Just to start out with a good ol'-fashioned disclaimer, I do not view myself as a good-for-nothing. Most of the time. I mean, there are Wednesday nights around 10:20 when my three espressos and a cafe au lait have worn off and amidst the sludge that remains of my brain, all I can think is, "what the hell am I doing with my life?" I'm not convinced, however, that these are the most honest, soul-searching moments, because things tend not to look so dreary when I can assemble a little perspective (and get some sleep).
My educational experience is a bit unique. After high school, I launched into two gap year programs. Then, when college plans fell through one fateful June, I moved to the Philadelphia suburbs, there to diddle away my time in community college until I was able to transfer to the University of Pennsylvania, against the discouraging words of at least one transfer adviser. [Tangent: college people are incredibly cynical and not particularly helpful. Maybe they realize that the only way you'll get anywhere in life, for the most part, is if you fight for things, so they make a resistance for you to fight against. I don't know. I just know that they're not my friends.]
All that being said, it's a little weird to be a commuting, twenty-two year old sophomore who transferred from community college and whose experiences are asymmetrical with those of the average college student by grade or age bracket. But the weirdness and awkwardness are only true of my attitude if I try to define myself relative to the normal expectations. What about when the categories fail? Then I just have to think about my goals for education and life in an entirely different way. Which is kind of fun and freeing, if a little tiring.
Just to make things more interesting, I have already determined that I have no desire to spend the rest of my days in academia. When you're a philosophy major, there aren't a whole lot of other options, or at least, none that are too appealing. So how do I explain why I'm taking philosophy? Am I just wasting my precious time in ways that are even more painful at twenty-two than they would have been at 18 or 19?
Well, no. I am still getting something out of my education, confused as it may be at times. Here are the sort of goals I've made for myself:
1) Learn to take risks. I don't have to graduate with a 4.0. I just need to maintain above a 3.75 until next Spring, if Cambridge accepts me, which leaves me a solid year and a half to mess around in the most intelligent way possible. Knowing that you don't have to reach some crazy academic standard that includes coursework in classes that are not your strongest point is really, really awesome. Because it means that you don't have to toe the line. I still do the work for the classes, but what I'm trying to get out of it can be entirely different, and I can pursue riskier tracks for assignment ideas, because ultimately, how well I do on them according to one teacher or class's standards is less important than how well I can think through them.
2) Learn how to think well, in terms of both critique and comprehension. This takes more time. Understanding a 20 page pdf worth of philosophy article makes me really, really sleepy by the time Thursday rolls around, sure, but if I don't take the time to understand the full import of what I'm taught in my cosmology class, for instance, then every hour I spend there is time wasted, and it doesn't have to be. I may not want to be an astronomer, but what I'm learning there has implications for my worldview too, and if I grasp the ideas, then I expand the variety and depth of conversations in which I can and do participate.
3) Learn how to communicate. I've been working on a study abroad application to Cambridge's Pembroke College for the past month, and it has been an exhausting series of miscommunications. It started last Fall when the secretary told me I didn't have to deal with anything until this semester (the office's internal deadline was December 1, 2012), and it kept going with notifying my academic references, working out writing samples, and such. My lesson is that good communication involves making solid goals, communicating them explicitly, and confirming that they are understood. Otherwise, I get a huge, chaotic mess. That's my usual result because I don't play well with others. I figure that if we all know what we're doing, then you're not my responsibility. There is a positive flip side that I tend not to micro-manage, which can be empowering, but it's definitely requires sensitivity to circumstances.
Confession: I'm making these goals because they're all things that I do poorly, if at all. The Cambridge example probably made that clear, but the more general problem is, freedom to fail is hard to live out. I got a B+/A- on my first two papers in my existentialism class this semester. The first one was kind of funny. I've never gotten less than an A- on a paper. I felt like I was adding a little color variety to my blue ribbon collection. And one B+ can be made up, especially when lowest grades are dropped. But the second one gave me an existential crisis. Sorry, but it does actually apply, irony aside.
See, if I define my being by the letters that I get on my assignments or my transcript, then a B+ is a serious problem. It's like sinning or something, because I haven't just gotten a lower grade, no, I've betrayed who I am. And that's just foolishness and Unsinn. I bet nobody else in the world sees me differently. Most people don't even know it happened. It's not in the least bit significant to my life. And that's when I realize that I've tied myself into completely unnecessary knots. Because if I care so much about that letter, I'm not going to take risks, because they might not pan out. I'm not going to learn how to think critically and independently, because other people's thoughts are more authoritative. Counter-intuitively, perhaps, I'm also not going to communicate when I do hit problems, because what I really need is for my professor to think that I have it all together and I know what I'm doing, even if it's not true.
Moral of the story is, I'm going to fail a lot in my life, so I might as well learn how to take the knocks now. The other moral of the story is, the fact that my life is my own means that I choose how I'm going to live it. So basically, the moral of the story really is, we're all free, so we might as well embrace it in all its gory details and just get on with the business of living.
19.3.13
The Agony of Metamorphosis
"It's all bullshit anyway. What does it matter whether I say "he" or "she" for the genderless one? Do you really think that the words you say make that much of a difference?"
"Do you really think that you don't make much of a difference?"
…The silence of the thought. The panicked flicker of insecurity and fear brushing against a revelation of responsibility, of being-in-the-world. It is easier to forget, most of the time. To think oneself small. All of those inspirational quotes, like the one that got passed around a lot in meme-fashion after "Coach Carter" came out, they hid stark truth behind psychological comfort food. They said one thing, and they meant responsibility. Humanity: a massive weight pressing down around a morbidly obese man, folds and flub descending upon the single skeleton as it sags under its burden, bending but not breaking because the body, though weak, can withstand more than it knows.
This is the way that most of these conversations go. We talk about anything, and with a newfound flippancy, the brilliantly meaningless reflection off of a newly jade-gilded surface, there is the readiness to dismiss. "Everything is meaningless." Nothing is new. The world line of the stationary observer moves upward, ever upward, but there is no deviation, no progress, because [the gender neutral, "es"] can barely propel itself in time much less carry all of humanity in tottering forward steps along the change-in-x axis.
All of it, a covering for fear: I am not enough. I want you to see me as not enough, so neither of us will be disappointed when I fail. Oh, I will be, even if I convince myself that I shouldn't be, that it is only to be expected. But at least that is only one of us, and then too, it will be the compounding of failures, the confirmation of self as failure. When you say, "Enough. You are enough," the salt stings the wound but brings no healing. Where there is no blood, self-exsanguinated by the wounds of cruel words spoken in hate against soft skin, there can be no renewal, no scar to begin the future.
"Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you,
You must travel it for yourself."*
The only answer is to will within, take in nourishment, revive dead tissue with the means to reproduce lifeblood. The body doesn't change. The fissures remain, the pain is real. But there is always the choice: to remain dead or to be renewed. All is not lost.
*"Song of Myself" 46. Walt Whitman
"Do you really think that you don't make much of a difference?"
…The silence of the thought. The panicked flicker of insecurity and fear brushing against a revelation of responsibility, of being-in-the-world. It is easier to forget, most of the time. To think oneself small. All of those inspirational quotes, like the one that got passed around a lot in meme-fashion after "Coach Carter" came out, they hid stark truth behind psychological comfort food. They said one thing, and they meant responsibility. Humanity: a massive weight pressing down around a morbidly obese man, folds and flub descending upon the single skeleton as it sags under its burden, bending but not breaking because the body, though weak, can withstand more than it knows.
This is the way that most of these conversations go. We talk about anything, and with a newfound flippancy, the brilliantly meaningless reflection off of a newly jade-gilded surface, there is the readiness to dismiss. "Everything is meaningless." Nothing is new. The world line of the stationary observer moves upward, ever upward, but there is no deviation, no progress, because [the gender neutral, "es"] can barely propel itself in time much less carry all of humanity in tottering forward steps along the change-in-x axis.
All of it, a covering for fear: I am not enough. I want you to see me as not enough, so neither of us will be disappointed when I fail. Oh, I will be, even if I convince myself that I shouldn't be, that it is only to be expected. But at least that is only one of us, and then too, it will be the compounding of failures, the confirmation of self as failure. When you say, "Enough. You are enough," the salt stings the wound but brings no healing. Where there is no blood, self-exsanguinated by the wounds of cruel words spoken in hate against soft skin, there can be no renewal, no scar to begin the future.
"Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you,
You must travel it for yourself."*
The only answer is to will within, take in nourishment, revive dead tissue with the means to reproduce lifeblood. The body doesn't change. The fissures remain, the pain is real. But there is always the choice: to remain dead or to be renewed. All is not lost.
*"Song of Myself" 46. Walt Whitman
13.3.13
An Inconvenience Rightly Considered
It is one of those odd little facts about life that how we think about something can sometimes affect what it is. In my epistemology class, we've been discussing theories of knowledge and of justification. What do I mean by justification? Consider something you believe and ask yourself why you believe it. Whatever those reasons are, on a basic level they're your justification. Whether someone else will accept that your belief is a case of knowledge depends on whether they also accept your justification for believing it to be true. They also might make a distinction between what are called "epistemic" reasons and "pragmatic" reasons. Say you are about to run a half marathon. You haven't trained more or differently since your last race, but you still believe that you will beat your last time and do pretty well. Perhaps you've even slacked off in the meantime. Epistemically, you don't really have good reason to believe this. But pragmatically, your belief that you will do well can actually cause you to do better than you otherwise would have. Though the belief is not epistemically justified, it is pragmatically useful and perhaps even self-fulfilling. The point is that how we think about things affects the way they are.
I've been thinking about this recently because I dislike the all-too-human tendency to avoid what I would call privation. Some of my best experiences have involved having to take cold showers (which, in Peru, was actually kind of pleasant), not having any showers at all (there's nothing better than team bonding over your general lack of hygiene), going on international trips with barely a cent in my bank account, or having to throw things out/go without essentials for a time because they just don't fit in a suitcase. Clearly I'm thinking more about trips here, but the same could be said of the time when Katrina and I went sightseeing at a palace complex on an overcast, drizzly day. The peaceful beauty of the Badenburg in the rain is not something I would have missed out on for anything. And really, is rain or cold or relative lack of finances truly a privation when you have the option of shelter, clean water to bathe in, and the opportunity to experience something even if you can't take it back with you? Even if you could get yourself a souvenir, it would be like flowers picked from a beautiful meadow: their charm too becomes a memory rather than a present reality. If one simply leaves them in their right environment, one need never have the experience of their decay, only the memory of their perfection.
This morning before class, I woke up early and caught a train to meet a friend at a coffee shop in a nearby town. I got to the station early, and when a train rolled in, I didn't think to consider that it might not be the one I wanted because I didn't check the time and so climbed aboard. Of course, that train happened to be an express that skipped the station where I wanted to disembark. I ended up getting off at the next stop on the line, but rather than wait 40 minutes for the next train back, I chose to walk the mile and a half, since it would take less time and would certainly keep me warmer than standing outside by the tracks. It was fantastic. The air was just chilly enough to be invigorating. The world was slowly waking up, some houses sleepily blinking their eyes, others not yet having stirred. The quiet streets welcomed my feet without protest as they led me through and by the most marvelous little places and things. We always live, but we are not always alive. My mistake with a train schedule turned into a surprisingly delightful ramble that led me by places I never realized existed, much less expected to see.
Chesterton put it like this: "An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered." The way that I think about my past or present experiences affects what I call them. And as the nature of pragmatic reasons suggests, the way that I approach a future event is strongly determined by my expectations and my attitude toward it. Simply by calling it a different name, I open myself to greater possibilities and, more broadly, to the incredible experience of being alive.
I've been thinking about this recently because I dislike the all-too-human tendency to avoid what I would call privation. Some of my best experiences have involved having to take cold showers (which, in Peru, was actually kind of pleasant), not having any showers at all (there's nothing better than team bonding over your general lack of hygiene), going on international trips with barely a cent in my bank account, or having to throw things out/go without essentials for a time because they just don't fit in a suitcase. Clearly I'm thinking more about trips here, but the same could be said of the time when Katrina and I went sightseeing at a palace complex on an overcast, drizzly day. The peaceful beauty of the Badenburg in the rain is not something I would have missed out on for anything. And really, is rain or cold or relative lack of finances truly a privation when you have the option of shelter, clean water to bathe in, and the opportunity to experience something even if you can't take it back with you? Even if you could get yourself a souvenir, it would be like flowers picked from a beautiful meadow: their charm too becomes a memory rather than a present reality. If one simply leaves them in their right environment, one need never have the experience of their decay, only the memory of their perfection.
This morning before class, I woke up early and caught a train to meet a friend at a coffee shop in a nearby town. I got to the station early, and when a train rolled in, I didn't think to consider that it might not be the one I wanted because I didn't check the time and so climbed aboard. Of course, that train happened to be an express that skipped the station where I wanted to disembark. I ended up getting off at the next stop on the line, but rather than wait 40 minutes for the next train back, I chose to walk the mile and a half, since it would take less time and would certainly keep me warmer than standing outside by the tracks. It was fantastic. The air was just chilly enough to be invigorating. The world was slowly waking up, some houses sleepily blinking their eyes, others not yet having stirred. The quiet streets welcomed my feet without protest as they led me through and by the most marvelous little places and things. We always live, but we are not always alive. My mistake with a train schedule turned into a surprisingly delightful ramble that led me by places I never realized existed, much less expected to see.
Chesterton put it like this: "An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered." The way that I think about my past or present experiences affects what I call them. And as the nature of pragmatic reasons suggests, the way that I approach a future event is strongly determined by my expectations and my attitude toward it. Simply by calling it a different name, I open myself to greater possibilities and, more broadly, to the incredible experience of being alive.
15.2.13
The Space Between
In German, prepositions take certain cases, most of them only one. A handful, however, take one of two cases, depending on whether it is used as a verb of motion or non-motion. Hence, "die Liebe zwischen ihnen," takes the dative case, because it is sort of existing in the space between two people, i.e. not moving.
So much time is spent in this space between; not between people, of course, but between goals, ideas, desires.
To be alone is not to be lonely. To be alive is not to be lively.
How to be lively?
If we cannot maneuver the space... What becomes of us? Man, more than pulse, intake of air, neurons firing. To be fierce, and to be known. Heidegger's truth and falsity: a proposition is true if and only if it reveals. It is false if and only if it conceals.
Like a one seated in a slingshot, ready to fly. Each side a source of tension, and the legs too that burn to maintain force against the ground, on the other side of pain they send a thank you card to friction. Using physics, math, engineering, philosophy, psychology, to be. Does that even make sense? Where is art?
The art is the question that is asked. The science is the method to the answer. The answer is.
So much time is spent in this space between; not between people, of course, but between goals, ideas, desires.
To be alone is not to be lonely. To be alive is not to be lively.
How to be lively?
If we cannot maneuver the space... What becomes of us? Man, more than pulse, intake of air, neurons firing. To be fierce, and to be known. Heidegger's truth and falsity: a proposition is true if and only if it reveals. It is false if and only if it conceals.
Like a one seated in a slingshot, ready to fly. Each side a source of tension, and the legs too that burn to maintain force against the ground, on the other side of pain they send a thank you card to friction. Using physics, math, engineering, philosophy, psychology, to be. Does that even make sense? Where is art?
The art is the question that is asked. The science is the method to the answer. The answer is.
6.2.13
Above ground
The degree to which we viscerally react to fictional characters is in direct proportion to the precision of their correspondence with reality.
Dostoevsky's man from underground is NOT lovable, by any stretch of the imagination. A friend recently told the story of a cat lady who would trap strays and take care of them. One of her specimens was a pathetic, oozing monster, for whom caring meant a brief alleviation of marginal sources of suffering in order to usher it respectably toward its demise. Sam described it just flopping at the top of the stairs, sort of yowling in abject misery. That's how the reader sort of wants to view the underground man at first blush, and maybe even at second. The things he says to Liza are cruel, while his petty tyrannies and small-minded obsession with trivial vengeance make him an unbearable scumbag.
But why do we react so strongly to him? He is merely trying to work out the stuff of life, and if he goes back and forth, debases his own propositions as falsehoods, and seems to be trapped forever in a tiny, cramped room filled with the rebounding echoes of circular self-reflection, then that is his own problem. It only affects me insofar as I choose to take his words to heart.
The thing that makes the underground man so loathsome is that we fear him. We fear him because he represents the part of any self-aware individual who has ever been trapped in the self-perpetuating crisis state of realization that beneath the deceptively tight weave of our terrifyingly fragile justificatory cobwebs there lies an uncharted void. Here be monsters, because our senses are useless in the space beyond conception. We cannot look the underground man in the eye for fear that the cycle from which we escaped by God alone knows what means ("time heals all wounds" being merely another way of saying "we don't know") will trap us again, perhaps this time for the last time.
In his essay on the maniac, Chesterton says that the cure for tight circles of rationality is poetry. I understand that more fully now, I think. He speaks of the one who can do meaningless things, like stroll in country lanes and lop the heads off of daisies with his cane for sheer bedevilment. The man from underground cannot do without thinking, but that is the only way to escape. If for one moment, one could stop thinking about the impossibility of walking through the wall, he might in fact just do it. It is his only way out.
Dostoevsky's man from underground is NOT lovable, by any stretch of the imagination. A friend recently told the story of a cat lady who would trap strays and take care of them. One of her specimens was a pathetic, oozing monster, for whom caring meant a brief alleviation of marginal sources of suffering in order to usher it respectably toward its demise. Sam described it just flopping at the top of the stairs, sort of yowling in abject misery. That's how the reader sort of wants to view the underground man at first blush, and maybe even at second. The things he says to Liza are cruel, while his petty tyrannies and small-minded obsession with trivial vengeance make him an unbearable scumbag.
But why do we react so strongly to him? He is merely trying to work out the stuff of life, and if he goes back and forth, debases his own propositions as falsehoods, and seems to be trapped forever in a tiny, cramped room filled with the rebounding echoes of circular self-reflection, then that is his own problem. It only affects me insofar as I choose to take his words to heart.
The thing that makes the underground man so loathsome is that we fear him. We fear him because he represents the part of any self-aware individual who has ever been trapped in the self-perpetuating crisis state of realization that beneath the deceptively tight weave of our terrifyingly fragile justificatory cobwebs there lies an uncharted void. Here be monsters, because our senses are useless in the space beyond conception. We cannot look the underground man in the eye for fear that the cycle from which we escaped by God alone knows what means ("time heals all wounds" being merely another way of saying "we don't know") will trap us again, perhaps this time for the last time.
In his essay on the maniac, Chesterton says that the cure for tight circles of rationality is poetry. I understand that more fully now, I think. He speaks of the one who can do meaningless things, like stroll in country lanes and lop the heads off of daisies with his cane for sheer bedevilment. The man from underground cannot do without thinking, but that is the only way to escape. If for one moment, one could stop thinking about the impossibility of walking through the wall, he might in fact just do it. It is his only way out.
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