceptable because we can always change the standards by which we’re held. You have only to see the educational standards of the United States stacked up against the rest of the first world—what an awful denomination, and I have no doubt that you will see what I mean.
The problem, as I see it, with both of these systems is that the focus is entirely wrong. In the first place, it teaches students that failure exists. Failure can only be the unachieved goal set for a person by somebody who is not that person. When I set a goal for myself, it’s a want. When somebody else sets it for me, it’s an external expectation. When I don’t achieve somebody else’s goal, I don’t get them what they want. When I don’t achieve my goal, I don’t get what I want. That’s it. I haven’t failed anything.
Doesn’t that sound a lot like: the only failure is not trying?
Yes.
That’s because (with a slight modification): in every genuine attempt involving legitimate effort, progress is always achieved, even if it looks like a regression. Attempt to love, attempt to feel passion, attempt to understand human nature, and attempt truth.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
More Notes from the Bus
My enemy has presented himself to me. He is loud. He understands nothing. Believes instead of knows. If you were asked to bow as you entered the temple of another faith (a temple that you have chosen to come to out of curiosity), simply as a sign of respect for other human beings attempting to struggle with their reality and searching for it wherever they can find it, would you do it?
I would.
The problem is, of course, that you cannot engage a religious warrior un-religiously. Try as you might, there is no possibility of them being able to separate their cause from your attack:
You attack A Muslim? You are attacking Muslims.
You attack a Christian? You are attacking Christianity.
We love taking our victimization and extending it through contiguity to our group—whatever that might be.
Perhaps the most fundamental flaw in the religious program is that the individual is lost, engulfed in whatever belief system they have associated themselves with, and the importance of the individual may be this:
his or her ability to maintain objectivity in the quest to develop society towards the next phase of human growth. Tainted with the beer goggles of religion, this is impossible. Why are there so many shared stories? Why are the traditions so many and various, and yet so similar? It would seem totally possible that in ancient times people simply spread out, and as they observed their world the stories which had been passed down to them changed as their personal observation allowed it to change, and right no we’ve got what we’ve got. I like the idea of the brotherhood of man. Eons ago when Jacob and Esau were on the outs, it was Brother V. Brother. Are we not all descended from that unknowable, primordial wellspring? Whether it be God, whether it be an accident of nature, or whether we are simply a fungal growth on some giant turd floating in the toilet bowl of space, we can all call each other by our proper name: human.
Stop disseminating hate—and believe me that when you’re telling someone they’re wrong you ARE disseminating hate.
Ask them to define their terminology more clearly for themselves, for you.
Ask them to clarify their position and simply identify any potential non sequiturs.
Ask them about the meanings of words such as belief, faith, love and meaning.
To be able to accurately define these words for one’s self is the first step on the path to the dissemination of love. Control yourself.
…
I try to avoid the topic of religion because people get so worked up about it. The thing that I am most put off by is proselytizing. I understand that Jesus said something about making fishers of all men, but he didn’t say what kind of fishermen. Catholics read that verse, too. It doesn’t say Catholic fishermen or Baptist fishermen or Protestant fisherman, simply fishermen. What is a fisherman but a seeker of nourishment the belly ache for understanding that we all have? Seekers and, sometimes, finders of those calming moments that remind us we are on this beautiful place for a time—and indefinite article kind of time. Seek to love. Find love. Seek peace. Find peace. Take the example of almost all religious leaders: live by the example of peace, harmony and love.
I would.
The problem is, of course, that you cannot engage a religious warrior un-religiously. Try as you might, there is no possibility of them being able to separate their cause from your attack:
You attack A Muslim? You are attacking Muslims.
You attack a Christian? You are attacking Christianity.
We love taking our victimization and extending it through contiguity to our group—whatever that might be.
Perhaps the most fundamental flaw in the religious program is that the individual is lost, engulfed in whatever belief system they have associated themselves with, and the importance of the individual may be this:
his or her ability to maintain objectivity in the quest to develop society towards the next phase of human growth. Tainted with the beer goggles of religion, this is impossible. Why are there so many shared stories? Why are the traditions so many and various, and yet so similar? It would seem totally possible that in ancient times people simply spread out, and as they observed their world the stories which had been passed down to them changed as their personal observation allowed it to change, and right no we’ve got what we’ve got. I like the idea of the brotherhood of man. Eons ago when Jacob and Esau were on the outs, it was Brother V. Brother. Are we not all descended from that unknowable, primordial wellspring? Whether it be God, whether it be an accident of nature, or whether we are simply a fungal growth on some giant turd floating in the toilet bowl of space, we can all call each other by our proper name: human.
Stop disseminating hate—and believe me that when you’re telling someone they’re wrong you ARE disseminating hate.
Ask them to define their terminology more clearly for themselves, for you.
Ask them to clarify their position and simply identify any potential non sequiturs.
Ask them about the meanings of words such as belief, faith, love and meaning.
To be able to accurately define these words for one’s self is the first step on the path to the dissemination of love. Control yourself.
…
I try to avoid the topic of religion because people get so worked up about it. The thing that I am most put off by is proselytizing. I understand that Jesus said something about making fishers of all men, but he didn’t say what kind of fishermen. Catholics read that verse, too. It doesn’t say Catholic fishermen or Baptist fishermen or Protestant fisherman, simply fishermen. What is a fisherman but a seeker of nourishment the belly ache for understanding that we all have? Seekers and, sometimes, finders of those calming moments that remind us we are on this beautiful place for a time—and indefinite article kind of time. Seek to love. Find love. Seek peace. Find peace. Take the example of almost all religious leaders: live by the example of peace, harmony and love.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
The Mind of Man
is a hall of mirrors. Almost every thinker from the beginning of time has noticed, one way or another, that they way the human mind works involves reflections. It is absolutely appropriate that reflection is the word that has many meanings, and those meanings are basically the structures of the mind of man.
The first and most basic definition of reflection is could be thought of as direct observation. I see my reflection in a mirror. That reflection is passive and inactive. It is a bit humorous to think that when we see ourselves, our bodies, we are looking at the thing that is inactive; however, the body is merely the stage for the action. Think about the theatre. Does a stage do the acting? It can, and certainly ought to be, a character—in some methodologies and in some plays the stage might even be the central character, but it doesn’t actually do anything. Its simple existence is enough for it to be important, and it is enough for the body to exist to make it important.
(In a small aside here, I would like to make a plug for taking care of the body. In general this involves three things, and they are the biological imperatives. Eat food that is conducive to good health. What will happen if you eat McDonald’s every day for thirty days? Bad things. What will happen if you eat a balanced diet and one day (let’s say in a month) when you’re out and about, you happen to stop at McDonald’s for a convenient meal? Probably not too much harm will come from this. Do something physical. Have sex, go for a run, play soccer, and do whatever it is that needs doing for a few hours every week. You don’t have to be a gym rat, going every day, just ensure that you are taking care of the physical needs of your body to stay in shape, otherwise atrophy ensues, and that kind of atrophy is impossibly slow and painful. Taking care of the body’s shape is essentially the shelter from the always-impending storm of atrophy. Protect your body, as much as is possible from harm. Don’t do incredibly stupid things that are guaranteed to harm you. It is important to note that the body ought to be put in certain dangerous situations every once in a while, but don’t be reckless about it. Your body will thank you for it.)
The next kind of reflection that happens is the first that happens in the mind. Let’s call it a Hume-ism: impression. Essentially, all this amounts to is that you are taking in all the sensory bits and pieces that you can. When you look at yourself in the mirror, you see yourself and you start to think about the scar just below your right eye, or the zit that creeping into existence on your chin, or the fact that your left ear is slightly higher than your right, or “Damn, I need a haircut,” or that black eye is swelling up pretty intensely. These impressions are, in themselves, some of the simplest thoughts that human beings can have, but they are floor number one, built on the foundation of the existence of the thing in the mirror.
It works equally well with the other senses. Close your eyes and touch your skin. Your impressions are that your arms are really hairy, or your fingernails seem to be long. Take a deep breath and smell yourself. Lick your skin. What do you taste like? Listen to yourself, and I mean really listen to yourself saying something. All of this information we pick up about everything around us through the sense organs that have been granted to us, and it is the most basic information that we have. If the stage is the foundation, the sensory impressions that we pick up become the set on the stage. We are beginning to get an idea of something coming together.
The third type of reflection involves giving back—let’s call it a reaction. Imagine a line of mirrors set at an angle and a laser being pointed at the first one, only to have the light reflected down the line of mirrors. This is the first stage at which something actually happens. It is at this point that we are actually doing something about the idea that we now have, and it amounts, basically, to an explication of what the impression is. Take the color blue. The eye sees the color blue, the brain recognizes it as a thing existing on a plane, and finally you say its name: blue. Action, in this sense, is the very physical action, whether in speech or motion, that takes place as the result of an idea. First impressions become ideas that give rise to a reaction. If we continue with our analogy of the stage, then the actors have begun to populate the set. We now see that there is A) a stage B) a set and C) actors. These actors are even saying things, but it is essentially incoherent babble for the most part, or, if comprehensible, then the most rudimentary of meanings. In our other analogy (that of the building) this is essentially the enclosed building. It exists, it has vitality and color, it is populated, and it is enclosed. Foundation. Floor. Ceiling.
The final type of reflection is that metaphorical type of reflection that reaches into the past—and I am pretty sure it is always into the past that it reaches. When I sit and reflect on my life, I am thinking about the accumulated knowledge of my days on this planet, the myriad routines I have subjected myself to, and the cultural knowledge that has somehow been implanted in my brain. This is where the magic happens. Habit and our customary way of doing things are pulling the strings. We only recognize blue because we have seen it and been told its name before—in the past. Had we encountered blue for the first time, without having been told its name, there is no way that its particular moniker could possibly spring to our lips. Think of a child just learning his or her colors. We must be told something in the past for it to affect our present or future.
What presents itself as a problem for this type of reflection is that everything gets muddled here. Before the roof was on the building, we could see inside it and understand what was going on, but now our view is obscured. Before, the actors were wandering around the stage babbling in basic incoherence, and now they are saying things that seem to matter in a way that seems to make sense, and it is the unseen hand of the director that is reflection in the metaphorical sense that makes it all possible.
I have encountered this four-fold in other places, and it took me a long time to accept it, but when a thing keeps coming up in so many and various places, you start—perhaps by habit and a customary way—to believe and understand it. Heidegger’s four-fold is almost essentially this, but with different names: earth and heavens, mortals and gods. The earth is the existing thing, the initial impression (the entrance of the mind onto the scene) would be the heavens, mortals would be the populated stage, and the gods would be the realm of history and habit that seems to invisibly pull strings.
It seems to me that this is the way we go about things. Call them whatever you will, but these seem like reasonable structures of the consciousness: body, consciousness, sub-consciousness, and spirit. It’s what makes humans capable of doing the things they do. Animals do not have the same metaphysical structure. Their minds and spirits do not work in the same way. If for only this, I implore you to go about using the abilities and skills that are inherent in you simply by virtue of being human to start working on your understanding of your own reflections. Sit quietly for a while and stare at yourself, notice that you are, notice what you really look like, say something to yourself, do something with, go somewhere, and be great.
The first and most basic definition of reflection is could be thought of as direct observation. I see my reflection in a mirror. That reflection is passive and inactive. It is a bit humorous to think that when we see ourselves, our bodies, we are looking at the thing that is inactive; however, the body is merely the stage for the action. Think about the theatre. Does a stage do the acting? It can, and certainly ought to be, a character—in some methodologies and in some plays the stage might even be the central character, but it doesn’t actually do anything. Its simple existence is enough for it to be important, and it is enough for the body to exist to make it important.
(In a small aside here, I would like to make a plug for taking care of the body. In general this involves three things, and they are the biological imperatives. Eat food that is conducive to good health. What will happen if you eat McDonald’s every day for thirty days? Bad things. What will happen if you eat a balanced diet and one day (let’s say in a month) when you’re out and about, you happen to stop at McDonald’s for a convenient meal? Probably not too much harm will come from this. Do something physical. Have sex, go for a run, play soccer, and do whatever it is that needs doing for a few hours every week. You don’t have to be a gym rat, going every day, just ensure that you are taking care of the physical needs of your body to stay in shape, otherwise atrophy ensues, and that kind of atrophy is impossibly slow and painful. Taking care of the body’s shape is essentially the shelter from the always-impending storm of atrophy. Protect your body, as much as is possible from harm. Don’t do incredibly stupid things that are guaranteed to harm you. It is important to note that the body ought to be put in certain dangerous situations every once in a while, but don’t be reckless about it. Your body will thank you for it.)
The next kind of reflection that happens is the first that happens in the mind. Let’s call it a Hume-ism: impression. Essentially, all this amounts to is that you are taking in all the sensory bits and pieces that you can. When you look at yourself in the mirror, you see yourself and you start to think about the scar just below your right eye, or the zit that creeping into existence on your chin, or the fact that your left ear is slightly higher than your right, or “Damn, I need a haircut,” or that black eye is swelling up pretty intensely. These impressions are, in themselves, some of the simplest thoughts that human beings can have, but they are floor number one, built on the foundation of the existence of the thing in the mirror.
It works equally well with the other senses. Close your eyes and touch your skin. Your impressions are that your arms are really hairy, or your fingernails seem to be long. Take a deep breath and smell yourself. Lick your skin. What do you taste like? Listen to yourself, and I mean really listen to yourself saying something. All of this information we pick up about everything around us through the sense organs that have been granted to us, and it is the most basic information that we have. If the stage is the foundation, the sensory impressions that we pick up become the set on the stage. We are beginning to get an idea of something coming together.
The third type of reflection involves giving back—let’s call it a reaction. Imagine a line of mirrors set at an angle and a laser being pointed at the first one, only to have the light reflected down the line of mirrors. This is the first stage at which something actually happens. It is at this point that we are actually doing something about the idea that we now have, and it amounts, basically, to an explication of what the impression is. Take the color blue. The eye sees the color blue, the brain recognizes it as a thing existing on a plane, and finally you say its name: blue. Action, in this sense, is the very physical action, whether in speech or motion, that takes place as the result of an idea. First impressions become ideas that give rise to a reaction. If we continue with our analogy of the stage, then the actors have begun to populate the set. We now see that there is A) a stage B) a set and C) actors. These actors are even saying things, but it is essentially incoherent babble for the most part, or, if comprehensible, then the most rudimentary of meanings. In our other analogy (that of the building) this is essentially the enclosed building. It exists, it has vitality and color, it is populated, and it is enclosed. Foundation. Floor. Ceiling.
The final type of reflection is that metaphorical type of reflection that reaches into the past—and I am pretty sure it is always into the past that it reaches. When I sit and reflect on my life, I am thinking about the accumulated knowledge of my days on this planet, the myriad routines I have subjected myself to, and the cultural knowledge that has somehow been implanted in my brain. This is where the magic happens. Habit and our customary way of doing things are pulling the strings. We only recognize blue because we have seen it and been told its name before—in the past. Had we encountered blue for the first time, without having been told its name, there is no way that its particular moniker could possibly spring to our lips. Think of a child just learning his or her colors. We must be told something in the past for it to affect our present or future.
What presents itself as a problem for this type of reflection is that everything gets muddled here. Before the roof was on the building, we could see inside it and understand what was going on, but now our view is obscured. Before, the actors were wandering around the stage babbling in basic incoherence, and now they are saying things that seem to matter in a way that seems to make sense, and it is the unseen hand of the director that is reflection in the metaphorical sense that makes it all possible.
I have encountered this four-fold in other places, and it took me a long time to accept it, but when a thing keeps coming up in so many and various places, you start—perhaps by habit and a customary way—to believe and understand it. Heidegger’s four-fold is almost essentially this, but with different names: earth and heavens, mortals and gods. The earth is the existing thing, the initial impression (the entrance of the mind onto the scene) would be the heavens, mortals would be the populated stage, and the gods would be the realm of history and habit that seems to invisibly pull strings.
It seems to me that this is the way we go about things. Call them whatever you will, but these seem like reasonable structures of the consciousness: body, consciousness, sub-consciousness, and spirit. It’s what makes humans capable of doing the things they do. Animals do not have the same metaphysical structure. Their minds and spirits do not work in the same way. If for only this, I implore you to go about using the abilities and skills that are inherent in you simply by virtue of being human to start working on your understanding of your own reflections. Sit quietly for a while and stare at yourself, notice that you are, notice what you really look like, say something to yourself, do something with, go somewhere, and be great.
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