This was a very strange and interesting piece to me; first because of what was actually being said, which is something I've definitely felt before but never really thought about to any great extent; and second because of the author himself, and his own intriguing background from "failed physician" to accomplished writer.
As with some other authors and moral philosophers he seems to presuppose how other people feel and think or claims to know how they should feel or think. He makes sweeping generalizations about human nature without taking things like personality types or intelligence into account. Not everyone looks at the world with his distrust of the institution or want for the "authentic" human experience.
I was interested when i looked back at the preface and first discovered that he had tried his hand at being a doctor but gave it up in the end to write. Sounds like such a classic situation in which someone adheres to pressure about becoming something they think would be good for them, but only because of what it means to have that position, not because it's a passion of theirs.
He seems like an idealist to me with an over active conscience and sense of self consciousness. He appreciates knowledge, but not in order to know facts but to expand his own world-feeling. He appears contemptuous of other types who don't seem as "authentic." Since he naturally gravitates towards leaning, he figured he would choose a practical field like medicine. It was probably a bit rough but he figure it would get easier with time, only with time he was eventually put on the right path towards his own passions.
Some would call this mini-analysis a form of projection from me onto the author but he's seems so similar too me how could i not draw these conclusions? i feel that i can spot a fellow idealist when i encounter one, either in life or through reading. We seem to share similar views; a larrge contempt for any sort of pre-set "package deal" which everyone receives regardless of who the are (i.e. education, tourist destinations, etc.); we want the authentic experience.
What he doesn't take into account is that most people simply just don't care. They are grateful for (or at least take for granted) the package. It's much more convenient that way, much less of a hassle, and less chance of getting lost or something. For them the tour gives them a lot of useless facts they can impress people with and an experience not everyone gets to have. Some people go just to say they went. Some go because it's something for the whole family that isn't too demanding. some glance around contemptuously at their surroundings complaining that it isn't as cool as they expected, and some (myself included) look around, only half hearing, mostly lost in fantasy, seeing everything through the highly romanticized lens of their imaginations, only broken by that which brings them back, painfully, to reality (e.g. other people not sharing the same vision). The more the worse, unless you can somehow separate yourself from them. You answer all the questions correctly. You prove yourself to the natives. You are seen as the one who "understands" and takes this all seriously, while remaining likable the whole time. You are the "enlightened" on of the ignorant pack, waiting to be recognized and raised above.
Maybe the best method of teaching isn't to give students free range, or too much structure. Maybe we should be sorted according to our personalities and be taught accordingly, but does that still incur a loss? I believe so. We can't trust people on their own nor can we force them to do whats "right." So then what do we do?
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
On Thinking
I do not think. I imagine. When external words and voices run through my head I am merely racing through a land of intense images and surrealistic settings. All words feed into pictures and all pictures produce words. What i see is entirely indescribable because it is instantaneous. It comes to me as if by instinct and fades when pondered too closely.
Time
Time. The very word triggers emotion and a wave of thoughts. Usually the thought is a variation on need. The need for more. More time. More time to waste, to manage, to take, to utilize, to lose, and to kill. Why? What is time but an idea. An idea that is different for every person but universally accepted. This is an unfeeling and indifferent idea that we cling to constantly and never lose completely. Again why? Does the turtle fight the current? The Ocean is merely another force, an idea, outside of ourselves and completely unfeeling and unyielding. It has strength and continually moves. The turtles knows this from instinct his ancestors long ago chose to use it as the guiding force in their lives. It's true the turtle may leave for a period, go to land and be free, but always it must go back to the familiar waves in order to lay it's eggs and complete it's purpose.
We can never really step outside of time, only stop measuring ourselves against it for awhile. Not to worry though, because it is still passing though you, whispering in your ear, pulling you ever closer to eternal life beyond the veil, crushing your bones and melting your skin, until all you have left is yourself, in it's essential form.
We can never really step outside of time, only stop measuring ourselves against it for awhile. Not to worry though, because it is still passing though you, whispering in your ear, pulling you ever closer to eternal life beyond the veil, crushing your bones and melting your skin, until all you have left is yourself, in it's essential form.
Music Relating to Emotional Thought
Music has life. Silence has life. All sounds make something. There was a beginning in that. It started from one noise; an obscene distraction from silence. Elongated sounds. Human voice. Harmony. Dissonance. Forming with thought and emotion. Music is an enhancement of feeling and a roadmap for thought. The music creeps in and finds it's way to my mind and to my stomach. I hear and feel the sounds. If they are correct then I will think and feel in accordance with how I need to in that precise given moment. Sometimes I will pursue the thoughts and emotions that a certain song will produce. Sometimes not. It is rare that i have intense emotion without equally intense thought and a drive to "act out" how I think I need to in that moment. This "acing out" includes coming to dramatic and groundshaking conclusions about life and what I need in order to achieve the good life and become myself.
The Sun
The Sun destroys feeling because it represents God.
Am I conforming to perceived cultural opinion
Or am I forming an original thought about how the Sun shining makes me feel.
The Sun destroys dreams while interrupting sleep
It is a Harbinger of life
And a forerunner for death.
-Derek Ririe
"Three o'clock. Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do. An odd moment in the afternoon. Today it is intolerable."
-Jean-Paul Sartre
Am I conforming to perceived cultural opinion
Or am I forming an original thought about how the Sun shining makes me feel.
The Sun destroys dreams while interrupting sleep
It is a Harbinger of life
And a forerunner for death.
-Derek Ririe
"Three o'clock. Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do. An odd moment in the afternoon. Today it is intolerable."
-Jean-Paul Sartre
"Grief and a Headhunter's Rage"
This was a strange piece that i really disliked in the beginning but grew to enjoy and sympathize with the further in i got, and eventually i came to agree with what the author had to say on somethings although it still left me with a few questions.
I was frustrated in the first few pages on how he kept telling us how long it took him to understand the "significance ", the "power", and "force" of their words, and yet he it took him forever to get to why he couldn't understand what was going on with the damn words. I was screaming (in my head of course)
"Come On!!! Don't keep saying that! Effing tell us HOW you finally understood the power of their words, because if you don't understand, how the hell am I to understand, because the more you say that, the more empty your stupid words become to me. Rage from Grief?I've felt rage in depressed moments, but it's rage at how long it's taking me to pull myself out of depression."
He finally gets his act together and dives into the meat of things when he relates to us the tragic death of his younger brother and what he witnessed vicariously through his parents' eyes as well as what he himself was going through.
Shortly after this, his wife Michelle falls off a cliff, in a freak accident, resulting in her death. It wasn't until after these events take place that a he could feel the rage the Ilongots talk about amidst his grief and it finally dawns on him basically what everything is all about. He can start to see the silliness of himself as a traditional anthropologist, and the silliness of following the outdated methods in that profession. He sees the world as not arranging itself to universals as is commonly accepted in western culture, but is much more relative and subjective than that, and you know what, that is what is what actually makes sense. Every person and culture are slightly different, and what are universals but arbitrary titles given to accepted customs of a dominant culture.
He provides the audience with a great critique of other anthropological works (i.e. deep play), realizing that they are too detached and unemotional, hoping to observe life as if they weren't apart of it. A child studying ants, not interested in their lives, but them as a culture. He accuses traditional anthropologists with being overly rational and simplistic in their approaches to heavy subjects like love and death. He also critiques something called "cultural depth" which is the act of giving something more significance than it possesses in reality, just because it looks good, and adds so called validity for actions. it's a way of excusing undesired behaviour, blaming it on ritual or culture, when it is really something else all together, and maybe, what's really embarrassing or undesirable is the idea that everything has to be excused. Maybe it should just be, and those who do it should not have to feel like they need to explain for doing it, whatever it may be.
I was frustrated in the first few pages on how he kept telling us how long it took him to understand the "significance ", the "power", and "force" of their words, and yet he it took him forever to get to why he couldn't understand what was going on with the damn words. I was screaming (in my head of course)
"Come On!!! Don't keep saying that! Effing tell us HOW you finally understood the power of their words, because if you don't understand, how the hell am I to understand, because the more you say that, the more empty your stupid words become to me. Rage from Grief?I've felt rage in depressed moments, but it's rage at how long it's taking me to pull myself out of depression."
He finally gets his act together and dives into the meat of things when he relates to us the tragic death of his younger brother and what he witnessed vicariously through his parents' eyes as well as what he himself was going through.
Shortly after this, his wife Michelle falls off a cliff, in a freak accident, resulting in her death. It wasn't until after these events take place that a he could feel the rage the Ilongots talk about amidst his grief and it finally dawns on him basically what everything is all about. He can start to see the silliness of himself as a traditional anthropologist, and the silliness of following the outdated methods in that profession. He sees the world as not arranging itself to universals as is commonly accepted in western culture, but is much more relative and subjective than that, and you know what, that is what is what actually makes sense. Every person and culture are slightly different, and what are universals but arbitrary titles given to accepted customs of a dominant culture.
He provides the audience with a great critique of other anthropological works (i.e. deep play), realizing that they are too detached and unemotional, hoping to observe life as if they weren't apart of it. A child studying ants, not interested in their lives, but them as a culture. He accuses traditional anthropologists with being overly rational and simplistic in their approaches to heavy subjects like love and death. He also critiques something called "cultural depth" which is the act of giving something more significance than it possesses in reality, just because it looks good, and adds so called validity for actions. it's a way of excusing undesired behaviour, blaming it on ritual or culture, when it is really something else all together, and maybe, what's really embarrassing or undesirable is the idea that everything has to be excused. Maybe it should just be, and those who do it should not have to feel like they need to explain for doing it, whatever it may be.
"On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense"
Well, I think I'll need to read this one again before I'll remember any specifics but I did catch some key "concepts."
Nietzsche is making the statement that truth and lies are terms that depend on our acceptance and interpretations on a given language. We categorize everything based upon systems that we construct, regarding things we see as external and constant. This argument seems like a smooth blend between Plato's formalism and Locke's conceptualism. Nietzsche seems to making the point that yes, these things we name that are external from us may very well exist, and for all intents and purposes they do, but we conceive an abstract thing called language and put labels on everything physical and abstract, therefore we are completely dependent upon our conceptions, both new and preconceived in order to get the the base of things. At least that's my interpretation so far.
What we do could be seen as arbitrary since a fish or gnat would see things separately and if they had this thing abstractly named "consciousness" they would make a different language, with completely original systems and classifications, since it would be through a vastly different "lens."
He seems to reject both the empiricist argument as well as the rationalist argument; sense experience is subjective and abstract thought that leads to "proof" is comparable to a man hiding something behind a bush and suddenly finding it again, and then having the complete audacity to be genuinely astonished at what he found.
He also makes the distinction that what we dislike is not inherent in lying itself, but merely in the negative consequences that can happen directly or indirectly to us as a result of saying them, or i suppose unsaying them. We care little for the action, for us humans, it is only in the result, because this is what actually affects us.
"...Man now wants nothing but truth: he desires the pleasant, life-preserving consequences of truth. He is indifferent toward pure knowledge which has no consequences; toward those truths which are possibly harmful and destructive he is not even hostilely inclined."
Man only seeks truth when it agrees with how he already acts or thinks, or when it provides "proof" of how he wishes to act or think. He dismisses any hing of "truth" that may disagree with either pre-conceived "knowledge" or "truth" that could be potentially harmful to his own reality, faith, or ideals.
This reminds me vividly of my uncle who discusses ideas at length about the pursuit of "true knowledge" which he believes that he has found in Mormonism. His discussions always seem like long, drawn-out apologies and thinly veiled attempts to validate his own counter-intuitive belief system. I never know what to say when this subject comes up. To me he blindly believes in what his parents told him was true and what has made him relatively happy. To him, my so called "atheism" is the easy way out, my "excuse" for not being able to live up to the intense "standards" expected of his faith. He admits that belief does not equal truth, but then turns around and tells me to pray to find an answer, which should of course confirm that Mormonism is correct and that if don't receive this confirmation immediately, that I just need to attend church anyways, live by the standards and someday this "knowledge" will come to me and I'll know that it is the only right way..... uh.
Nietzsche is making the statement that truth and lies are terms that depend on our acceptance and interpretations on a given language. We categorize everything based upon systems that we construct, regarding things we see as external and constant. This argument seems like a smooth blend between Plato's formalism and Locke's conceptualism. Nietzsche seems to making the point that yes, these things we name that are external from us may very well exist, and for all intents and purposes they do, but we conceive an abstract thing called language and put labels on everything physical and abstract, therefore we are completely dependent upon our conceptions, both new and preconceived in order to get the the base of things. At least that's my interpretation so far.
What we do could be seen as arbitrary since a fish or gnat would see things separately and if they had this thing abstractly named "consciousness" they would make a different language, with completely original systems and classifications, since it would be through a vastly different "lens."
He seems to reject both the empiricist argument as well as the rationalist argument; sense experience is subjective and abstract thought that leads to "proof" is comparable to a man hiding something behind a bush and suddenly finding it again, and then having the complete audacity to be genuinely astonished at what he found.
He also makes the distinction that what we dislike is not inherent in lying itself, but merely in the negative consequences that can happen directly or indirectly to us as a result of saying them, or i suppose unsaying them. We care little for the action, for us humans, it is only in the result, because this is what actually affects us.
"...Man now wants nothing but truth: he desires the pleasant, life-preserving consequences of truth. He is indifferent toward pure knowledge which has no consequences; toward those truths which are possibly harmful and destructive he is not even hostilely inclined."
Man only seeks truth when it agrees with how he already acts or thinks, or when it provides "proof" of how he wishes to act or think. He dismisses any hing of "truth" that may disagree with either pre-conceived "knowledge" or "truth" that could be potentially harmful to his own reality, faith, or ideals.
This reminds me vividly of my uncle who discusses ideas at length about the pursuit of "true knowledge" which he believes that he has found in Mormonism. His discussions always seem like long, drawn-out apologies and thinly veiled attempts to validate his own counter-intuitive belief system. I never know what to say when this subject comes up. To me he blindly believes in what his parents told him was true and what has made him relatively happy. To him, my so called "atheism" is the easy way out, my "excuse" for not being able to live up to the intense "standards" expected of his faith. He admits that belief does not equal truth, but then turns around and tells me to pray to find an answer, which should of course confirm that Mormonism is correct and that if don't receive this confirmation immediately, that I just need to attend church anyways, live by the standards and someday this "knowledge" will come to me and I'll know that it is the only right way..... uh.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
