I’ve been feeling a distinct lack of trust in my life lately. Usually I’m fine in my independence, but sometimes I need someone I feel comfortable talking to. It is a weird sort of loneliness, as if everyone who knows me is content with their own perceptions of who I am, uninterested in anything other than casual understanding. I feel like I’m on no one’s priority list. I wish I felt comfortable talking to someone, but even when I talk to my mom I feel like she has no confidence in my abilities and no desire to accept that I’m not the person she has always wanted me to be. She will read this and, as usual, think that I’m painting her in bad light instead of realizing that I feel this way because, though I love her, talking to her causes me stress and that I haven’t felt comfortable telling her what is close to my heart since junior high. She will feel attacked instead of wondering why, whenever I talk to her, the only thing I hear is disapproval. My uncle Collier gave me some frank and excellent advice about this while fishing in Canada one year, which is one reason why those trips are so special to me.

I’ve been trying to help people out with their problems, small and large, quite a bit lately. I get the idea that other people need my help more than I need theirs. So on the rare occasions when people ask me if I need anything, I feel obligated to say no. I don’t want to bother them with my uncertainties and fears. This is a problem I’ve always had. I don’t like appearing weak or vulnerable. This comes across as aloofness or arrogance to many people and prevents me from becoming close enough to tell and trust someone with the things I need help with.

I think my fear of trusting was born from three different sources.

1. My father: finding out that he cheated on my mother, seeing his violent, hate-filled and hurt side to the point where jumping out of a car was a viable and best solution. That was much worse than his normal casual indifference and manipulative disapproval.
2. My mother: In junior high, sharing with her the initials of a girl I had a crush on, and her asking around and finding out who it was. I was mortified that other people, strangers, knew who I had a crush on. Also, when she put my dog Rosie to sleep without telling me. Coupled with her disapproval, I’ve not felt secure talking to her about anything remotely personal since then.
3. My roommate: Pretty much the only friend I had in the class of 2003, he hooked up with a teammate he knew I had a crush on when I went home for my mother’s 50th birthday and proceeded to blatantly fool around with her in our room for the rest of the school year.

Writing that last part made me realize that the whole reason I started this weblog was to place my trust issues in a place external to me where they can be examined and [most likely] forgotten about for a time. I might be creating my own internal informational cascade. Lately I’ve been doing my best at being completely open and honest about my insecurities with one person, but it is very scary because, even though I’ve been doing so, I still don’t know if I can trust them.

I expect that I’ll get a few comments saying “You can talk to me, man.” but that will be the same mechanism as when someone talks about how they need a hug and someone immediately offers one. Some of the authenticity of the offer is lost. Of course, the previous is also just me preemptively saying that I don’t need any help. A cleft stick of my own devising, and the only way out is to just go ahead and trust.

I participated in a thread about male-female communication at one of the community sites I frequent, and have continued thinking about it offline. It kind of bleeds into my ever-evolving thoughts on masculinity, and since I haven’t done much thoughtcrime lately, I figured I’d flesh it out a bit here. One of the commenters is something of an anthropologist, so her thoughts usually get me thinking in that mode. Much of what was said had a Men are from Mars tone to it, but the point was made that this paradigm is facile and in reality we’re all individuals [except that guy] and our communicatory ambiguities are unique as well.

I think this is a useful and true statement in an objective sense, but doesn’t do much in actual application. That’s where the Men are from Mars paradigm rules. I tried to flesh out my thoughts, quoting myself:

What I’ve noticed … through the associations I’ve had with girlfriends and girl friends is that women have a certain way of talking about their feelings that men don’t have. I’ve seen several instances in this thread of people saying men don’t have feelings, which is wrong. For me, I don’t talk about my feelings unless someone asks. I don’t interpret lack of asking as non-interest in my feelings; I think that women are used to talking about such things without the need to be asked. What I’m getting at is that there might be an expectation on each of your parts that the other will behave in the way that they’re used to.

I agree with [the idea that each communicatory act is unique] in concept, but I don’t think it is actualized very often, because emotions necessarily prevent an objective examination of the mechanism in which they are communicated. They aren’t reasonable.

Of course, this is how I deal with my emotions, for the most part. I don’t communicate them [unless asked] but objectify them and deal with them rationally. So, when someone does ask about them, I sense incipient boredom right off the bat because I’ve got them controlled and analyzed to such a point that I don’t talk about them in a way that has been interesting to the female friends I’ve had.

Communicating emotions with my male friends is much different. No one asks, because most of the time there is no need to. The correct type of space is automatically defined and given. The male emotional empathy is so strong. The most outreach I ever give or have been given usually consist of “Are you alright, man?” “Okay, if you need to talk, I’m around.” This is kind of sad to me since the definition of “American Male” is so simultaneously rigid and nebulous; emotionally dangerous, that any wavering from the macho bravado is “gay.”

That is all probably over-simplified, Men are from Mars crap, but like I said before, so many people buy into that paradigm that it has some utility.

So what interests me here is my rather quick statement about the rigidity and nebulousness of “American Male”, something that has been simmering on a back-burner since the disappointment that was US Guys. Basically, what I meant by that statement is that, men have a definite list of attributes which are given to us through cultural inculcation and expectation to follow. Such as not being emotional in a certain way. The nebulousness rolls in two separate ways. The fact that the list of American Male attributes is so long that it might as well be infinite, and the fact that there are no assembly instructions. It is like having all the ingredients for an apple pie, and a picture of an apple pie, and being told to make one. That, I think is the fundamental problem with being male. The entire construct is arranged in such a way that there is little to no support network, each must figure it out for themselves. They system is so arranged that attempts to create a deeper, more meaningful support network [from a feminine standpoint] are immediately and extremely awkward for all male parties involved.

That’s where we end up with throwaway comments like “that’s gay”. Any male behavior that deviates from the norm in such a way as to challenge it is “gay”. So, at least for my generation, there is no room for homosexuals in the societal construction called American Male. I’m sure this will change, and I hope that as it does, the rigidity and nebulousness will reduce to something at once a bit more codified and broad-minded than the yeehaw toe-the-line emotional treasure hunt that men have been rough-painted as.

There might be something similar for women, but I’m not qualified to speak on that subject.

I think in the past I’ve thought that doing your best simply meant giving full effort to a task. That completely neglects the use of judgment in the process. Just following the first would mean that you would sprint a marathon, run as fast as possible the entire way; full effort, not much judgment. I probably need to start consciously exercising my judgment and integrating it into what I mean when I do my best.

I think one of the reasons I’m so rigid in my reckoning of life is that at a fundamental level I’m a coward. Sometimes when I’m caught by surprise and have to think fast about something, I choose what appears to be the easiest or safest way, or sometimes just refuse to think about it at all and go pound sand with my head. The enforced rigidity has cut down on my opportunities to let myself fuck up, but the side effect of this is that I have been or am becoming a proud asshole. I guess I should stop feeling smug about my supposed success and figure out how to take myself down a peg or two.

I think I’m going to reject the act of nostalgia from my life. Hindsight, reflection and appreciation of the past are fine, but comparing the past to the present’s detriment is inefficient, irresponsible and inauthentic. All moments are incomparably precious and moments past should not distract and detract from the value of the moments present.

So I did a mild redesign. Not much changed on the front end, but I basically coded this one from scratch and it is 50% less crufty and 50% more cromulent than before.

I had a half-formed thought last night about how moments are precious because most of them get lost to memory during the abyss of time that is life; life always seems short because we forget most of it. So each moment has to be used up to the last nubbin, because even if we forget it, we’ll know it wasn’t wasted.

I like cruising down the dirt roads of the internet to see what pops up. Dead sites, deleted threads, random things from the Internet Archive and somehow by doing this I ended up on a zed-list celebrity gossip site that had paparazzi pictures of Britney Spears no-no spot. In an interesting bifurcation of thought I clicked on the link. I didn’t really want to see it, but I was interested in what all the fuss was about. It looked like any other no-no spot. What was more interesting to me was the c-section scar.

In any case, there is this prevalent fascination with what certain celebrities look like with the wrinkly bits visible. Almost as if, since they have celebrity, their junk must look or somehow be better than someone elses. It is self-consciously chuckle-dumb. Everybody has the same bits, more or less, so paying attention to personality, focus and wisdom should be the main swing of things. Except it’s easier to let the lizard hind-brain do the thinking, especially when teh internets are involved.

Years ago, I read an essay about the cultural construction of whiteness in America; the author’s claim was that whiteness is defined as a void, easier to discuss in terms of what it is not, rather than what it is. I can’t remember if this was mentioned in the essay, but I believe this loss is derived from the ubiquity of whiteness itself. Trying to define whiteness is bootstrapping. Even the vocabulary involved in such discussions of ethnicity is insufficient to properly address the issue. By virtue of their minority status, it is possible for folks in a non-white construction to hone their self-awareness in terms of their association with whatever their minority is. So a black folk has an easier time grappling with what it means to be Black because their blackness is less prominent when compared to whiteness. This applies just as well to sex and gender roles, and even works in subcategories of whiteness based on country of origin.

I’m sometimes envious of people who have this kind of associative chance. I have no legacy to use to direct my self-definition. My family, awesome as it is, shows no ethnic traits, like a focus on food from the old country, songs and stories, or even knowledge of distant family over in Europe. This is why that essay resonated with me so strongly, it seemed to be describing my life exactly. Because my cultural background is ubiquitous to the point of meaninglessness, I’m missing out on an entire facet of existence. This was likely the nascent impulse that made me so interested in anthropology.

Something Alixa + Naima said the other night sparked this thought process. In an amazing poem about Hurricane Katrina, they made disparaging reference to being white. After, they explained that it wasn’t a remark about race, but about a certain state of mind they call “white.” To me it seems like this state of mind is the same as the ubiquity/void that I’m talking about. It makes sense, but is also troubling. Their sense of culture and legacy was very prominent in their reading, in direct contrast to whiteness.

Yet where does that leave me? There is no Italian or Polish or Hungarian or Irish or Jewish heritage for me to lean on. I cannot adopt myself into any of those paradigms and be authentic. On the positive side, this void leaves me free to define myself in any terms that I choose; except these always seem to remain in the void and the process gets awfully old after awhile. It is almost easier to just be meaningless.

Since my library books and Amazon order haven’t arrived yet I started rereading David Cooper’s Existentialism last night. I picked this up at a table in the faculty building at Notre Dame many years ago. This was a very cool table. Profs would drop whatever books they no longer had a use for there for other profs [and piratical students like myself] to snatch. Unfortunately I didn’t find out about this table until my junior year, thereby missing two years of potentially awesome library building.

In any case, apart from a few copies of The New Yorker whose covers I coveted until I threw them out, this volume is the only one I can actually be certain came from the holy table. Coming as it did, post- my existentialist philosophy course, this book has served as a refresher since that day. Last night, the same section that always catches my eye caught my eye last night in the same section. If you use Amazon’s Search Inside This Book feature and go to page three you can read it for yourself and a bit more. I’ll still excerpt the critical point.

…to quote Kierkegaard again, ‘an existing individual is always in the process of becoming.’ …no complete account can be given of a human being without reference to what he is in the process of becoming. … “As Heidegger puts it, the human being is always ‘ahead of himself’, always unterwegs (”on the way”). …Unlike the stone, whose essence or nature is ‘given’, a person’s existence, writes Ortega y Gasset ‘consists not in what it is already, but what it is not yet…Existence…is the process of realizing…the aspiration we are.’

This is always a good reminder for me when I get frustrated about the difficulty in realizing my aspirations. As long as I exist, I’ll be in the process of becoming something new. Satisfaction and must arise from the journey while motivation must arise from the destination, even if never reached. That’s almost exactly the point of Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus.

My application and understanding of this idea doesn’t bind fully to a pure existentialism [which probably doesn't exist], but it works well enough for me.

I’ve written about my resistance to labels several times. Yet after The Shondes show the other night I found myself thinking in other paths. I was wearing my Don Hertzfeldt “Rejected” shirt, perhaps as a mostly unconscious association with the meaning of The Shondes and the fact that I was going to a show full of performers who are marginalized. Yet in retrospect I feel that in my disdain of labels I might have appropriated one that I have no right to.

I’m a Catholic white middle-class straight male. I’m anything but a shonde, anything but rejected [except when it comes to getting a new job]. In my label-disdain I think I neglected to recognize that when people willingly label themselves [in contrast to accepting a label] a subtle exchange of power takes place. This is probably right in there with the reclamation of “nigger” and “queer” which I’ve understood in theory but never internalized.

By embracing the label of a marginal group a person gains grist for the grinding away of the millstone status quo. Because the acceptance of the label is willed instead of enforced, my old saw about how labels limit more than they specify changes. The limitation now becomes focused [like a laser beam, Andy] and strong enough to balance the exchange of power to those who don’t recognize this next bit. It is almost like “Tom Hanks as Tom Hanks in Tom Hanks from Space”. By that I mean the label-chooser retains all the power of labelless humanity in addition to the focus provided by their chosen label; to those who understand the reasoning behind their choice. So, for example, The Shondes are even more powerful than the people who have cast them out realize. By going on making rock as “just folks” who happen to use shonde-itude as a slap-back to society, they’re operating on a different level.

For me, my disdain of labels is probably caused by the fact that I am so mainstream/majority. I have no need to adopt a label because, at a fundamental, selfish level, the world has already set my plate the way I like it.

I’m not creative like an artist or musician or a poet or a chef or a filmmaker or a writer, but I am creative. I’m creative because my need to to build and support rather than destroy or undermine makes me a creator. Creating community or reinforcing networks might not be as immediately edifying as a well written poem or a pretty tune or a tasty dinner, but I think intangible creativity of that sort [parenting could be another example] lets the creator retain his creative integrity longer.

What I mean by creative integrity is that a creator should create not for his own edification or the use of others, but for the creation itself, that it may be. Appending value onto the creation is necessary and appropriate, as is edification and effective use, but I feel most edified during the process and completion of creation. Effective use can be striven for, but is not guaranteed, which is why I feel it is secondary to the existence of a creation itself. There is a sort of amazement at accomplishment and a simultaneous loss of power in a finished product. That moment of equilibrium maintains creative integrity. If the amazement rules, ego can take precedence over the act of creation. If others begin to determine the creative path, the creator becomes an automaton.

What if all of us think in the same manner, but only our reactions to those thoughts and stimuli are what shape the perceptions that other people have of our personalities?

The above statement has been sitting in draft form for a few months. I had nothing much to add apart from the problematic half-idea that it is. I finished Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore [which reads like anime watches] last evening and a prostitute/philosophy student started tossing around Hegel quotes specifically relating to the subject-object problem. After the brief amount of research on this that I have done this morning, I think that’s what my halfmatic problem-idea was aiming at. As usual, whenever I think of something that might be revelatory, I find that great minds have been there long before me.

This promises to cover lots of ground in leaps and bounds. I am once again having the same troubles with agency that I’ve been having all my life. The first reading at Mass yesterday was the story of Abraham and Isaac, one which has caused no end of problems for no end of thoughtful persons over the years. After Mass, I went home and busted out Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling and reread bits and pieces of it, searching for a hint about what was bugging me from the reading. I didn’t exactly find it there, but I did remember something I assimilated sometime in the mists of the past.

I remember being taught that since God has given us everything that is our existence, when he requires it back from us, we should willingly give it. If that is true, all right. But essentially it seems to indicate that we have no agency of our own. If everything is a gift from God, none of my actions and efforts earn me anything. No matter how hard I work I ultimately have to depend on someone else for approval. This might sound like a “life is unfair” whine, but my main complaint is that I feel like I have no proof that my action A will result in effect B.

It really shouldn’t be a surprise that I’m currently dissatisfied; the job interview process requires extensive amounts of effort and stress but ultimately places all power in the hand of the prospective employer. To my current employer I’m nothing more than a resource to be exploited for as hard and long as possible. This weekend I ran into a neighbor and he mentioned that I’d been bitching on my blog and said it in such a way that I felt he thought I had no right to be dissatisfied with my life as it stands. So I suppose I haven’t effectively articulated my dissatisfaction.

The conundrum: I want to feel like the work that I do earns me the means to live a life that I enjoy. I want to end each day feeling that I have accomplished something worthwhile and congratulate myself for that and reenergize for the next day’s accomplishment. Yet my current lot does not provide any of these things. The job seach exacerbates this feeling of helplessness because it is basically begging dressed up in a tie. My pride resents that. But how do I find a path that fills me with agency?

I’ve always wanted to be in full control of myself, and I know that in some ways my life would be much more varied if I let loose a little, cared a little less about my feelings and those of others. Trusted more. Whatever. The times I’ve attempted this usually ended painfully. I don’t want to depend on someone else’s approval to live my life.

I think this means I should be self-employed. But what to do and how to afford it? I’ve got no ideas on that account. I’ve got a phone interview with a place in NYC today, and hopefully another one will be lined up by the end of the week. I’ve gotten more action from NYC in a week than I did in 9 months in Cleveland. Places there seem to like my resume, which is nice to hear; I’d been starting to think it wasn’t any good. I’m tired of being less than my best by someone else’s leave. I’m flailing around, trying to grab on to some sort of rock to steady me, but I have to be my own rock. As much as I cherish my self-reliance, it feels awfully stale sometimes.

Power corrupts because it is so difficult to obtain. When someone has struggled to gain power and finally succeeds, they often spend the rest of their time trying to hold on to it. What can get lost in the shuffle is the reason for seeking power. Ironically, power as a means to its own end is impotent on a personal level because it is based on external control.

Empowerment, on the other hand, is not for its own sake, maintains its strength from inside itself and is obtainable by everyone. The ability to be, without struggle, without context, is to be empowered. Then you can do anything.

This is the the wrong time of year for this post, but I thought about it anyway so stop judging me already!

Sin [or immoral or unethical behavior or the opposite of Right Action or whatever you want to call it] is subtle. You can do something that isn’t sinful, but if done with that kind of evil intent, would probably still qualify. [These thoughts mayn't be canonical, I dunno.] So if there is an orchard of apple trees and you sneak in and grab a couple to eat and sneak out and eat them, with the idea that if you get caught you’ll get in trouble [even if the lady who owns to orchard really doesn't mind if people come take her apples] then you’re sinning.

Sinful thoughts are hard to avoid, but as long as they don’t inspire internal revelry or external action, then they aren’t really sin. But one can also do no harm although they intend to do so and I would consider that a sin. There is also doing something with evil intent that has a positive [though unintended] resolution. The unintended part is crucial because otherwise you fall into the “a wrong doesn’t make a right” situation. The easiest example of evil intent with unexpected positive resolution that comes to mind is at the end of The Return of the King, when Gollum’s lust for the ring results in its destruction. I think that’s probably still a sin, because it appears my definition of sinfulness is predicated on what my momma taught me, willful disobedience is always a personal feeling of selfishness. What about not knowing you are doing wrong, but do wrong? I think that only becomes a sin when the ignorance is rectified and behavior is not changed, nor restitution sought. I think that covers it.

I’ve written about this before and I’ll write about it again I’m sure but since it is so mind-bending I’m going to write about it now. The problem is that I can’t ever explain it to anysort of satisfaction because the state of mind you have to be in is so strange. I’ve done a bit of glossary on Zen Buddhism and I’ve got Zen Mind; Beginner’s Mind, on my reading list. Although I haven’t read it, I think Beginner’s Mind is a good concept to use in my own context.

So I’m laying in bed, just got done reading about Buddhist breathing exercises, so I’m listening to myself breathe. Not thinking about it, or controlling it, just observing it. This is a hard thing to start consciously and thankfully I managed to do it unconsciously and then realized what I was doing. So I started thinking about how friggin complex the simple, automatic and taken for granted act of breathing is. The diaphragm changes the air pressure in our lungs which causes exhalation and inhalation. Alveoli in the lungs help transfer carbon dioxide and oxygen between the bloodstream and the lungs and then the little blue RBCs get all red with their load of oxygen and truck around my body delivering it to various things. And I never think about it. It just happens, taken for granted.

Then I zoomed out just a tad. I’m in this huge galaxy that is just one of a huge number of other galaxies that all do their things with gravity and light in volumes and distances so huge that only a concerted effort will let you comprehend them. And I take all that for granted as well.

But the taken-for-grantedness is one step too far. I only got to that after proceeding through a stage of joyous wonder which is my version of Beginner’s Mind. Since I was a child I’ve told myself I wasn’t going to lose my sense of wonder and so far I have succeeded. All of these things and innumerable threads of others are all happening in concert and I’m a part of it. The wonder comes from not taking things for granted, and until that wonder comes when you regard a certain thing, you are taking it for granted. The obvious next response to this is gratitude for being a part of it. My gratitude is directed into my faith, but even if someone doesn’t have a faith, this sense of gratitude is still legitimate and should be present, I hope.

My version of Beginner’s Mind is also humbling, because wonder and gratitude have humility as a prerequisite. I’m being this specific so that the state of mind I am talking about can be identified and separated from other ones. The mind is cunning, and memory and taking things for granted are two ways it uses to assure us of our own power and importance. By taking things for granted and using memories to tell stories about our past we keep our egos healthy.

I’m not saying that one should live in either state all the time. I’m saying the opposite. Everyone should be able to engage and act and focus on a specific point in the world and take things for granted in order to accomplish whatever needs done. This would be the enthalpic drive, our God-like abilities yearning for use. But we should also be able to put ourselves in universal context, realize our relative insignificance, cast even that aside and just sit in observational wonder at existence.

There is a necessary tension between these two things, and when their use is out of balance [if someone has forgotten wonder, for instance] then the other side gets twisted by its own weight. Strive for Balance.

Here endeth the lesson. I hope I learned something.

Just about every time I run into Steve Goldberg and Starbucks is mentioned, he starts talking about how they sell consistency instead of good coffee. There is a poem by Richard Brautigan that is particularly trenchant in this context:

Xerox Candy Bar

Ah,
you’re just a copy
of all the candy bars
I’ve ever eaten.

So I guess another variable can be thrown in with the quantity and quality argument that I had with myself a while ago. Quantity, Quality and now Consistency. I can see no problem with consistency if the quality is high, but consistency at the price of quality is a bit troubling. I’m pretty sure the root of this foolish consistency lies with the Eli Whitney’s cotton gin, or Samuel Colt and his revolvers, or perhaps even as late as Henry Ford’s assembly lines; and with the first manufactories . I’m not aiming at some sort of Luddite anti-Industrial Revolutionism here, although anymore I have to wonder if the price is worth it.

Instead I’m trying to say that we’ve become accustomed to consistency and comforted by it. We’d rather have the same burnt cup of coffee and the same department store layout each place we visit instead of taking the risk of being startled by changes in the quality of the product. I guess it is no surprise at the world-listlessness of many folks if you think of it in these terms. If you eat the same feed every day it is no surprise you start thinking like a cow.

Lately I’ve been running across various things dealing with quantification [via Jack/Zen]and qualification and value. I’m engaged with these thoughts and have been reshuffling and retelling them in order to get closer to… something. The heart of the matter? At least, something that feels right.

Questions I’ve been asking myself include:

• Does everything need to be quantifiable?
• Must everything fit qualifications?
• What things naturally resist quantification or qualification?

The quantification questions are easier to answer, easier to quantify, because they obey their own rules. Asking the question in terms of need is subjective, and therefore a bit disingenuous, but the answer to that question adds context to the question: Can everything be quantified? For me, the answer to both is no. I’m even of the opinion that things that can be quantified don’t necessarily need to be quantified exactly. We can’t avoid measuring and judging; distance, how much salt is in a pinch, whether we have time to eat breakfast in the morning, but when the measuring and judging takes precedence over the experience of tossing a football or baking brownies then quantification is getting out of hand.

Questions like: “How much do you love me?” are bad questions because I think this is the area where quantity and quality start to get mixed up. If the answer to “How much do you love me?” is “Bigger than the universe.” then the quantity question has been answered in terms of quantity. If the answer is “More than warm blankets and hot cocoa on a winter’s day.” then the question has been answered qualitatively. Quality arguments [like the main thread of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance] are subjective and therefore slightly different from each other quality argument. Even in groups that supposedly espouse the same set of qualifications there is a lot of elbow room.

Jeff Hess frames a quality argument:

Since the Englightenment the argument has run something like this: Yes, here are fanatics and fundamentalists who committ evil in the name of their god, but that reality should not be allowed to deny the solace of faith to those who do not seek to deny others their freedoms and faiths.

Do you think that argument still holds true, or, as Sam Harris argues in The End Of Faith, is it time to recognize that all faith systems are based on superstition and are inherently damaging to the future of humanity?

This sort of question is a tough nut to crack for several reasons, but the main one I can see is that it takes one set of qualitative criteria [the post-Enlightenment belief in Reason] and sets it against the qualitative criteria of other belief systems. For me at least, this is a question that can never be answered because to me it is apples and oranges. Probably the best explanation of this comes from a MetaFilter comment:

Pure scientific fact is just a meaningless pile of numbers. Scientific theory is just a falsifiable prediction. Humans can’t live on that alone. They can fit those predictions and data into a view of what the world is, who they are, and how those two relate, but that’s a story–that’s a mythology–no matter how you cut it. A prediction about human population dynamics over the next 100 years is a hypothesis; believing that humans are defined and ennobled by the very same faculty of reason that paves the eternal road of progress on which we march is mythology. Not in the sense that it isn’t true, but in the sense that it is unfalsifiable, unscientific, and philosophical. In short, in that it is human.

I’m not trying to create an argument about the veracity of one set of qualitative criteria against another, instead I’m of the opinion that any set of qualitative criteria must be tempered by doubt in the qualifications of the qualitative criteria. This also includes doubt in the qualifications of quantitative data. If you follow me.

Certainty is hubris.

Fractals are inherently natural; and nature loves to repeat patterns. This really isn’t a surprise, because everyone knows that there is alot of symmetry [which is a bit different than patterning, yes] in natural objects. It’s like in π where the Golden Ratio [a sort of fractal] can be found everywhere. For years one of my doodling habits has been, unknowingly, an echo of the Golden Ratio. I draw a right triangle and then section it off by drawing a line perpendicular to the hypotenuse from the right angle of the triangle. The result is two more right triangles, which I then do the same thing to. Smaller and smaller and smaller. Another way of describing fractals uses the example of a coastline, if you’re measuring the length of a coastline, the closer you get the longer the coastline becomes. A finite area bounded by an infinite line.

Asymptotes come to mind here as well, and the old saw about a frog jumping halfway to the pond with each jump. He’ll never reach the pond, mathematically speaking, because he only halves the distance remaining with each jump. This is why I can never know anything, despite the fact that I’ve learned so very much in almost 25 years, I’m still only halfway to wherever there is. This might be a very good explanation for why we can’t ever really know God or reach perfection on our own, but I’m way off track at this point.

Branches were the impetus to write this post. So many things branch, and branch the same way, that it gives me the good willies. When I truly realized that there has to be a reason behind the similarity between rivers and tributaries, the branches of a tree, our veins, capillaries and arteries it was one of those minor mindblowing things that only really occur to me when I see something ubiquitous and mundane as if for the first time. The sphere is another reoccuring pattern, from subatomic particles up to planets- rain is spherical, or would be without the work of gravity. This makes me think that size does not matter. Another thought I had the other day, atoms are mostly empty space. The universe is mostly empty space. Science has this idea of dark matter, and they think it must fill the “empty space” of the universe. I wonder if anyone has thought to look in the empty space of atoms.

Chris Coyne has made a mathematical programming language [redundant, I know] that can create beautiful pictures, including some with branches.

Quick, explain any difference you see between being “drunk” and being “a drunk”. Not much, is there? Just one letter. Perhaps I am exceptional but I would be willing to wager that many people do not consider how indefinite articles can drastically change reading comprehension. What, exactly, does “a” do? In my drunk example, “a” turns adjective into noun; my descriptor codifies into tangibility by adding one letter. This is dangerous, I think. I have been, on record, resistant to labels from nearly weblogogenesis; I believe I have finally discovered that this resistance resides in “a”.

It makes things too strong for me. Perhaps I have little faith or much arrogance in thinking that reality or nounhood cannot withstand this weight of being, but words don’t describe reality; so it should be no surprise if the vestment of “a”, when worn by adjectives, takes people further from fact. I have been through most of this before. Something new: Using “a” in reference to specific persons, including oneself, is nothing more than subtle violence. It pigeonholes and singles out for more pigeonholing. I’d much rather be described as “something” than defined as “one of something” Using “a” in this manner; “I’m a Catholic”, “She’s a feminist”, “He’s a black”, has distinct “Oh, one of those people…” overtones. Saying “I’m Catholic”, “She’s feminist”, “He’s black” gives equivalent factual information but avoids any sort of pigeonholing.

Or not.

I believe I used no articles [except as examples] while writing this post.

Links of the Day: Gallery of Regrettable Food and The Company Cookbook.

This post from a while back, and more specifically, the first blockquote in the post, have hopped up to the forefront somewhat again lately here. Yes.

Thesis: Anger stems from dissatisfaction caused by our mortal imperfections.
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I hesitated in regard to writing about this, for fear of shame or embarassment, but since I was about ten or twelve and I had a long conversation with my parents about “naming my feelings” I’ve had this voice telling me to do so whenever there is something that I am afraid of in myself. So why not talk about sexual urges? I’ll put it past the jump so you don’t have to read about it if you don’t want to. I’m sure there is going to be TMI for some of you.

And no, I’m not gay.
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In high school, senior English introduced me to the codified world of fallacious reasoning. Throughout college I learned a bit more about it, but it seems the only people who really understand logical fallacies thoroughly are philosophes and rhetoricists. They’ve always been considered bad things, and in strict terms of argument-in-order-to-win, I suppose they are. But I think they can do some good too.
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One of the characters in Stand on Zanzibar is a synthesist. Everyone else refers to him as a dilletante, and even the government agency he works for is colloquially called the Dilletante Dept. Don Hogan’s job is to browse through this giant encyclopedic computer archive [sort of prefiguring the internet] and learn about whatever he wants, and report on the interdisciplinary associations he makes. In a sense he is a spy.
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On the way in to work this morning I realized that the phrase “your name is ‘mud’” applies to me in a a quite real sense. My name is mud. I love puns. But that’s not important right now. Entropy. It has been on my mind lately. So many things are on the old noggin and little bits appear in my other ramblings until I realize there is a filet mignon cut up into all the ham salad of my other posts. Or at least a sirloin.
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A concept in one of the works of C. S. Lewis popped into my head the other day while I was running around Tremont. It boils down to the idea that there are no bad emotions, just poor applications. I’ll reproduce it for you past the jump.
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I think the world pendulum swings in twenty year cycles. Recessions occur every twenty years or so, We seem to go through a ten year conservative phase and then a ten year liberal phase cycle. Schools of thought seem to flex the pendulum a bit more and last a bit longer, but they also fit the pendulum swing. Newton’s Third Law even holds true for culture. Until the heat death of the universe. Anyway.
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I spend too much time on MetaFilter, but I find it quite intellectually stimulating when I don’t find it quite silly. Sublime and ridiculous. Anyway, I’m somewhat of a minority there since I’m Catholic and it seems at least the most vocal people are quite secular. This is good for me.
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The heat death of the universe as framed through the 2nd law of thermodynamics probably makes such thoughts as I have been trying to have lately quite impossible, but the Wikipedia manages to toss in just enough doubt [string theory!] on the subject that I’ll go ahead and hash out whatever the hell it is that I’ve been thinking. I wish I knew more physics.
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I am pretty consistently pulled in two distinct directions. In one, I feel that my life should be full of celebrity and glory. That I should be famous and contribute to the betterment of mankind. It rejects the comfort and mundanity of working a normal job and living a normal life.
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Advent is the time in the church calendar when we are supposed to look ahead, in expectation, in hope for redemption. Today at church, the priest, whose homilies are very lulling, gave me a bit of food for thought about hope. He described hope as a center from which two possible bastard [he didn't say bastard, but it is the right word to use] versions may arise. Despair on one end, and presumption on the other.
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By now everyone on the internet has read Ron Suskind’s Without a Doubt which was published in the New York Times. The whole article sort of hinges on one quote and you probably know which one it is.
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I am in one of those stages where I think it is the height of arrogance to be always thinking through myself and blogging about things I think or the way I think I think things. Yet I’m still doing it because maybe perhaps I will actually figure out something new. Coming in to work today as I passed the steel mill, it’s heat bleed stack was afire and the sky was the color of a fresh bruise, disturbingly pretty.
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I heard through a secondary source that someone once explained me as someone who “never assumes anything.” I’m not sure if this is correct, but I will assume it is and try to watch it play out.
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Over the weekend I had a conversation with B rd over at edlundart about time and since then I’ve coincidentally read several short stories dealing with time travel by Michael Swanwick.
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This might be altogether too vague to make any sense.
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I wonder far too much for my own good, so much in fact, that I wonder about my wondering.
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A cockroach can lose its head, have its carapace crushed and be subjected to intense radiation and not admit defeat. I am unconquerable, invincible. In any contest the loser is the one who thinks he has lost. Losing is only a mentality, it does not exist unless it is believed in, like the closet monster. If this seems grandiose and unreasonable to you then I think I will say that you do not realize being beaten requires your acknowledgement and agreement to the state of beatenness. If someone stuck a pin-pulled grenade in my mouth, lobbed off my hands and tied me to an oil drum on a leaky boat in the middle of the Sargasso sea, I would still not admit defeat; like the cockroach.

I. Of things some are in our power, and others are not. In our power are opinion, movement toward a thing, desire, aversion (turning from a thing); and in a word, whatever are our own acts: not in our power are the body, property, reputation, offices (magisterial power), and in a word, whatever are not our own acts. And the things in our power are by nature free, not subject to restraint nor hindrance: but the things not in our power are weak, slavish, subject to restraint, in the control of others. Remember then that if you think the things which are by nature slavish to be free, and the things which are in the power of others to be your own, you will be hindered, you will lament, you will be disturbed, you will blame both gods and men: but if you think that only which is your own to be your own, and if you think that what is another’s, as it really is, belongs to another, no man will ever compel you, no man will hinder you, you will never blame any man, you will accuse no man, you will do nothing involuntarily (against your will), no man will harm you, you will have no enemy, for you will not suffer any harm. - Enchiridion, Epictetus.

As I near my 24th birthday I find myself becoming more and more set in my ways. It is a subtle process, easing into my old man pants.
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I’ve still not been thinking about much, lately. So I’m pulling out a topic I’ve had in storage for a while. I had Ethiopian food this weekend, Kitfo is spiced raw beef that looks like viscera and Ethiopian bread is like zombie flesh. And it was all tasty But I’m not writing on that.
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I read a folk tale, years ago, where a boy receives a purse that always contains a gold coin. This handy source of income helps him on his quest, which I cannot recall. When he takes out the coin, there is still a coin in the purse. Always. Magic!
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self-ac?tu?al?ize: To develop or achieve one’s full potential. It really isn’t that fair to critique a simple definition of self-actualization without addressing it in a engaged and intelligent manner, but I am too lazy to reread what I’ve already read and catch up on what’s hot these days in personal definition.
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What most people would call splitting hairs, I call finding seams, weaknesses and assumptions that, for me at least, need explicated to my somewhat satisfaction. Mostly these things end up circularly and nothing gets resolved except my understanding of certain subtleties. Infinity equals zero, or something like it.
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Disclaimer: I am in no way, shape, form or manner planning, thinking about planning, planning of thinking about planning or attempting suicide. Quite a bit of time in my anthropological learning process was devoted to the study of suicide, this stems from that. Some bits and pieces also come as a result of my delvings into existentialist philosophy. Thank You.

Emile Durkheim talked about both suicide and anomie; anomie being a state that can culminate in suicide. Snitching from the linked site, we get two definitions:

Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus makes a philosophical case against suicide, something which Camus was mightily concerned. His assertion that suicide is a statement that life is not worth living seems to apply more to Durkheim’s egoistic suicide than the altruistic version, this makes sense to me because Camus is concerned with a person as an individual entity instead of someone who can dampen their will to sacrifice for others. A meaningless life is the ultimate absurdity and this is fine. What seems to have troubled Camus so is that suicide is a rejection of life because the life does not fit the mold of the person living it. Suicide is therefore the dumbest philosophical thing someone could do.

Those bloody Romans had all kinds of ideas about suicide too. But all too often it seems that suicide was more of a political act than done for Durkheim’s take on altruistic or egoistic reasons. Cato for instance, did not kill himself because of the degree to which he was or was not integrated into society. He killed himself because he would not live under Caesar. This seems to threaten Camus’s take as well, because I don’t see how Camus can denigrate Cato’s use of Cato’s life for a suicide that is done in this manner.

In one of my recent National Geographics, a statement [which coupled with a sort of A Modest Proposal spin gave me the idea for this] along the lines of ‘Only a ninety percent reduction in human population can result in the preservation of endangered and threatened species in natural habitat.’ This was in order to keep some species from being wiped out and others from being mere curios [only kept alive by constant human breeding and intervention]. This brings me to my case for suicide. Instead of folks killing themselves because ‘no one cares’ or because ‘the world is a terrible place’ why not axe yourself in the name of conservation? It is altruistic and you’ll be in good company with the likes of Cato, because you are also doing it because you will not live in a world where animals are mistreated. I’d do it myself but I’ve got to go spread the message. You understand I’m sure.

Here I go again with more of this thinking stuff. You ever get the feeling that you’ve thought of something mindblowing and then find out later that someone else thought about it 100s of years before you and it was probably just chilling in your subconscious? Yeah, I hate that. So a few days ago I was blabbering about ontology to little avail. Almost a year ago I was blabbering on the nature of knowing to basically the same end.

And now, last night, they, unsurprisingly in retrospect, merged. [damn lotta commas] So I guess this is my version of the ontological argument. It ends with God = Nothing, which is rather surprising.

Assume:
x = something
y = nothing
z = God

If y ⊆ x exists, where y is a subset of x, and z ⊆ x exists, where z is a subset of x, then y = z.

Postulates†:

1. Is y a subset of x?
   • If x is the set of all that exists then y exists. Ergo, y is a subset of x.
2. Are y and x opposites?
   • At first blush it seems so, but if y were not a subset of x then y would not exist. [i usually start boggling at this point.]

Proof†:
If y DNE then there would be no concept of y.
There is a concept of y. Mere discussion of y proves this.
Therefore, y exists.
If z DNE then there would be no concept of z.
There is a concept of z. Mere discussion of z proves this.
Therefore, z exists.
If y exists and z exists and they are both subsets of x, then y equals z.

Fallacies†:
I am equating the conceptual with the factual. I have apparently also decided that everything in the set of x is mutually exclusive to everything else. So it appears that everything is permitted. So lets do whatever we want.

I was rummaging through my old sheet music last night in search of something simple enough for me to play on my guitar. While doing this I came to the conclusion that eight years ago I was a damn good saxophonist. Up until high school marching band killed my love of musical performance [a love that had already waned since becoming involved in organized ensembles in 6th grade] I was starting to play some Coltrane and learning the art of jazz improvisation. Then I up and quit. The upshot of this is that all of my sheet music is far too complicated for me to play on my guitar. For now at least. But something as mundane as this did get me thinking. [surprise!]

I am in a constantly struggling with my art. I have a well of creativity and imagination that I can’t quite ever fully tap into. I feel like I am standing in front of a leaking dike with a bowl and just catching dribbles until I have enough to take a drink. I figure this might be the typical state for many artists, and the periods of rapid productivity and genius are when the levee breaks. Since all art [except for writing*] is, by its nature, ineffable I think my difficulty lies in the basic connection between translating the ineffable into something. Which is a pretty damn big problem. A fundamental one in fact. A problem that says, perhaps I shouldn’t be doing art at all if I cannot translate.

My problem is that I’m not very good at any of the art forms I’ve been trying. I’ve avoided drawing and painting because I don’t know how to do them and I don’t think my mind is arranged properly to deal with that type of visual artistry. Filmmaking is the closest visual art to my mindset because it is siginificantly easier to make things look the way I want them to. My writing breaks down because I always end up writing about writing about things. I want to tell stories, not be a writer or filmmaker. I want to be a poet, not write poems.

So I’m thinking that perhaps music is an art I can be good at. With music I don’t need to describe the ineffable because I can make it myself. This strikes me as the reverse of what I have just talked about. Instead of interpreting that which cannot be fully interpreted, if I play good music I can lead myself and others to a place where things cannot and do not need to be interpreted. Because being there is enough.

I love language because it is a code; because it is so malleable. I love watching young people pick it up and turn it into their own code. My Classical Greek professor once said that babes and children create and change language more than adults. I suppose this is because children are still being indoctrinated, don’t know all the rules, make their own. His example was caca, a baby word for shit. Once children becomes expert enough working within the language, I suppose they start working within the code, changing its periphery instead of its nexus.

Where I am now, as a relative adult, I can love language because within this code others can be created, codified, destroyed, reinvented. Simile and metaphor are perhaps the most basic of codes within The Code. Puns, riddles, double entendres - these are, perhaps, the second level of speciation? If I am in a conversation with two people, I can speak one sentence that has vastly different meanings to each person. Or, at least, I can do it if I am sufficiently skilled in creating these codes.

This breaks down when a code is misinterpreted [always a threat] or when a code is only understood by the person creating it. Skill level comes in when a code is created and disseminated. The skill is teaching others how to read the code. Communication is an art, and Art is communication. blah blah blah.

Poetry, painting, sculpture, these are art forms that to a great extent have become estranged from general society because their code is no longer accessible. Or, perhaps, it was not accessible for so long that most people lost interest in it. or maybe its just TV. yeah that sounds fine.

to die:

1. see: to live.
2. a process that results in death. Also, dying.
3. often misused in place of dead. Example: He died. Instead of He is dead. This is like saying He lived. It is obvious and therefore needless. He is alive is much better. see also: When You Die, You’re Dead. This usage is similar to the use of balding. A thing is either bald or not bald. The process of balding takes so long as to be meaningless.[NB]

death:

1. The liminal state between dying and dead.
2. The last instant of life. [Assuming dead is not a state of being.]
3. The first instant of being dead. [Assuming dead is a state of being.]

dead:

1. No longer alive.
2. An objective state [only to those alive] in reference to the body of someone who who has finished dying and experienced death.
3. A subjective state [only to those alive] in reference to the sentience/consciousness/soul of someone who has finished dying and experienced death.
4. An objective state [only to those dead] in reference to their body. [Assuming dead is a state of being].
5. A subjective state [only to those dead] in reference to the sentience/consciousness/soul. [Assuming dead is a state of being].
6. A meaningless word.
7. A word with too many meanings.

I think that I am a relatively disciplined and responsible person, but doesn’t that sound lame? I go to bed at 11:30 at night and wake up at 6:45 in the morning. The seven hours and fifteen minutes I give to sleep are necessary for me. I do not like the way I feel when I have not had enough sleep and when I am groggy I am unable to perform to the best of my ability. Last night I was asked if I ever stay up late when I have to work the next day and whether I do this because I care so much about my job. The answer is no, I never stay up later than around eight hours before I need to functional and alert the next day. I don’t do this because I care about my job, I do this because I take pride in doing good work. I have tried to stay true to the idea that if I am unable to do something to the best of my ability then I should not be doing it.

This, I think, is the foundation of my efforts at organization and discipline. The more I control the minutiae of my life, the more fulfilled I feel. I am by no means obsessive-compulsive, I make plenty of messes, I just hate looking at them. I am always fighting procrastination. If I leave dishes in the sink for over an hour after I done eating, I start worrying about it. I don’t like leaving things unfinished. If every job is completed, or at least organized, I feel quite satisfied in leaving it behind and directing my full attention to the next thing that confronts me.

I also worry that without strong discipline, I could lose all control. When I like something I don’t like half measures, I get involved in it. I haven’t and probably won’t ever use drugs and I don’t drink very often because I am afraid of what might happen if I release my discipline. When I seem quite detached with a new person, activity, or whatever, it is because I am judging whether or not this new thing is something that is worth investing some part of my soul in. This method might be a bit strange, but it protects me from myself and from the possible hurt that a hasty decision might result in. A bit selfish I suppose.

As strange as this sounds, my discipline allows me greater freedom, I can now do things spontaneously. If a friend calls, I can typically take off and hang out. Unfortunately, most of my friends around here don’t have jobs and are night owls. I haven’t hung out with them since my new job has started because they aren’t ready to hang out until I am heading to bed. And when I leave someone’s house because I have to go home and get some sleep, I always feel like a loser. Maybe I care too much about coming home to an apartment where everything is pretty much in place, maybe I care too much about making sure I can pay off my debts as quickly as possible, maybe I care too much about doing excellent work, maybe I should relax and not worry so much about responsibility.

I just find it hard to be enthusiastic about what is in front of me if I have other things to do.

we seem to spend much of our lives in transit, or waiting. tedium. how many ways have we to take up all the listless liminal states of developed life? this entry for instance. portable video games, cell phones, cheap magazines and romance novels. the internet above all has become a redoubt for those afflicted with overbearing ennui.

this is why just about everything can be found on the internet. cheap art seems to fester when boredom is present. at least for me though, boredom kills whatever artistic rush flows through me. a perpetual neap tide. words flow but meaning sinks into the abyss. 20,000 leagues into inertia. hurry up and wait. kill some time because when we don’t need it there is always too much.

I came across this great article by Wendell Berry on Arts and Letters Daily. I find it to be a challenging and succinct analysis of life as a part of the modern industrial complex. It spoke to me in some ways that I recognized as coinciding with my own beliefs, but also impulsed me to examine the ways in which I have bought into technological mass consumption, and have rebelled against it. I will most likely masticate on this for quite some time, and hopefully discoveries will abound. Here is an excerpt:

The statistics of life expectancy are favorites of the industrial apologists, because they are perhaps the hardest to argue with. Nevertheless, this emphasis on longevity is an excellent example of the way the isolated aims of the industrial mind reduce and distort human life, and also the way statistics corrupt the truth. A long life has indeed always been thought desirable; everything that is alive apparently wishes to continue to live. But until our own time, that sentence would have been qualified: long life is desirable and everything wishes to live up to a point. Past a certain point, and in certain conditions, death becomes preferable to life. Moreover, it was generally agreed that a good life was preferable to one that was merely long, and that the goodness of a life could not be determined by its length. The statisticians of longevity ignore good in both its senses; they do not ask if the prolonged life is virtuous, or if it is satisfactory. If the life is that of a vicious criminal, or if it is inched out in a veritable hell of captivity within the medical industry, no matter?both become statistics to ?prove? the good luck of living in our time.

I’m fairly well read in existentialist literature, I still buy into portions of it, for they allow great strength to be present within an individual, thereby strengthening myself.

But as with all things in me, there is an inevitable backlash. Although I am not quite sure this one is a true backlash or merely another spin.

Instead of freedom of choice in the world, we are totally limited by that very freedom.

My understanding of existentialism, is that, though the world is inherently meaningless, we as humans, have the ability to create our own meaning for ourselves within the world, thus giving ourselves control over our lives.

But this series of choices has another side. If I make a choice, by its definition, I have also excluded other choices, thereby limiting my own existence. However, if I make no choice [in and of itself still a choice], I remain stagnant and limit myself in that way.

An example:
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Bear with me here, please.

After brief conscious mastication, followed by a long boil in the subsconscious, and another bout of conscious banging my head against this thread [and accompanying article], these are what I think about some stuff.

We always know nothing. [Yes, that contradicts itself, as do most of my navel-gazings].

Here we go.

What started me off was this statement by one Ryvar:

It’s important for people to realize that all of the experiential processes you have within the course of a day or year can be explained while accepting that there is no mystical component to consciousness.

Now, I disagree with this quite a lot, but I’ve noticed when disagreements arise it is usually the result of a fallacy in a higher order of thought on the part of all parties, so after I gnawed on this for a bit, decided what was wrong with his argument, I then applied it to my own.
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A big deal is often made of hope, mostly positive, Pandora’s Box contained hope, to assuage the miseries it released. The Matrix: Reloaded even makes a point about it. Hope apparently is a saving grace, something that keeps us humans dreaming.

I don’t see it that way, to me, hope is something of a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
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I’ve seen The Matrix: Reloaded twice now. Fittingly I will give it two entries, one on philosophy and one on its cinematic qualities. This is the philo one. Most likely they will both contain spoilers.

To start out, those who say that this second film lacks [in substance and thought provoking material] are idiots.
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