wisdom and hangovers

Can a hangover leave the residue of wisdom? Something more than the typical "that was a mistake" afterthought? (or wisdom beyond the physical residue of dried throw-up?)

Completely unrelated (or is it?):

I think that desires and opinions are like optical illusions - they tend to flip/flop and play tricks with the mind.

computer screen

Little Bird

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIIudD44o58

i

finally have something to say and can't say it. I'll say this: I'm glad for self-control and restraint.

reminder

Critchley, S.,Continental Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction

Volume II by Scott Soames, The Age of Meaning, (Princeton UP 2008)

freethought - a joke?

Freethought is a philosophical viewpoint that holds that beliefs should be formed on the basis of science and logic and should not be influenced by emotion, authority, tradition, or any dogma. ~Wikipedia

Why exactly is it called freethought? Free from what? Free to do what?

Okay, free from the pressures of authority, tradition, dogma. That's all well and good. But strictly bounded by science and logic? Isn't that confining human thought? These freethinkers...are they virtuous only in looking at the world through the goggles of science and logic. Are there no other ways of thinking that are to be praised?

Gosh. That Wikipedia notion of freethought (is there a better one I should know about?) really seems to cause trouble for all sorts of human thinking. Firstly, how can a person ensure that their thoughts are purified of emotion and other such human characteristics? Secondly, in trying to purify our thoughts of emotional baggage and otherwise, aren't we trying to blot out a part of what makes us human beings? What, so maybe being human isn't all that great? And we should try to transcend ourselves through freethinking...? Become something no longer human - something better? What would that be like, 'cause, as we are, with all our logic and rationality we feel; and sometimes it's hurt, and sometimes it's ecstasy. Hurting and elation are limitations on our thinking? They aren't merely aspects of our thinking?

What good are reason and logic separated from all the interesting content of human life? Since when can any "good" or "bad" be found in the principles of reason and logic? Again - I keep coming to the conclusion that we would cease to be human if reduced to "creatures" of pure reason or "freethinking." A kind of wholly amoral existence.

turn your volume up BEFORE playing

Well, not quite. Lyric Analysis (part I)

Lyric Analysis:

Preface-

Am I not living up to what I’m supposed to be? ~Trent Reznor

Too much of human action has been motivated by FEAR!

Terrible Lie!

Don’t take it away from me; I need you to hold on to.

There’s nothing left for me to hide.
I lost my ignorance, security, and pride.
I’m all alone in this world you must despise.
hey God,
I believed your promises, your promises and lies.

terrible lie!

Juxtapose this with Nietzsche’s observation: God is dead.

My interpretation: Tries to convey the agony of someone wanting very much to believe, but, in the end, abandoning belief for what seems more real, for what is not a perceived lie.

Down In It:

I used to be so big and strong.
I used to know my right from wrong.
I used to never be afraid.
I used to be somebody

I used to have something inside
Now just this hole thats open wide.
I used to want it all
I used to be somebody

Ill cross my heart and hope to die but the needle's already in my eye.
And all the world's weight is on my back and I don't even know why.
And what i used to think was me is just a fading memory-
I looked him right in the eye and said goodbye.

I was up above it.
I was up above it.
Now Im down in it.

My interpretation: Losing God and throwing off world views perceived to be false. Sacrificing a false stability and knowledge for a lack of knowledge or a nothingness that is, at least, real and true. Note: Why did Socrates believe he was wise? Because while others claimed to have wisdom and knowledge about things and were wrong and didn’t know it or denied it, Socrates knew he didn’t know any thing, which was one thing more than the others knew.

I don't think I'm projecting with all this religious interpretation either. "hey God" is actually part of the lyrics in the first song. And the second song follows right after the first in order on the album: Pretty Hate Machine. That's a bit of justification and legitimacy then. I'm sure I could scrounge up more, but I don't feel like discussing the particulars. And I swear I do not have any kind of "holier-than-thou" attitude. And I'm not speaking tongue-in-cheek. I'm being frank.

The end of the stream (of consciousness).

These epiphanies - I call them connections because they come out of me just thinking. No new inputs are coming into my brain – it is just me thinking through whatever is already in my head, on my mind. No new material. Therefore, it must merely be the reorienting and turning of old material in novel ways that accounts for such “epiphanies”. Hence, I have taken to calling them “connections” – as opposed to completely new ideas, or revelations, or [ideas] divinely conceived.

Anyhow (for something completely different...), here’s a small part of a conversation about Dawkins and his whole atheism movement:

Friend A: do you know what his goals are?
Friend B: rid the world of religion. i'm guessing you don't like that
Friend A: I don't know. prima facie, I don't like it, but that's just on the surface
Friend B: do you think that certain religions--islam, for instance--do more harm than good?
Friend A: I would suggest hitting the heart of what's "wrong" (and even of this I'm skeptical): ridding the world of dogma/unreason/irrational beliefs

And then it was mentioned that religion perhaps “needs to be focused on so strongly because it is so often accepted as being above criticism, while other areas of irrationality are not.”

But here’s my schtick:

I’m skeptical of going after “unreason” because, really, I think there is something naturally and unavoidably “irrational” about man. (I’m currently reading Irrational Man, by William Barrett, though I can’t say whether this is what Barrett was getting at or not.)

I suppose many people see in religion a representation of all that is irrational or dogmatic – unreason – and want to get rid of it, the fundamentally irrational and therefore “wrong.” But this is to equate reason with right and unreason with wrong, two identities or assertions which are not, in my mind, at all justified or, to my knowledge, justifiable. This is what Kant wanted. Morality as rooted in human reason. But what is the justification? This seems to be what Dawkins would agree with or somehow support, from what I’ve been told. But didn’t the existentialists (and I speak broadly) already anticipate what happens next? Didn’t they ask questions like: Is it even possible to end unreason? Even theoretically? Is man irrational by nature? Is irrationality part of the human condition (not to be confused with human nature)?

The existentialists seemed to think or see that holding reason so high wasn’t going to get us anywhere, and might in fact get us somewhere we don’t want to be. Alienated from ourselves as human creatures who (should be exchanged for “that,” spell-check is telling me) are fundamentally irrational, though we have stumbled upon logic and reason along with our powers to use logic and be reasonable. But in these we are limited. Gödel has proven that mathematics is incomplete, hence his “incompleteness” theorem. And we have quantum mechanics to defy and discredit the holy treatment of logic (and as a subdivision of logic, human reason). So we have found that what we thought were infinite and universal capabilities (capacities?) – i.e. logic, reason, etc. – are really finite and imperfect areas of human knowledge which seem to confirm, or at least suggest, the finitude and imperfection of man, of human beings. We used to believe that through religion, and then reason (or maybe vice-versa), that we could (might) eventually arrive at some ultimate explanation or inherent meaning for the world, for ourselves, for humanity, but now it seems that religion will fail us and that reason will do no better. Therefore, the skepticism regarding any movement which would seek to destroy unreason, and condemn irrationality in all its forms, as those may just be fundamental characteristics of man.

I mean, I'd like to see someone give a rational basis for all of human emotion.

Maybe meaning and purpose will come from somewhere else. Maybe we should think of ourselves differently.

Why my mind may be racing:

I had an energy drink at 9pm - earlier this evening.

Full Throttle: Blue Demon.

remembering where I came from

This is something I posted 2 and a half years ago on an internet philosophy discussion board. The topic of the thread was "Are we that meaningless?"

At several points in the span of the past half hour I have found myself agreeing with most of the opinions in this thread. I of course bring one more to the discussion.

Why are we searching for the meaning of life anyway? Searching for a single meaning that applies to us all is sort of like looking at the big picture because the smaller frame that is our life cannot have importance independent of the whole. And it's funny because if you can't find yourself to be important (or meaningful) as an individual, you're actually letting down a part of the big picture.

What if the big picture is just a disorganized mess of little ones, a mosaic that doesn't reveal any particular design? We don't know...can we know?...who knows...

I'm still young and it seems like life is going to be short. I'm afraid of death, but I'm excited for what happens next. Maybe it's better that it just happens to me because how the hell am I supposed to know what to do next, or what to do now?!?!

Even though I've said this, I still want to know what's in store. I want to know why I am here. I want it to make sense, as if it were a reason I could understand and think "ohhhh.....so that's why....wow, cool!"

I wish I could contribute a little more, I had a few interesting thoughts, but they evaporated almost as quickly as they began to form... I'll still be here though, still thinking.

It was the summer before my freshman year in college. I had already decided that I would study philsophy in college a year and a half prior to this, at some point during my junior year in high school. I have to say, it's kind of weird, morbid, nostalgic, even interesting to be able to look back at something I wrote, something I thought, something I thought about very hard before posting (as usual - whether I appear to you better or worse for it), something I believed, something I confessed, something I was - two and a half years ago. That something is still a part of me, I feel. Many different thoughts have occupied my mind since then, but to read again what I once wrote, I can say that the words I posted then are not at all foreign to me now. I am actually surprised that what I said then is soo close to who I still am. It's almost uncanny, and slightly disorienting. In a good way. I have such a difficult time figuring out who I am and dealing with my identity, my self-concept, the I, that I think to see such consistency in my thoughts after over two years of life is a remarkable insight into my own identity.

I probably seem pretty funny to you with all this talk of not knowing who I am. Just saying this I am reminded of the oft-quoted Socrates and his famous imperative: "[Above all] Know thyself." Maybe there is something to this. To know thyself seems to be the fundamental objective in anyone's life. And I don't know how you could arrive at such knowledge other than through self-reflection. I mean, sure you could live life to the fullest (however that may be), but if you never think about the things you have said or the things you have done or the things you have thought, do you know who you are? You can be, but do you know what that being is?

I'm afraid that I am rapidly coming to the end of this post. I'm hitting a block in my thinking, just as I did two and a half years ago when it seemed that my incoming thoughts had evaporated "almost as quickly as they began to form." This pattern of hitting a wall in new thought, where I'm left to ponder the old worn out thoughts that continue to circulate and take up all the space in my head, has got to be of some importance. There has to be something to say about why this happens, whether it is a pattern many people experience, and whether it is a pattern I can change.

Why do I feel so much less articulate than my 17 year old self? Another good question. On the one hand, I would like to say that I have changed. That if you were to transport my 17 year old self here to meet me, he and I would find that we are two different people. On the other had, I also feel that who I once was, what I once thought, never really is gone. That, somehow, my 17 year old self is still inside me, maybe a few layers down. Because the differences between my present self and my 17 year old self are so insignificantly minute that even if I have not seen people for two and a half years, they still, without strain, recognize me as ... me. And not as a different person, unrecognizable. I guess that brings up the question: am I still me?

It's a fact that I've known people who wish they were the same as they were before - who wish they had never changed from who they used to be - and it may be morbid to think about, but if one's past self is a few layers underneath the present self does that then mean that people sometimes wish newer layers had never smothered older ones? Can I ever revert back to who I used to be? I feel like it's impossible to whack off the topmost layers to get to the ones underneath, that it's only possible to add another layer to who I am. There are some who would say that when we change who are, we change so that there is nothing left of what used to be. That the layered theory is all wrong because there are no layers. In another camp, there are those who would say it is impossible to change at all. That who you are is who you are, always, no matter how you try to hide or distort it.

At this point, I'm stupefied. What I thought would be a short post has dragged on to this. And, reading what I've written, it seems tinged with negativity. Does it seem to have a negative slant to you, or is that just me slanting it? An important question.

Goodnight. But oh what's the use of saying goodnight when there's no promise that you will read this at night? If you were here, now, I would say goodnight to you. But you aren't. So do I cut it out altogether or make it more general, like: "Cheers."

The Sopranos