floodgates

I think I'm surprised by myself. I speak and act more freely than ever and I'm caring less and less for self-censorship. And I have no inclination to change it.

Existentialism

Humanity, the universal, is more real than any individual man. ~Irrational Man

This is a much abbreviated account of the Platonic Ideal. Existentialism rebels from just this type of abstraction.

An interesting parallel to Utilitarianism, which holds that the value of a man is determined by his contribution to the collective good, is Platonism which subjugates the value of the individual to the collective (the universal - the abstract), a move thought to be justified by pure reason (or rationality?). Existentialism questions the justification.

Kant's Categorical Imperative, too. It is precisely because of our reasoning capacities that we are moral agents. For Kant, our moral agency is rooted in our reason. But what is this necessary connection between morality and reason? Why is reason so privileged?

For man to enter history as the rational animal, it was necessary for him to be convinced that the objects of his reasoning, the Ideas, were more real than his own individual person or the particular objects that made up his world. ~Irrational Man

But what if things are the other way around.

I gave a talk on Existentialism 36 hours ago. I feel like I could give another talk.

funk

I feel kind of reckless. And now vain because all I ever do is talk about myself which makes me feel odd and embarrassed. I'm in a funky mood right now where everything's a glaze and I don't know what I'm supposed to want. I don't know what I want and I rarely try to think about it. A lot of times you don't know you would have wanted something unless you try it. I usually just do things and assume I will be happy once I'm finished and can think about them in retrospect. Could you live your whole life doing things you think you will be happy about in the future? I guess that's what people do.

favorite series ever (right now)

Mad Men (AMC) - Wisdom from the 1960s

On Advertising (1):

On Sex:

On City Folk versus Country Folk:

On the Future:

On the Past:

On Dating:

On Psychiatrists:

On Love:

On Marriage:

On Business:

On Advertising (2):

On Restaurants:

On Clients:

On Grief:

college --> parties --> drinking

Why do I get so excited about the idea of drinking? The thought of downing a few beers with a group of friends is wildly compelling, isn't it? Friends, alcohol, good times...right? I guess this all started when I was a freshman. Curiosity. Experimentation. Good times. [Bad times.] Formation of strong associations. Fond memories. Future projections. Temptation. For all you know, this sequence of events might describe my becoming an avid library book reader. In fact, it's a pattern that describes a broad range of human activity.

Moderation in all things, right? But what about the things that make us happy? Shouldn't we want to maximize the things in that category? I'm not making any arguments here, just asking asking you to think about a few questions and their ramifications. Okay. That's all.

green eyes

Mary: Your eyes are definitely green, not blue. Get it right.

Alex: "The perception of color depends upon various factors. These are the same eyes; however, depending on the light and surrounding hues, the eye color can appear quite different."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:BlueGreen.jpg

Mary: After a year and a half of dating you, I think I can safely say that your eyes are primarily green.

Alex: The interesting thing is that their greenness or blueness is completely conditional (dependent upon conditions like lighting and surrounding hues). They are neither unconditionally blue nor unconditionally green. So why should we prefer one color to the other? Maybe because one color appears more often? But this only happens because the conditions for that color happen to arise more often than the conditions for the other color. So what does that mean about “the” color of my eyes?

Here’s what Bertie Russell said, anyway. Mind you, here he’s talking about a table instead of a pair of eyes:

“This colour is not something which is inherent in the table, but something depending upon the table and the spectator and the way the light falls on the table. When, in ordinary life, we speak of the colour of the table, we only mean the sort of colour which it will seem to have to a normal spectator from an ordinary point of view under usual conditions of light. But the other colours which appear under other conditions have just as good a right to be considered real; and therefore, to avoid favouritism, we are compelled to deny that, in itself, the table has any one particular colour.”

Mary: Goddamn it they're green.

potato chips

I was walking to class the other day and I was eating a bag of lays baked potato chips at the same time. I was kind of making a show out of it and I was thinking, what if I see someone else eating a bag of chips -- wouldn't the slightest head nod be appropriate? So I'm thinking about this and two girls walk past me going the opposite direction. The one farthest away looks straight at me and says: nice bag. She was eating a bag of the same potato chips. I said, hey, you too! It kind of made my afternoon.