Stop Thinking, Start Being

Do you know how, when you repeat a word over and over again, it begins to sound strange? Today I was sitting and thinking heavily and at great lengths and depths when I started to feel odd. Soon I realized that it felt weird to sit and think repeatedly, to be consumed only with the act of thinking. I began to feel a little unsettled as my thoughts started sounding more and more strange, like the odd waving vibration you feel when two notes are almost in tune. It occurred to me, then, that I was on to something, that epiphany might make an appearance amidst the tangle of oddity and thought.

Eventually it did. I realized that thought itself is a removal from experience. It is an abstraction of occurrences and abstractions are intangible and do not contain the reality of truth, beauty or any other aspect; it only contains itself.

After this realization, I decided that I think too much. By thinking at great depths for long periods of time I am removing myself from experience, and this does not coincide with my personality:

I feel like I have a young soul. I feel a perpetual will and energy of unparalleled strength and vigor. I need motion and action. I am burning when still, and living in a fully engaged manner only partially quells my fire. Because of this, I am especially excited that in a few months I will be hiking for almost an entire cycle of the seasons. I will fill myself with life and burn comfortably in the immense simplicity of the wilderness. I can no longer feel content with "disinterested contemplation". I do not wish to be disinterested, I want to be perpetually engaged. I do not care for abstractions, I prefer reality. Why think about things when you can embody them? Why contemplate art when you could make it? Why think about sex when you could actually fuck?

Sometimes, I think my personal philosophy dictates that I forget about philosophy; that I need to stop thinking and start being.

Meditation

I try to meditate often, but the imagery provided by the recording in the in-class meditation was incredibly illuminating and really enhanced the meditative experience past the bounds of my usual meditations. The imagery, it seemed, functioned as a stream of analogies for the state of being. The ebb and flow through the opening and closing of the pores and the blooming and wilting of the lotus flower described the perpetual fluctuation that we are permanently engulfed in. However, fluctuation and flow require the future and past, and I think that the two inhibit the examination of the state of being, also referred to as the human condition or, more simply, experience. We only are, we only exist, in a stream of instances, of heres and nows. If things are as fluctuating as they seem, how would each here and now account for the constant interchanging of lows and highs, ins and outs, lightness and darkness?

Well, after a few days of reflection, I think that each here and now is potentiality, or rather, is everything at once, as opposed to a particular thing at a particular time. This way, there can be no constancy in our successions of here's and now's (time), as the fundamental component of these successions is a single, uncertain, infinite instance. Across the expanse of time, things that are high become low, things that are good become bad (Nietzsche- Genealogy of Morals); everything becomes its opposite because each instance exists as everything, making it pure possibility.

This meditation allowed me to consider each here and now (not that there is a calculable, tangible quantity of heres and nows) and whenever I embrace the experience of the present I find myself steeped in paradox and duality. Even as I sit typing these words, my heart is expanding and contracting. I'm letting in breath, and letting it out. My muscle cells die in order to regrow. Human beings, and all things experienced are beautifully contradicting; everything gives way to it's opposite because, at its most basic, each thing is its opposite. Life seems very cyclical, and I love cyclicality.

Wall.E and the Axiom

The Axiom, in Wall.E, may be described as a "utopia"and I would understand the reasoning behind such a description. However, I could only honestly say that the Axiom possesses utopic qualities. It is entirely stable and peaceful. There is no suffering, only entertainment and hedonistic consumption.

However, the Axiom is missing something. It is missing sorrow and pain. It is missing toil and turmoil. It is missing failure, it is missing mourning and death, uncontrollable outside forces and the Unknown. Moreover, it is missing the tears that burn cheeks and the pressures that break backs, bones, hearts and minds. These are the aspects that make humanity so incredible; only through the lens of suffering can we see happiness. It is all too evident that, in our fear of the Unknown and the Negative, we seek stability and ease, and I believe these lack the importance we assign them without existing in congruence with their opposites.

I'll take upheaval and struggle over the Axiom any day. Only then, in intense moments of pain and suffering could I truly be happy. Negative forces are no different than positive ones. And sorrow is just as beautiful as happiness.

Dear America...You Are An Idiot

Today, I was coming home from a friends house and upon entering the house I, unfortunately, heard a television blaring the "nightly news". Before escaping to my room I couldn't help but overhear the following: "Tonight we are discussing Newt Gingrich's bold plan to do what no other man has dared to do, create a colony on the moon. But first we must ask ourselves, is it currently scientifically possible. Here to discuss with us is..."

Right now I am trying to remain serene, and not allow my head to fill with disgust, outrage and anger. It is a struggle, but I think I can manage. Only in America could this happen. Only in America could such an unfounded, ludicrous proposition be so readily lapped up and absorbed. In a recent debate in Florida, Gingrich claimed that, were he elected president, he would set up an American (and he stressed that it would only be American) colony on the moon. He further specified that after reaching thirteen thousand citizens, the colony could apply for statehood. He elaborated no further and gave no explanations.

How pathetic is this "society", how brainwashed are the majority of the population, when this is taken seriously without any form of investigation or rational discussion? WHERE THE FUCK IS THE DIALECTIC?! Why is the "nightly news", which is considered a source of information, and is used as such by most of America, not investigating the basis of such a moronic claim? Why is no one, on a national and public scale asking things like "What would be the purpose of doing this?" or "Do you realize that there is no oxygen, water, or anything at all on the moon?". Only us American's who are so adept at removing ourselves from truth, rationality, and reality, could not question such inane nonsense.

I would like to say that I am angry, I would like to say that I am outraged, but I am not. I am afraid. I am afraid of what our civilization is in the process of devolving into. We have given up personal control of our own thoughts. The man on the T.V. tells us what to think and we don't question. We are so caught up in our own conscious creations that we are completely alienated from the natural world. We are, subsequently, alienated from our survival instincts and cannot understand the basic concepts of sustenance, otherwise we wouldn't take this claim seriously. There are no resources on the moon. Organisms cannot live without necessary resources. Everything is done for us, as long as we keep existing as one more cog in a machine. Who among us is self-reliant in a true sense? Who can sustain themselves? There are very few. There are, possibly, one or two agrarian communities who have the ability to exist completely self reliantly and sustainably. The rest of us work a job and go to the grocery store to find the shelves magically stocked with food, turn handles in our kitchens and bathrooms and find clean water inexplicably flowing from the pipes. We are all focused on minute, little Particulars that we have forgotten about the larger, singular and cyclical Universal: survival. I think we are doomed to run ourselves into extinction, and if it happens within my lifetime I will laugh uncontrollably, for it is so pathetic it borders on comical.

The only solution I can see today, with my head clouded by dark thoughts, is to hand out a copy of Brave New World and hope that people aren't so stupid as to ignore the warning within it's pages.

Part of me, the darker, more morbid and less forgiving part of me, wishes for an apocalyptic catastrophe. Part of me wishes for huge global storms to rage across the planet, killing millions, even billions, of people. The one's left would be the strongest and smartest, the ones who are most aware of their mortality and their capacities to prolong it. I would like to think that they could rebuild, or not rebuild and just live barbarically and beautifully.

Well, that's my rant for today. I can already feel the brief storm clouds in my head fading. After all, I'm alive right now so there is no reason to be upset in the slightest.

Two Songs

“Woods” by Bon Iver

Whenever I listen to this song, specific memories replay themselves in my head. This nostalgic ode to the healing powers of the wilderness, and of solitude itself, reminds me of a backpacking trip in northern California that made me who I am today. More specifically, it reminds me of how I discovered my one constancy, the most important aspect of my life: nature. The dramatic buildup of “Woods” forces me to recall my initial realization that I belong away from the consciously created clutter of humanity’s modern civilization. This is the only piece of art that, I believe, could possibly come close to reducing me to tears. I do not particularly enjoy art, nor do I find catharsis through artistic mediums, but this song nearly does the trick.

“Yawny At The Apocalypse” by Andrew Bird

This song, too, conjures up fairly specific memories and the emotions intertwined with them. The high-pitched violins and droning cellos create a tension that is all too familiar to me. It reminds me of instances when I have felt like the embodiment of freedom. One would think that freedom ought to feel loose and devoid of constraints, but I have come to realize that it is quite the opposite. Looseness is more accurately attributed to oppression and control. Under control, you are directed by an outside force, as if floating on a raft amidst an ocean or river. The tides and currents remove any semblance of personal control; you are flowing. Freedom is quite the opposite. Freedom is taught, a feeling of internal energy. Within freedom, everything is a possibility and, because of that, the individual is filled with choice, and choice is an unstable, quivering feeling.

This song does a remarkable job of recreating the invigoratingly tense feeling of freedom that I feel most of the time, but most acutely in specific situations, for example, when I fall asleep beneath the stars and wake to the chirping of birds, greeted by the warm rays of morning Sun. In those instances, I realize that all I must do is live, and I don’t even have to do that if I don’t want to.

These two songs both reveal the same aspect of my personal aesthetic. My personal aesthetic seems to be dependent on my personal experiences. For me, art does not conjure up abstractions or singular emotions, but specific events and emotions with a context.

Justice As An Evolutionary Adaptation (Part 2)

As I have termed societal justice “collective consensus” [i] on what moral values to uphold as being common determinants of mutual benefit or harm, the obvious objection raised is that it doesn’t appear that any country in existence has a single semblance of collective consensus; laws are always being debated, there is always internal strife. I agree. There do not seem to be very many societies today that have collective consensus on anything at all. The question we must ask ourselves is what causes this, and what are the effects of such societies?

There are two conflicting components that, I believe, cause a lack of collective consensus, and therefore a lack of societal justice. These two forces are freedom and societal dimensions.

Modern society is larger than ever, or rather, modern governments and the things we have termed “a society” are larger than ever. There are three hundred million people in the U.S. and a single, centralized government attempts to enact laws over every single one of them. A society this large cannot conceivably reach a collective consensus. There are too many people spread across too much land. This size creates infinite variability; moral thought is dependent largely on the culture in which one is raised, and with so many different cultures within a single society, moral values will inevitably differ from person to person.

Surely, American society still functions, though. As to how well it functions, well that is a matter of debate (one that I’d love to have). It may be asked, naturally, why it is that the society still maintains itself, if it does not possess the mechanism for survival that is justice. Well in response to the self-posed query, I would say that a society doesn’t necessarily need to be just in order to preserve itself, but that a just society does a better job of preserving itself than an unjust one. However, I would feel bad if I were to merely claim that modern society is unjust and leave it at that. I am not one to criticize without attempting to offer pragmatic solutions. In order to explain my solutions, though, I must first explain how the second component, freedom, fits into my theory.

With all the differences in moral outlooks, our society is, on some level, disorganized as it is filled with disagreements on the most important and pertinent issues our society faces. Why is this? Well, put simply, it is because people have the freedom to disagree. There is room for disorder. If a society of this size is to be just, everyone must be made to conform to a single set of moral values that are upheld as the common determinants of the benefit or harm of social decisions. Freedom and justice are inversely related in a large society; if freedom is desired, then justice is lost and if justice is desired then the freedom to have differing views of morality must be lost.

This brings me back to my solutions and, not surprisingly, to Socrates. Though I said that, in a large society, people “must be made to conform to a single set of moral values” I do not mean that these people should have certain ideologies forced upon them; much worse, in fact. I mean that an individual’s ability to disagree with those moral values must be destroyed. If the ability to have opposing moral views exists, then disagreement is possible, as is the likelihood of revolution and civil unrest, and therefore societal instability; as society is our primary means of survival, unstable society is a threat to our existences. Socrates’ myth is the best method of controlling people’s ability to have differing views on morality. Their individual thought processes must be morphed into unanimous conformity, by whatever means we have available. The perfect example of this is the dystopian/utopian novel Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. In this novel the people of the world are not only manufactured by the State, but are also conditioned throughout the course of their lives into a conformed culture and, therefore, a particular set of moralistic views.

On the opposite side of the freedom-societal dimensions spectrum the solution is, I believe, much more enjoyable. A society with freedom as well as justice is much less complex to obtain. The size of the society must be made small enough that consensus is easily and readily obtained on an entirely societal scale and in individuals' interactions with one another.

My third and final solution is complex in its simplicity. This solution is not so much a construction of societal organization as much as it is a deconstruction. My proposal is this: that we forget about justice entirely. Indeed, that we do not consciously consider society and its organization, and that we no longer consciously create organization or structure within society, instead allowing it to become more natural and simplistic. In all of our haste to escape death we have grown shortsighted. We have built huge buildings, towns and cities, so as to ensure knowledge of what is in our environment. We seek to control every aspect of our lives in order to be as sure as we can that we will not die. At the core of every animal is the drive to live. It is the reason for our every behavior, our every action. However, humanity has become so caught up in the avoidance of death that we have forgotten to accept the inevitable: we will die. We have grown more and more afraid of death, and thus our adaptations for survival have grown larger and grander. Our adaptations are killing us; not individually, but as a species. We reproduce endlessly, bringing billions and billions of new members of our species into the world so as to ensure huge society, and therefore our survival. But, in order to sustain these people, we are pillaging the Earth ruthlessly and without foresight. The Earth’s resources are our resources, and we can only survive insofar as we have access to them. Amidst our avoidance and fear of death, we are destroying these resources (every one imaginable) and thus are leading, inevitably, to our own extinction.

So, my final solution is to take a step backwards and give slack to our taught focus on society, become more utilitarian and simplistic and accept death. In fact, welcome it when it arrives. We do not need rigid rules, and strict structure. All we need is our brief, transient lives, and whatever comes after is no cause for alarm.

To anybody who reads this, I hope that you never read it again. I hope that you focus on your immediate existence and enjoy it because it is beautiful and inexplicable. It is this mindset that can deconstruct our destructive organization. Breathe deeply, stay healthy, and enjoy the fluctuations of life.

:)

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[i] The term “collective consensus” seems to imply a conscious mutual agreement, but I would not limit the scope of the term to something that simple. There are plenty of unconscious agreements made within each culture; people behave certain ways because they have seen others behave that way. In fact, it seems to me that the very nature of culture is to be an unconscious set of rules.

Justice As An Evolutionary Adaptation

What is justice? This question seems to be at the heart of all of our discussions about Plato, however, I do not believe that this is the central question being argued in The Republic. The manner in which Socrates, his interlocutors and, indeed, our class use the term “justice” implies its definition. Justice is equitable with morality. Things that are “just” are “good”, just as things that are “moral” are “good”. Similarly, things that are “unjust” are “bad”, as things that are “immoral” are “bad”. The question we all (Socrates included) are asking is not “What is justice?” but “What is just?”. We are asking what constitutes “good” or “bad”.

As I have said many times in class, morality is subjective. Things I consider “good” or “right” or “moral” will inevitably differ from someone else’s concept of what morality entails. I, personally, have different moral boundaries than others, and their moral values hold no sway over mine. However, justice has, as Socrates pointed out, two components or scales: the individual, and society.

Societal justice must, necessarily, be treated as objective instead of subjective, and in order for me to explain why I believe this I feel obligated to first explain and define societal justice, and society itself.

As extraordinary as we human beings are, we are still organisms. We still exist in the same way that a wolf, or a gorilla, or any animal or plant exists. Our basic function in life is to perpetuate our species, for no organism exists without others like it; no organism lives entirely in solitude. In all of our grandeur I feel as though humanity has lost all sense of humility and all sense of what it means to be a species. As we are just a species of organisms like any other, we must not forget that evolution is the only inescapable aspect of life. Through our constant struggle to survive we are perpetually changing and adapting, and in understanding ourselves it is key to understand how it is we are most adept at survival. Some species are immensely large and powerful, like the buffalo or the elephant, and survive first and foremost by being able to fend off attack easily due to superior strength. Others are incredibly quick, like the rabbit or fox, who survive first and foremost by being able to either escape predators with their speed and agility or to catch prey with the same qualities. Still, others are adapted for survival in admirably different ways, such as the simple plants, who survive by being absolute in their indifference.

How are humans best adapted for survival? Well, as I see it, communication and cooperation are our first and foremost means of survival. Envision a human completely solitary. How is it adept at surviving? It is not particularly large nor is it particularly strong. The human stands no chance against a bear, or a lion, or any number of other animals, nor does the human seem equipped, by itself, to survive strong currents in a river or ocean, or to survive much bodily injury at all; many important organs are only protected by a thin layer of skin, fat, and lean, thin muscle.

The human does have the ability to run slowly for very long distances, but that is not very useful when its life is threatened, as it cannot run quickly to escape danger. However, humans have an ability that has, clearly, been highly advantageous to the survival and subsequent propagation of our species: our ability to complexly and effectively communicate with one another. Through communication we are able to coordinate large tasks that help fill the void left by our other, inferior characteristics. We can coordinate with one another to elaborately trap and kill prey to eat, and further coordinate with one another to ensure that the food is disseminated amongst the population so that each member of the species may thrive and then, moreover, help to coordinate the species’ survival. It is because of this remarkable faculty of communication that we have survived as a species for as long as we have. It is because communication is our best means of survival that we are constantly together; why we form the things we now term as “societies”. Society is, therefore, an evolutionary adaptation; society is our peculiar excellence.

If our interactions comprise our main mechanism of survival, and the most basic fundamental function of an organism is survival, then by what do we measure and control our interactions with one another, to ensure our survival by achieving some form of symbiotic mutualism? Morality. By terming certain decision as “good” or “bad”, we have made the concept of beneficial versus harmful more easily applicable to our method of survival: society. For example, no one would make a moral judgment on the decision to eat food. They would say that eating the aforementioned food is either beneficial or harmful to one’s health and, subsequently, their survival. Moral judgments are instead used to describe the beneficial or harmful nature of a social decision. People debate whether it is right or wrong, good or bad, just or unjust, to make the decision to do things such as perform capital punishment or abortions, lie, cheat, or steal because all of these decisions are social decisions: they affect the interactions between humans. As communication and, thus, society are our primary adaptations for survival, and moral judgments are the way in which we determine the benefit and harm of certain interactions, then morality and, therefore, justice are also adaptations for survival.

Justice on the larger, societal scale functions exactly in the same way. It serves as a means of maintaining society, and therefore is a means of survival (adaptation). However, societal justice is more complex. Just as an individual’s concept of morality is personalized and objective only in context of him/herself, so must justice, within the greater context of a society, be personalized and objective in context of the society itself. Societal justice is the collective consensus on what moral values, what is considered good or bad, right or wrong, just or unjust, are to be upheld as common determinants of mutual benefit or harm. It must follow, then, that justice on both the individual and societal scale is humanity’s primary evolutionary adaptation.

Now, it may be easily pointed out that most societies today do not have any collective consensus on what moral values to uphold, and I have quite a bit to say about that topic and more, however I felt that it would be too long of a blog post if I incorporated those thoughts. So, I’ve decided to break this essay into multiple parts, and the next part that I post will be concerned with modern society and how I think it does and does not reflect what I’ve just blabbed on about for the past one thousand words.

...

Today, I have come to the realization that simple, physically laborious activities are the most enjoyable. There is something about working with my own two hands that I find rewardingly meditative. As much as I love purely mental activities, such as writing, I think I find true understanding in, not thinking heavily, but enjoying the beauty of sweat dripping from my brow, dirt covering my hands, and the straining of my meager muscles against their bounds: pure sensation without analysis or scrutiny.

Once again, this blog post has nothing to do with philosophy or anything we have discussed in class, but it is pertinent to myself and I felt it worth typing up a few words about.

Search For Synthesis

Yellow leaves tumble, tumultuous, plotting my peaceful resignation to the moment. I lay, still as the dead, temporarily as wise as the tree beneath whose branches I existed. Grass blades quiver with my slight, minute movements, for as still as I may strive to be, I remain a creature of impatience, of comfort and ignorance. I have yet to learn the patient wisdom of the woods; I have yet to find the stillness of the mountains or the quiet of the trees.

When I meditate, I feel time slow, close to a halt. Each second feels like a minute, each minute an hour, each hour a lifetime. The absence of sight creates a blackness that blinds, and the quiet creates a silence that deafens. This blackness, this silence, and this expansion of time are antithetical to my usual experience. They are singular, they are One. In their Oneness, they are bold and grandiose: all encompassing. My usual experiences are Many. In their Manyness, they are small, seemingly infinitesimal. They are a thesis to my meditative antithesis. I am searching for a synthesis.

Beneath the tree, my face is wet with rain. My breath bursts visibly from between my lips, and my legs shiver slightly. Above me yellow leaves are still tumbling through crisp autumnal air. I am at peace, and, for the moment, I am content with nothing more than leaves and living. In my contentedness, I fall more silent than usual, my legs cease their shivering, and I hardly stir a single grass blade. Time passes slowly and the soft patter of rain forms a singular sound. Yellow leaves still tumble, though they seem to grow in their boldness. They cut a stark contrast against the grey sky, and I am suddenly filled with loud and quiet, light and dark, Oneness and Manyness. I know, then, that I have only just begun to embark on a life-long search for my synthesis, for the reconciliation of the two forces of life: emotion and reason, good and bad, yin and yang. I feel one step closer to understanding myself, and because of this, I feel I may yet learn the wisdom of the woods, find the stillness of the mountains and the quiet of the trees, for if it lies anywhere, I am sure it is within me.

Nietzsche: Question #3

The only advice I would give an individual human being would be to not accept advice at all. You must break from the bonds others have placed upon you. All we know of our existence is that it is finite; one day we all will die. how you deal with this inevitability is your choice. You can live in despair, or you can celebrate the fact that in this present moment, you are not yet dead. the only thing that should matter to you is your own existence and your own celebration of this existence. That is why you must break free of society's many entrapping arbitrarily emplaced values. if you are to live in celebration instead of, or perhaps in spite of, despair, then you must recognize that other people's values do not necessarily apply to yourself. if you are to enjoy your time here, you need to develop your own value system, based upon yourself and yourself alone, and apply it to your everyday life. For it is only through this self-reliance that we can realize our true potential; it is the only way to achieve our will to power, our drive to gain control of our own lives; it is the only way to become the Übermensch.

A Clutterless World

People seem cluttered today. They seem distracted, confused and devoid of direction. They look adrift in a current that is too strong for them to fight against, so strong that they have neither the will nor care to even try to struggle against the directionlessness. Do most people still devote all of their focus and energy into individual tasks, or are they too engrossed in multitudes of meaningless distractions? Do people still sit down face to face and have long, meaningful, serious discussions? There must have been a time when this was so, when people had the will power to achieve great things, and achieve things greatly, or else incredible works of literature would not have been written and revolutions would never have occurred, and all of the great philosophies we have been studying would never have been thought up.

I have a vision of a utopia. In it, all clutter has been removed from the individual consciousness and humanity’s collective unconscious. People are, not merely satisfied, but happy with the necessities of life: food, clothes, water. Gone are the days of ipods, cell phones, Facebook, mass media, mass production and all material distractions. Capitalism comes crashing to its knees because companies can no longer force the false sense of need into our heads. Money is no longer a concept, as people have realized that the necessities are easily and sustainably produced from the earth. Oil ceases to be considered a resource because simple agriculture and water filtration do not require thousands of acres of land to be tilled with tractors, nor underground aquifers to be pumped dry. Violence no longer exists, as there are no inequities in need of balance; everybody lives simply and has their needs met equally through sustainable means. People have a mutual respect and love for one another, and an even greater love and respect for Earth, upon whose body they live and find sustenance.

My utopia is not attainable through policy change, changing economic systems, or any alterations on a grand societal scale. It is an evolution of consciousness. It is an individual’s realization that these things are all arbitrarily placed upon us and that they are not necessary to one’s happiness or existence. I have termed the process of coming to this realization “decluttering”, because it involves simplifying every aspect of one’s life, and removing unnecessary distractions, or clutter. Over the past few months, I have been undergoing this process of decluttering.

I started with my dietary habits. There are so many things citizens of industrialized nations like the United States consume that are unnecessary and downright unhealthy. I no longer drink sodas or most juices, as they have no nutritional substance and are filled with unnatural flavorings, colorings and chemicals. Fast food is gone from my menu, along with most saturated fat and all assortments of grease-laden food (except for an occasional desert). I feel much more energetic and aware than I did a few months ago.

Next was my bedroom. I have removed most physical clutter, and now the only things in my room are a small desk, two guitars, a mandolin, a keyboard, and a small selection of important books. I have also painted the walls a very mellow, calm, khaki color. My room now feels very peaceful, and as a result I have been sleeping less fitfully and falling asleep faster than ever before.

Everything else is still a work in progress. I am selling my Mac laptop for something with less frills, bells, and whistles. I am giving my smartphone to my sister in exchange for her more simplistic phone, and I recently decided it was rather “clutterful” to listen to music while I walk from class to class. I feel great. I feel focused, and I feel one step closer to my own personal utopia. I hope that other people may feel the same as I. I would like my utopia to, one day, extend beyond myself, and be a part of someone else’s.

A Conversation With A Friendly Schizophrenic

This past Sunday, I staggered out of the 930 club, in Washington, DC, and the warm smog and smoke-choked breeze greeted my skin heartily. I had just spent the better part of three hours having my bones massaged by beautiful bass, and endorphins were pumping through my bloodstream. We decided to head to McPherson square to check out the Occupy D.C. protest and I couldn't have been more content with how my night was going.

When we arrived at the protest I was glad to finally see a gathering of people who were not the "Tea Party", however, that cheerfulness was short-lived. As I stood, rather awkwardly surveying, a tall man approached me. He was head-and-shoulders taller than myself, with an equally large potbelly, dark brown skin, and a very protrusive goatee. His clothes were dirty and disheveled; his red shirt was faded to the point of being off-white, and he smelled as though he hadn't showered in a long time. It was quite clear that he was homeless.

He approached me muttering and, though I couldn't quite hear him, it sounded as though he was agreeing with a statement. He stopped muttering and looked at me.

"Tic tac toe, okay?" he said. He had a pencil and a small notebook in his hand. I figured I might as well humor the man. After all, who doesn't enjoy a quick game of tic tac toe?

"Absolutely," I said. The man opened his little notebook and drew two large intersecting, perpendicular lines. In each corner he drew another, smaller, set of the same two lines. It was not the tic tac toe I was used to. I drew little O's in some corners and he drew C's. I eventually drew four O's that could have, arguably, been in a row and declared "I win".

"'Lemme see," the man said, "You did, you did." I let out a little chuckle because he seemed genuinely surprised.

"Now we decode, you know," he told me. I was perplexed, but nodded in agreement. He began to scribble thoughtfully in the notebook beneath the "tic tac toe" drawing. When he was done he read aloud what he had wrote, repeating every line while nodding as if he were internally confirming that what he was saying was accurate. He had written the following:

"Two one two", "Lily Spun Leaf", "P.S Holy Flock", ""Dolble", "GASP", and "DKEX you/won!!!"

By this point, everything I had learned in psychology class about schizophrenia had been confirmed and I was now entirely more interested in the man in front of me than all the protestors I had originally come to meet. We continued to play his version of tic tac toe for the next ten minutes and he beat me every time by connecting his C's with jagged lines because the C's were anything but in a row. By the end of the third round he had written, or had had me write, the following:

"Iron tin man", "Metallic stone rage", "heavy metal groove", "PPS-DNld AT yahoo.com" (the word yahoo formed an acrostic poem which read: yield, allay, have, ottool, openl) "

I told him that my friends and I had to leave (and we honestly did) and he ripped out all the paper, plus an extra one and said, "Alright, do this for me: before you go to sleep, write something down. Remember this: zerox to the email machine" He then scribbled a few more things down and handed me all of the papers. On the final piece of paper there was an empty "tic tac toe" drawing, below which he had drawn a simple stick figure and written:

"Just You Him", "boyfriend she's Theme", "mole", "MAK"

I shook his hand and we left and as I walked through the rows of protesters all semblance of cheerfulness faded into ponderous curiosity. I wanted to see through his eyes, hear through his ears, and experience his consciousness. He clearly experienced the world radically differently than myself and most humans in general. This encounter brought to mind the idea of relative reality (the thing I have been harping on about since our first class) and I couldn't help but have an incredibly strong sense of synchronicity.

However, my brow soon began to furrow harder than usual; my jaw began to clench, my heart picked up its pace, and anger began bubbling up inside me. It sent my thoughts spinning into nothingness and I was encapsulated in rage. I was angry that that man had to live on the streets, with little to no access to healthy food or clean water. He didn't have a bed to sleep in or a nice warm shower at the end of a hard day's work all because his reality was radically different than ours.

In that moment, I understood the protesters more so than I had just a few minutes previously. They are fighting for a nation where people's needs would be considered more important than the acquiring and consolidation of money. In that nation, the amiable schizophrenic I had just met would not have to sleep on the streets and could receive psychiatric help for his mental disorder, so that his reality might seem a bit more like mine or yours.

Luckily, the anger did not last more than a few brief moments as I have, over the years, developed an unfortunate defense mechanism in which I instantly suppress any strong emotion, be it positive or negative. However, later that night, as I drifted off to sleep, my mind revisited my "tic tac toe" match. I realized then that I might be mere minutes away from experiencing life through a lens that was possibly similar to the disheveled schizophrenic's. My mind didn't disappoint. That night I dreamt of walking through a forest where every color was overly accentuated, as if it were a photo whose contrast had been dramatically increased. The trees all swayed with the exact same rhythm and off in the distance there was a chorus of timpani matching the beat to which the trees danced.

Upon awakening, I had an odd thought: if the man experienced the world in a way similar to how I experienced the world while dreaming, then my pity might be slightly misplaced.

Inner Peace

Of all the tenets of all the varied philosophies, I find the idea of achieving inner peace, through whatever means, to be the most applicable and important to my personal life.

Two summers ago I was backpacking through the Sierra Nevada’s, in northern California, and during the trip I spent twenty-four hours alone in the mountains, on the shore of a tiny lake for the purpose of meditation and reflection. The calm waters were hidden amongst soaring pine trees below two large rocky cliffs. I sat, crossed-legged, at the waters edge for several hours—eyes closed and ears wide open. I listened to the successive beats of the water lapping gently against the shore and soon my heart seemed to thud gently along with it. A cool breeze blew pine needles through my bare toes, and the sun warmed my skin with a temperate touch. For a while, my thoughts seemed to slip away and I felt a peace unlike I had ever felt before. My usually furrowed eyebrows relaxed, my muscles—tense from carrying a sixty-pound pack for two weeks—calmed and ceased their straining. Eventually, my body appeared rather secondary, and the clutter in my mind dispersed itself into the deafening silence of the woods. In those few hours, nothing was of importance other than my immediate existence.

When I opened my eyes, the colorful scenery burst into being and my utter calm was shattered by the inescapable beauty of my surroundings. I stared off at the not-so-distant shore and a sudden urge to experience myself upon the shore welled up inside me. I stripped down to my boxers and waded into the snowmelt-chilled water, energizing the little pool of placidity. I swam hard until I reached the opposite shore, where I sat shivering. The sun was still strong and I soon warmed. I then stared at the shore upon which I had just been sitting until I eventually ended up closing my eyes again. The wind blew gently through my meager hair and my heart beat along with the lapping lake. My thoughts slipped away again, and I was at peace. When I opened my eyes this time I laughed inwardly at my foolishness. The scenery burst into my field of vision exactly the same as it had before and I realized the mistake in my thinking. I had thought that the opposite shore would somehow be different, but the inner peace I felt was no different than the peace I experienced upon the original shore. Nothing had changed.

Today I was walking home from school with the sun at my back and a tiny breeze in the air. It was a beautiful day and I could not help but be happy in spite of the college applications, homework, and job interview that lay ahead of me. I could hear my heart beat thud gently in my ears, and for the few minutes in between W-L and my house I had a recurrence of the peace I felt alone in the mountains of California. I realized, then, that this peace was not in any way created, nor facilitated by any specific occurrence outside of ones self; it seems to be borne out of happiness. Later that day I finished all of my college applications, did my homework, and got a new job, all the while feeling decidedly peaceful and happy. I think that if I can manage to feel like that every day, then I can be successful in all my endeavors, and during a time when I am trying to get into college, I find that concept very encouraging.

The picture above is the lake to which I was referring.

Descartes vs. Hume: From Hume's Perspective

Had I been on the Hume side of the debate, I would have focused on two key areas. One, the issue of Descartes's "perfect entity proves god" theory is a wonderful piece of irrational, circular logic. If I have a concept of a perfect circle, does that mean that the perfect circle placed the concept in my brain? No. I simply have a concept of perfection. Secondly, when the Cartesians made the "Wax Argument", and implied that only through rational thought can you understand that the melted wax is still wax, I would have simply posed the following question: Could you deduce any truth about the wax if you could not perceive it? How could you be rational about something you can't experience?

In Response To Mr. Summer's Comment: Quantum Theory and Taoism

"Look for a clue in Newtonian thought. Could all the energy of the universe , whether spent or not, be everlasting, be unchanging, be of a permanent but not static configuration, so that while there may be change, in fact, irrefutable change, the essence of matter remains constant? You may refute as you wish.
-Mr. S"

I wonder sometimes, if there really is a concrete essence of matter. The more we discover about quantum mechanics, the more I seem to find the Taoist concept of yin and yang quite agreeable. Modern quantum theory has discovered that electrons do not have a fixed place in the structure of the atom, and that they are more correctly represented as possibilities. I think this is tied to the concept of yin and yang because the "basic building blocks" of matter are, like Schrodinger's cat, not existent or nonexistent, but both at the same time. Is existence inseparable from nonexistence? Is matter merely a possibility--a mathematical statistic? If so, I think that would account for change in the universe. If matter is the interaction between existence and nonexistence, the result of which is both existent and nonexistent, then the universe would seem to be in a constant state of flux, similar to the development of an organism; an organism is the product of the interaction of two chemical energies, the mother's and father's DNA. This interaction creates something that is the mother and the father at once. From the moment of the conception, this interaction is in a constant observable flux. The body forms, then the organism (or “the interaction”) is born and begins to grow and develop. It is like a great exhalation, bursting forth into the air, until the organism begins to die; it slows and its bones become brittle, and its organs begin to cease their functioning. Dying is an equally metered inhalation after the outward burst of the exhalation.

The organism never ceased to change throughout its days, because it was an interaction between two different things. Even when there was no apparent change from one day to the other, the organism’s body was perpetually fluctuating; acidic chemicals churned around in the stomach, the heart pounded out blood and the body’s temperature increased and decreased. Similarly, what we observe of nature is the interaction between existence and nonexistence, resulting in matter, which is both existent and nonexistent, in the same way that the organism is both its mother and its father.

I don't know if this is an adequate response to your comment, Mr. Summers, or an adequate description of my thought process, but the phrase "essence of matter" made me think fairly deeply and lengthily. I hope I don't come across as assuming or grandiose in the expressing of my thoughts.

Heraclitus vs. Parmenides

I'm torn as to how I would attack Heraclitus's position from Parmenides perspective. I know that I would point out the repetitiveness of nature; each morning the sun rises, and each night it sets. Every summer flowers bloom, every winter they die. However, I can't help but mentally rebut that claim. Modern science understands the development of stars like our own sun. One day, millions of years from now, the sun will grow to a size much larger than its current state and it will consume Earth into its burning body. Eventually the sun will grow too large to sustain its own energy and will dwindle and die. There will be one less star twinkling in the night sky of other planets, and the shape of the universe will be insignificantly different. I suppose that I agree too much with Heraclitus to really see life from Parmenides perspective. I am too close-minded. That is something I have to work on

The Essay About "Sophie's World" Due 09/23/11

Relative Reality And Its Importance

I think that most people, throughout their lives, attempt to develop their own personal philosophy—their own attempts to explain themselves and the world they live in. Of all the ideas expressed by the various philosophers in Sophie’s World, two philosophies struck me as massively agreeable, appealing, and influential to the development of my own philosophy. First and foremost was empiricism.

Alberto’s very first description of empiricism was “A number of philosophers held that we have nothing in the mind that we have not experienced through the senses.” (Page 258). This description immediately struck a chord. Were I a cartoon, upon reading this a bright light bulb would have appeared over my head. The empiricist philosophy made all the sense in the world to me, and the chapter dedicated to it opened a door within in my mind that led to a roomful of questions. How can one be rational, or have rational, complex thought without language? Do we not all have an inner monologue, and is language not the one thing that has contributed most to our success as a species? Complex thought seems to be a product of language, and thus does not seem to be innate. Humans learn language by observing adults who have already mastered lingual skills. We learn by sensation. We perceive our parents speech through our faculty of audition, and those perceptions are stored in memory. As those memories build up, the "habituation" Alberto referred to begins to develop in our mind and, consequently, our language develops as well. Because language and thought are interdependent, our thought develops simultaneously and we cease to be a bundle of emotion.

            As I attempted to mentally address these questions, I read past Locke and Hume and read the lesson dedicated to Berkeley. Reading about Berkeley brought about a serious case of epiphany for me. According to Alberto, Berkeley said, “…the only things that exist are those we perceive” (page 279). As is made clear by the majority of my remarks in class, I have yet to find a way to disagree with Berkeley’s thinking. How can we say some things are real or unreal if we experience them? How can something be irrational if our perceptions create thought? What is the difference between experiencing something in a dream, and experiencing something while awake? The only way I could explain this was to think of reality as being relative. However an individual experiences the world (or should I say, “their” world?) is a reality to them, because our realities consist of nothing more than our perceptions. Like Alberto said in response to Sophie banging her hand down on the table “You had a sensation of something hard, but you didn’t feel the actual matter in the table.” (page 280).

However, I could not help but have some qualms with this type of thinking. I could not help but feel that Berkeley, Locke, and Hume were all missing something, a “larger picture” if you will. I think the idea of a relative reality, model-dependant reality, has certain implications in our modern society, and neither Locke, nor Berkeley, nor Hume addressed these implications. They focused simply on human experience and not on human society.

Eventually, I read the lesson dedicated to Karl Marx. It provided me with one more epiphany. On page 388, Alberto quotes Marx, saying, “…’philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it’.” This perfectly embodies what I thought the empiricists were missing out on. It is certain that no two people think exactly alike. Could this be because no two people perceive their realities exactly alike? If that’s the case, then the implications for modern society are very important. If reality is subjective, then should we not govern ourselves accordingly? Does this not mean that, since everybody perceives things differently, that there is no single concrete way to experience the world? If that is the case, then why are so many laws made under the assumption of an objective morality? Some people consider it against their morals to consume drugs such as marijuana, MDMA, or lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), however many other individuals use such drugs recreationally for their own personal reasons. These people do not consider it a violation of their moral code to partake in drug use. These two people perceive the world differently, and therefore have differing realities; one in which they cannot, in good conscience, consume drugs, the other in which the consumption of such drugs is perfectly acceptable. Yet societies all across the world punish those who see the world from a more drug-lenient perspective. These societies are treating life and human thought as if it were concrete and standard, when it is purely relative. This kind of thinking has the potential to cause injustice in every aspect of life.

I think Karl Marx was incredibly correct; the point is to change the world. If that means applying philosophy to societal structure, governance, and behavior, then what Sophie’s World has to teach us is of far greater significance than I had previously imagined.

9/12/11: The Blindfold Exercise

It certainly is odd to temporarily abandon your most trusted sense. Walking blindfolded ought to cause one's stomach to drop, one's heart to pound, one's nerves to tingle, but for some reason I felt none of those things today--quite the contrary, in fact. Something about walking slowly, and feeling each step cautiously and methodically was surprisingly meditative. I'm not sure why I find it surprisingly soothing, but I'm even less sure of the answers to the questions that this exercise has raised. I wonder, if a child is born blind, deaf and devoid of any faculty of tactility, olfaction or gustation, is this child conscious? Or alive? If he/she had no sensory input, how could he/she form memories, and from those memories develop complex thoughts? If someone lacks consciousness, are they really alive? Doesn't the concept of "being alive" mean possessing a consciousness? I suppose that the best man to answer these questions would have been Berkeley. If you can't sense the "material world" then how does it exist? Things only exist in our perceptions of them. Take away those perceptions and what is left? However, I also wonder what it is we are sensing, if there is no external reality. If I only see a box lying in front of me, and it exists only in my perception of it, then what is it I was sensing in the first place? Is it all a figment of an imagination? Am I a figment of some consciousness's imagination? Does a universe lie within my own imagination, as real to it's inhabitants as my universe seems to me?
I wish I had the answers to these questions, but sometimes I think that thought and consciousness is just the inability to know things, and that a lack of knowledge galvanizes the existence of consciousness. In that respect, I would like to assert (on a somewhat off-topic note) that humans are the least wise formations of organic matter on this earth. Our consciousness, our lack of knowledge, is so powerful that we are capable of thought and language at a level far beyond anything else on this planet. So, in our ignorance we gabber on and on filling the air with our pointless noise, not understanding that we don't understand. All the while the trees stand quietly alongside the mountains, fully aware and accepting of their inability to know, in pure enlightenment.