HATRED, n. A sentiment appropriate to the occasion of another's superiority.
PRAY, v. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
AMBITION, n. An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead.
FASHION, n. A despot whom the wise ridicule and obey.
SELFISH, adj. Devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others.
CARTESIAN, adj. Relating to Descartes, a famous philosopher, author of the celebrated dictum, Cogito ergo sum — whereby he was pleased to suppose he demonstrated the reality of human existence. The dictum might be improved, however, thus: Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum — "I think that I think, therefore I think that I am;" as close an approach to certainty as any philosopher has yet made.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
a poem
Truth is like a cascading rainbow
Multicoloured and unreal
Yet without it lost and dazed,
We cannot help but feel.
Men are malleable.
Truth has many faces.
One mans rebel is another mans liberator,
Both with sound cases.
So how, you ask, do I know what’s right?
And what bad man that I must fight?
Cleanse the filter that surrounds you
And see for yourself what this world contains.
Precise ground your feet will never fall,
But the enlightened stance you will attain.
The only truth there is, you see
Is the one we ourselves behold.
Sooner or later we will realise
We make our own resolve.
Multicoloured and unreal
Yet without it lost and dazed,
We cannot help but feel.
Men are malleable.
Truth has many faces.
One mans rebel is another mans liberator,
Both with sound cases.
So how, you ask, do I know what’s right?
And what bad man that I must fight?
Cleanse the filter that surrounds you
And see for yourself what this world contains.
Precise ground your feet will never fall,
But the enlightened stance you will attain.
The only truth there is, you see
Is the one we ourselves behold.
Sooner or later we will realise
We make our own resolve.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
untitled
The scattered fragments of the night before are slowly reconstructed in his mind. Mixed emotions ensue, shame, regret, embarrassment? He detests himself. This is no way to live, he reminds himself. Is the booze the problem, or is something else? Is it society? Escapism...from what? He knows he is not the only one. Whence come these drives, those that wish to destroy him, and how can they be channelled? What is he trying to prove? This behaviour is destructive, decadent...there is no rational behind it, perhaps this is the whole point. He looks at himself in the mirror, his eyes are bloodshot - they hurt. He lies down and stares at the television. This is no way to live, he reminds himself, this is no way to live.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
A paradox
Imagine an arrow shot from a bow travelling directly towards a tree. It is ten meters away, travelling fast. Then it is five meters, two meters, one meter. Now it is really close, just a centimetre or so. Now it is a millimetre, half a millimetre, and half that again. Wait just a minute, if at every point of its trajectory it travels half the distance it previously was, how can it ever arrive at the tree? The distances would just divide themselves infinitely, without the arrow arriving.
This is Xeno´s paradox, and it demonstrates an interesting point. The explanation to this paradox is that the arrow never was at any of these points. To the person experiencing the arrows flight towards the tree, it traveled the distance in one complete movement. It is only when we look back and analyse its flight that we imagine actually being at these different positions.
What am I getting at here? Well, a simple point – simple, but by no means trivial. We experience the world differently from how we reconstruct it. In fact, was one to develop this idea it actually points towards two fundamentally different ways that humans can correlate with the world – one qualitative and one quantitative. However, this paradox will have to suffice for todays post.
This is Xeno´s paradox, and it demonstrates an interesting point. The explanation to this paradox is that the arrow never was at any of these points. To the person experiencing the arrows flight towards the tree, it traveled the distance in one complete movement. It is only when we look back and analyse its flight that we imagine actually being at these different positions.
What am I getting at here? Well, a simple point – simple, but by no means trivial. We experience the world differently from how we reconstruct it. In fact, was one to develop this idea it actually points towards two fundamentally different ways that humans can correlate with the world – one qualitative and one quantitative. However, this paradox will have to suffice for todays post.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Eagle fly free
Lyrics
People are in a big confusion
They don't like their constitutions
Everyday they draw conclusions
And they're still prepeared for war
Some can say what's ineffective
some make up themselves attractive
build up things they call protective
well your life seems quite bizarre
In the sky a mighty eagle
doesn't care 'bout what's illegal
on its wings the rainbow's light
It's flying to eternity
Eagle fly free
Let people see
just make it your own way
leave time behind
follow the sign
together we'll fly someday
Hey, we think so supersonic
and we made our bombs atomic
or the better quite neutronic
but the poor don't see a dime
Nowadays the air's polluted
ancient people persecuted
that's what mankind contributed
to create a better time
In the sky a mighty eagle
doesn't care 'bout what's illegal
on its wings the rainbow's light
It's flying to eternity
Eagle fly free
Let people see
just make it your own way
leave time behind
follow the sign
together we'll fly someday
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
The Dice Man
I am reading a fascinating book. It is called The Dice Man, and it written by a person called Luke Rhinehart. The plot is roughly as follows. A bored middle aged psychiatrist discovers a new way to live his life. He has wealth, a family and is respected by his peers. However, the nature of his boredom is existential. Various events makes him discover the meaninglessness of his life, of society, convention and of the pursuits of his fellow psychologists. One night he comes to a simple realisation which not only relieves his existential boredom, but fuels a new theory of human choice and the nature of human selfood.
The realisation is that to make his life exciting again, he must surrender his personal choices to the whim of a dice roll. His method is to select a range of options, some favourable but most importantly some which are not, and allocate different outcomes of the dice to them. He rolls the dice and the outcome determines his course of action.
He find the dice liberating - by letting the dice determine his course of action he removes his responsibility. Not only this, but by surrendering his choices to the dice, he removes himself from the equation. Hence, he becomes a random man. We like to think that lack of determinism implies freedom - that a free choice is that which is not controlled by external forces. The Dice Man provokes you to examine this belief.
This lifestyle, of course, has some interesting and quite amusing effects on his life and his practice as a psychoanalyst. He convinces himself that human change is possible through dice therapy - that is, when a subject frees themselves from the choices they associate with "themselves" they can learn to be new people.
I am not finished with the book, but i am finding it deeply intriguing. Indeed, my last two posts were inspired by this reading. What of my obsession with selfhood and subjectivity? Well, for this I invoke a general philosophical curiosity - much of modern philosophy is concerned with the status of the subject, and this book has got me starting to think about it again.
I leave you with an except:
"I gurgled with anticipation: the next half year of my life, perhaps even more, trembled in my hand. The dice tumbled across the desk; there was a six and there was a...three. Nine - survival, anticlimax, inconclusion, even dissapointment; the dice had ordered me to decide anew each month what my special fate would be."
The realisation is that to make his life exciting again, he must surrender his personal choices to the whim of a dice roll. His method is to select a range of options, some favourable but most importantly some which are not, and allocate different outcomes of the dice to them. He rolls the dice and the outcome determines his course of action.
He find the dice liberating - by letting the dice determine his course of action he removes his responsibility. Not only this, but by surrendering his choices to the dice, he removes himself from the equation. Hence, he becomes a random man. We like to think that lack of determinism implies freedom - that a free choice is that which is not controlled by external forces. The Dice Man provokes you to examine this belief.
This lifestyle, of course, has some interesting and quite amusing effects on his life and his practice as a psychoanalyst. He convinces himself that human change is possible through dice therapy - that is, when a subject frees themselves from the choices they associate with "themselves" they can learn to be new people.
I am not finished with the book, but i am finding it deeply intriguing. Indeed, my last two posts were inspired by this reading. What of my obsession with selfhood and subjectivity? Well, for this I invoke a general philosophical curiosity - much of modern philosophy is concerned with the status of the subject, and this book has got me starting to think about it again.
I leave you with an except:
"I gurgled with anticipation: the next half year of my life, perhaps even more, trembled in my hand. The dice tumbled across the desk; there was a six and there was a...three. Nine - survival, anticlimax, inconclusion, even dissapointment; the dice had ordered me to decide anew each month what my special fate would be."
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