Happy 32nd post Poems!
I'm happy. Today we set the clocks back, and so I get an extra hour of...well, I really didn't do anything. But it's the principle of the thing that makes me happy.
I've decided to continue my tradition of putting up poems as the last post of the month, and I'm going to get to it, but I have an announcement to make. As you all should know by now, I'm going to be participating in Nanowrimo. This is a good thing. Unfortunately, I anticipate that much of my mental capacity will be taken up while I'm doing it. So, the likelihood is that I won't spend as much time thinking of stuff. So for the next month, unless something just hits me that I can't help but put on the blog, I probably won't be posting any cool ideas to discuss. Still, I do hope to keep updating, so what I will do is periodically put up parts of my story, and since it's me writing it, it will probably end up having philosophy and junk in it. You guys should also feel free to act like editors, and point out mistakes and the like, or you can just lie and say how wonderful it is.
Anyway, enough stalling on my part: to the poems!
I wrote this after reading the Tao Te Ching. If you don't like eastern philosophy you probably won't get this.
Twist
The watcher who sees
doesn't perceive
those who perceive
do not see
I float on the sea of time
Time is a river.
The scars on my legs fade
so does my desire.
Love and words: two burning
fires in you, in me
The flames bring life
The tree I do not see
I am the absence of you,
such brings me to some
unreality. Such takes you
where I cannot be.
Oh, heart of desires fail me.
take the day of our meeting
and sponge it away
looking past the place of
passing into what sets us
free. If such it is to be,
so let us be.
but,
If chains are all we have, to be
chain her to me, throw out the key.
Some people here think I'm too harsh on politicians. Maybe I am, but they are such good material for irony.
Why I Laughed
He opens his mouth just so wide
as too much. There is not enough to
swallow the sun- but he hopes and reaches
for his tall cold hat at the door.
Exit one madman. Playing to the wind
of democracy always requires a
sort of insanity, one not yet found
in the DSM. We send them to practice
popularity properly but tremble if they come close.
what do you ask the questions to?
No kind of creature are these- they know
no questions, please.
And yet, we cannot censure them. The
ironists and change chasers play up
their game while the game is elsewhere.
Come up to bat at this false field
my little chickies? The conspirators are
nonexistent but that means nothing.
I just realized that the last poem had no love angle in it. hmm. Maybe I can say more than one thing in my poems. Or maybe not.
Rabbit Hole
We sit cheek to cheek on a cold stone
at the side of the river. Life
is around us- we do not stop
to contemplate it, its mysteries. We
hear the bard's sweet tree song and
smell the greeness of the leaves.
We take off our skin and scars
tiptoe into the stream.
I close eyes- these are not
deciding your unfreedom
that we revel in
Hey- where did the time fly?
I had it right by my side-
in my new blind genious-
and here he is- three wishes
poof! The world decides
to roll back over and let off its steam
Death comes, but we feel so too much right
to fake surprise. On the inside.
One more.
Devil (improvisation #4)
All alight on the streets
it invites a man with a black streak
to look ahead of the game
shade your eyes bite down your name
and the eyes become freaks
he cannot tame the urge to be unique
on a door,
right before
he steps out
and gone the world's about
I take a step in the dark
guess on the niche to keep it a lark
or else we'll all burn
and come to nought with all we've earned
can't fall, can't flee
everyone climbing away from me
heads back to see
you and me
try to scree
but fall and fail
endlessly
then, we get up
come out of shapes
and back around we
we...
live. again.
You complement my demise
with shots in the dark and a demon disguise
that purifies the room
with it's stench and coldhearted fume
but you, oh, breathe it in
and cuts to sin that life within
that drags us up
flying free, no place to stop
the whirl and dance in
the skies above
and you wrap
the wild untamed some
kind of blame and
hate towards us you
can't stand that fate
and break and break
and break on yourself
'till nought you close
into a point and we in
silence sing.
Answers, and questions.
Wow, this feels good. I'm pretty much done with all my homework, and I have a good idea that I get to elucidate on. It's like going back to the good old days of, like, a month ago. Just so you know, I'll keep checking the Thanksgiving post and I encourage you to do so also, so if you come up with a brilliant plan for us, that's the place to put it unless you come up with a better idea. I find that not unlikely. Anyway. About my idea. The honors program was in our colloquium talking about race issues, and some thoughts, none concerning race issues, came into my head. It's weird, but that's how I'm wired.
First, people use two meanings of the term, "wouldn't it be better if..." They first speak of things being better if one small thing was changed; if the world was changed a little bit things would be better. (I feel like stepping in with the Tribolet Principle here, but I won't.) The other way is speaking of things as being ideally better; if things were perfect, such is how it would be. Having the two distinctions is not a problem; moving from one to another indiscriminately is. For example, the general consensus in the colloquia was that reducing emphasis on differences between the races was the specific solution for the ills regarding them. On the other hand, I and others I have spoken with believe that, in an ideal world, we would accept our differences and celebrate them, instead. But to move from one to another without thought or warning leads to disagreements and misunderstandings: as you see, the two ideas are nearly complete opposites, so disagreements between people with the best of intentions are not inconceivable.
In a similar way, I believe people fail to make a distinction between behavior that is morally reprehensible and behavior that should be legislated against. In colloquium, we talked about hate speech, and found that while it was almost universally disliked, we could find no real reason to legislate against free speech on account of our dislike. Individually morally wrong behavior is often less dangerous than legislation attempting to deny that behavior, if we are believers of basic freedoms and rights. To make a system work, we have to go through the system according to its premises, even if they lead to ends that we do not like. We should realize that keeping the premises (in this case, free speech) is more important than some behavior we don't advocate.
My points have one similarity. They are both pessimistic in the sense that I don't think that human behavior, as a whole, can be improved. If you read them both through you might infer, correctly, that I think that 'solving' one of societies' problems will only lead to different problems. To some people, that seems rather harsh. I have a good reason for this, and though it's pretty simple,
proving that it is true will be pretty difficult, so for the sake of this discussion we'll just take it for granted, and scholars can attack me on it some other time. My reason is the basic similarity of human nature through time: a person today will have the same essential qualities that a person five thousand years ago would have, or a person a hundred years ago.
First, why do I think this? Mostly because the important arguments going on today are trying to answer the same questions people were arguing about throughout history. What is the best way to deal with society? What is the Universe made up of? Why are people the way they are? Why is God the way He is? All of these questions, besides remaining essentially unanswered, deal either with people or their enviroment (theological questions fall between the two).
I was worried for a moment. I thought I was wandering into circular reasoning here, but I'm not. Let me change something. It's not that we don't come up with acceptable answers to these fundamental questions, but that those answers aren't complete.
I was going to go further, but I think I'm going to end here, as I'm not sure on the logic for my next jump. I have to consider it more.
Thanksgiving
Just a short thing to get you all info on my life: I was going to e-mail y'all but then I realized that it was redundant and unnecessary. Anyway, the big news for today is: I'm coming home for Thanksgiving, from Tuesday the 22nd through Sunday, the 27th. Since this is one of the last times I'll probably get to hang out with some of you for a long time (*Cough*Chris*cough*two years*cough cough*) I thougt it'd be cool to, er, hang out. Let me know using the magic comments button!
The big, scary Superorganism.
I mentioned in a previous post my postulation of an entity I've called a superorganism. I wish I could say that I am the first to come up with this idea; but, according to another postulation of mine, everything has been thought up already, so I've missed the boat. In some form or another this idea has been around for thousands of years, and was the normal way of thinking about things in a lot of places. More recently, I've found a mention of it in the writings of C.S. Lewis so I'm going to continue my role of being a neo-Lewisian and expound profusely on something he just mentions.
The idea, basically, is this: if you get people together in a group, a social group with some sort of emotional bonding, the group becomes an entity, of sorts, of its own. That is, the Republican party, the Philosophy Club, the Honors Program, and the Lunchtable group all exist above the existence of their individual members. This is obviously not a physical existence, but one formed because of connections people can make to each other. The author Orson Scott Card made these connections physical phenomena and called them philotic links. These links, which I presume to be semiotic because they are created by language, form patterns of various types depending on the relationships and personalities involved. We speak and act in different ways around our family than around a certain group of friends, and different around teammates than we do coworkers. This is us playing to the memes created for those groups. Being in the group changes our behavior, but we also alter the group by our actions and words. This kind of group behavior can be very simple, such as the way people behave when they belong to a certain country club where there is little interaction between members. This is where C.S. Lewis gets his allegory of 'the spirit of the club' which he says is somewhat analogous to the existence of the Holy Spirit as the Spirit between the Father and the Son. (I know you guys think of Him as the Holy Ghost, but take a gander at this view for the sake of argument.) In some cases, though, our actions are even more dictated by the group. The first thing that jumps to mind is school. The superorganism which is made up of the teachers and students performs its little play. All parties go through rituals which seem to have little benefit to anyone involved. Sometimes they are split up as they work in pairs; sometimes the connection only goes one way, from professor to student. But all of these activities are not done for the sake of any of the people involved, student or professor: they are done for the sake of the group, with (catch this) only the stimulation of the group as its end. Here's another way of thinking about it. Humans make tools to extend their physical capability: a hammer can do something a hand can't. In the same way, the superorganism is extended from the people involved in it in order to do something the individuals can't. But from that moment on, the group entity has precedence over the individual, and can make the individual do things that are unpleasant, such as learning. The only way out is to sever the connection: either by not paying attention or skipping class. There are many variations: think of a firebrand riling up a mob. For as long as he holds them he has essentially thousands of arms and hands as they let him do the thinking in order to gain strength in unity. Think of a family, which is an exception because it pretty much exists in order to sustain the existence of the individuals. More on this in a bit.
Now I want to take a second and put out a warning. Some of what I'm about to say is true because of the way our language is set up. That is, we can speak of groups in the same way we speak of other proper nouns. But I don't want you to think that is all there is. I put this objection in because of a recent discussion I had with someone on this subject, and so I put it in in case anyone feels the same way. I do acknowledge that language aids the concept I'm about to bring up, but I also want to say that just because we don't see any physical proof (I picture here rubber bands keeping the people stuck together) of its existence doesn't mean it's not there.
So. We have semiotic connections between people. But this sounds very postmodernish: what did I mean in the beginning when I said that this idea had been around for a long time? People, especially in the East, have thought for a long time that the whole is more important than the individual. Obviously, there could not be a whole without the connection that binds the people together. In fact, there is an old reference to this idea which is very close to our own hearts: in the book of revelation it talks about the Church becoming "The Bride of Christ." While it seems amusing to think that I am some part of the ear while you are part of a fingernail, when taken as the spirit of the Holy Church it doesn't seem that ridiculous.
I think I'm rambling again, so please ask me questions, or tell me you understand and that it was brilliant. Preferably the former. ;P
Fingertips...Almost touching...Just a...Bit further...
I have to admit that I am a little hesitant about putting up this post; I'm not sure how you guys will respond to it. I have a rather strong feeling that I might run into some opposition to some of the things I say here; that's fine, I love having discussions with people who disagree with me, and I think that any problems you have with what I have to say will help me understand my argument or your positions better. That is what I'm looking for, and I think you guys like me enough (I hope!) to give what I say a chance even if it sounds crazy to you. What I hope to avoid is saying anything that might offend anyone because of my ignorance, not because I'm afraid of offending anyone but because I hold everyone who reads this blog in too high esteem to wish losing a friendship because of some disagreement, even when it's on something as important as religion. So, if you have anything to say regarding my reasoning, please leave a comment; if you think I'm completely overboard and offensive, please send me an e-mail so we can sort it out privately. I don't think it will come to that, though.
Okay, that was far more serious than I usually start out my posts! Time to take a deep breath, and let the penguin of knowledge guide us to new shores!
Brilliant men have always had disagreements on the nature of religion. It is rather unusual that we have so many brilliant people who agree on one thing at all, namely that there is something more to this life than the material world, but when it comes to explaining what that thing is we can't seem to find two philosophers or theologians to agree. This seems odd to me. If the best minds that mankind has come up with cannot agree on religious and spiritual matters, how can we come up with any knowledge about God that is solid? Sure, we can look at religious texts and search for knowledge about God from our understanding of those books, but the one unifying factor regarding those texts is their metaphoric and symbolic qualities, as well as their paradoxical qualities. While these are powerful uses of language, describing their meaning in other terms proves tricky. We might be able to approximate their meaning in abstract terms, but that tends to take away the immediacy and power of the content. It seems hard to reconcile religious texts with truth when they seem, not only to contradict each other, but to contradict themselves.
On the other hand, those brilliant men whom I mentioned above, despite their disagreements, all agreed that these works were important, whether or not they agreed with them. Something is missing here. Our best minds think that these works are important, despite their seeming weaknesses, but they can't agree on what these texts mean.
It seems to me that we have a problem regarding meaning. This makes sense when we consider that our subject is God the Almighty; it makes sense that the power behind the universe is difficult in the extreme to understand in any portion. There is an old 'proof' of God's existence called the Ontological argument that goes something like this:
God is that which nothing greater can be conceived.
Something that exists is greater than something that does not exist.
If God did not exist, we could conceive of something greater than Him existing: namely, something that exists in reality rather than just in our head.
Therefore, God must exist.
At first it seems that if you arrange the words in the correct way that magically God appears. I disliked this 'proof' for a long time until I discussed it with my philosophy professor. After that, I realized that the proof works if you accept that, using it, you cannot assign any properties to God without making him not "that which nothing greater than which can be conceived." In plain English, God exists, but we cannot know for certain anything about Him using that argument.
This leads us to the limiting factors on our knowledge: language and how humans are set up. The latter is less of a problem. We can only know new things in terms of what we already know, meaning in this case that theology is more of a study of what people think than who God is. Still, we can overcome this. First, we are "made in God's image." (Genesis 1:27) so we have some justification in our anthropomorphized descriptions of God. Second, I believe God is aware of our limitations, so when he reveals himself to us, he does not show us his true self, but only puts on a 'puppet show,' if you will, revealing as much as he can that we can understand. So while humans can only really talk about God in terms of being human, sometimes what we say actually resembles what God is really like.
I have, of course, talked about the weakness of the vehicle, the literal level of language before. When talking about spiritual matters, the problem is compounded. Some of the things we want to talk about simply cannot fit into words. This is why books like Ezekiel and Revelation in the Bible are written the way they were. They are not good literature; they were not meant to be. They are meant to show us some resemblance to supernatural power. On the other hand, I also talked about the thematic level of reality, and how we can access it through words even if the words are not accurate reflections of the meaning. This is what these books are trying to accomplish. They are true, even when, or perhaps especially when, paradoxes come up in them. It's just that our puny minds can't wrap around how both sides, which seem contradictory, can both be true, much the same way we can't understand how an electron is both wave and particle.
Unfortunately, the fact that we can't fully understand everything means that we have to pick and choose. This is where some of C.S. Lewis' ideas come in. While he was certain of the truth of Christianity, he said something rather strange. He said that God often accepts people who didn't know better who were trying the best they could with what they know. I think he's right, but I have justification for it: I think that these people whom God accepts are doing and saying the right things on the thematic level, even if they reject Christianity on the literal level of the words they say. As it is written, "The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart." (1 Samuel 16:7B) And let's face it. There is a lot that can be improved in Christianity; all levels. It seems that on every level from the local churches to the highest leadership there is corruption and false actions. I don't see it as a bad thing at all when someone criticizes Christianity, as long as by that he means the church in the world, with all of its baseness and iniquities, and not the Church that transcends words and labels; the Church bearing the fruit of the spirit. Hardly ever do I see people attacking that aspect of Christianity.
On the other hand, while it may be true that people who do not associate with the christian religion may in fact turn out to be close to God's heart, the fact that we cannot accurately know about God has another result, one that leads to strife. If it is true, then none of the different branches of Christianity can have it all right, but only aspects of the truth. But I don't look at this as cause for despair: I think that we should have differences in doctrine. Ideally, these differences should draw people with different needs to them, and help them find their path to God. Ideally, the high churches should minister to those who need regulations and traditions in order to open themselves to the Holy Ghost, and the low churches should minister to those who need freedom and equality in order to open themselves up to the Holy Spirit. And think about it. Aren't all those qualities represented and needed in what we perceive as Divine Virtue? So if you know you've found the true church for you, continue to worship and believe in its tenets. Just know that it is a way to open yourself to God, and not an end in itself.
Does this make me a universalist, believing that all people will be admitted through the pearly gates? I wish I could say yes. But the truth is, I think that God has given us the free will to reject Him if we like. And if they do reject Him, I don't think there is anything he can do to get them into the glory of Heaven. That, my friends, is what I would call hell.
So that's how I see it; my theological theory of everything. What I wrote here doesn't explain everything, obviously, but it should give you some idea on my thoughts.
S.S. Relation
I was going to do a post on a couple of thoughts I had, but right now I'm really quite tired, so I don't think I'm going to do anything that mentally straining. I think I'm just going to reflect on some things I notice when I'm around my new friends here at Gonzaga.
I'm not sure if any of you caught the passage in my post/letter to my proffesor when I said something about studying other people when they talk. Well, I don't know if anyone else does it other than me, but it is an interesting psychological study to see people going through their social acts. I've found that body language tells a lot more than words can. If they put their minds to it (though they often don't) People can often control the words they speak, but they can't control their physical reactions. Hand gestures are less revealing than pose, usually, and it usually doesn't take that much training to figure out what people are saying with their poses. What is a lot harder is applying it to the person you are talking to, because it is mostly an unconscious act. It's too bad, too, because a lot of interpersonal problems could be alleviated if we understood other people's body language: I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the difficulties in understanding the opposite gender is the fact that we are speaking two (or more) different languages when we are using the same words to each other.
Human interaction is very fascinating. I think one of the reasons we put so much effort in trying to understand the social behavior of other species is that we spend so much effort in our own interpersonal interactions. Parties are wonderful places to see this in action. Try sometime to study the groups people get into at parties, and then how the groups shift and form. When I do this, I start to notice patterns like the size of groups. Lets say the average sized group is six people, which is usually about right, depending on the party. Such groups end in one of two ways. Either they run out of things to say and wander elsewhere, or they get joined by more people and the group breaks down into smaller groups. Groups smaller than six usually are more likely to get joined than big groups. On the other hand, if two people deliberately separate themselves from the rest of the party, they have different characteristics. If it's two guys, they generally stand shoulder to shoulder, looking at some common thing and, generally, commenting on it. Pairs of girls stand face to face. If it is a mixed pair, they usually also stand face to face, but there is usually more active body language. Check it out at some gathering and see if your results match mine.
One last thing regarding more long term relationships. Starting college gave me a unique opportunity to see what happens to a group of people starting a new life together in an unknown, hostile (meaning new and unusual) environment. I mentioned in my very first post how Gonzaga found a way to unite all of the froshes very quickly. Now, though, past midterms, college is no longer quite as hostile. We have settled into our routines, we know how to do all the things that we generally need to do. As this happens, the 'grace period' of grand acceptance disappears. There were signs before: after the first two weeks no one was going around introducing themselves to all the new people at every opportunity they could find. But now, while people have become comfortable in their scheduling routines, they will find themselves at corners with their new friends. They are settling back in to their usual personalities and temperaments, which might be quite different from what they displayed in order to fit in. As this occurs, bumps in the relationships come up. This is when the first real arguments will occur among friends, and when the breaking and cementing of various cliques will be shown. While this period seems treacherous, it is necessary to ensure that these relationships are with someone real, rather than an image put up in order to fit in.
I want to know if these things are happening where you guys are. I bet that larger schools will have different timetables for acceptance and settling in to routines. Or it might not happen the same way at all. And don't worry: I don't analyze you guys the way I analyze people here. Take what comfort you may from that.
Dilatory Poetry Rambles
"What if a much of a which of a wind
gives the truth to summer's lie;
bloodies with dizzying leaves the sun
and yanks immortal stars awry?"
E.E. Cummings
I've always had a soft spot in my heart for E.E. Cummings. I know a lot of people don't like his kind of modern poetry, especially his poetry for the eye, but its something that just appeals to me. I've never quite understood why people try to fit their art into little boxes, and make what use of the boxes they can. On the other hand, there are people like Wordsworth or (of course) Shakespeare who just take their idiom and take it beyond the realm of human scope. All of us, no matter how much we practice, no matter how beautiful our verse, we will never write sonnets like Shakespeare, any more than we could compose fugues like J.S. Bach or paint landscapes like Monet. I listened to a lecture on the originality of Beethoven yesterday, and how people have spent centuries trying to understand his music, to fit words around it like other, lesser composers. But you can't. There are things in art that transcend our words and probably even our experience. And the fact is, that only Beethoven could compose the Eroica symphony. Only Picasso could paint Le Troix Mademoiselles. Only Shakespeare could write The Tempest. These men (and women, too, though I haven't mentioned any.) sometimes seem out of our reach, out of our range of possible contributions to what humans consider beautiful. But it is at times like that that our minds are too full of themselves. We are not meant to be another Beethoven or Shakespeare. There is no need for them. They have already poured out their souls on the human stage. The thing is, we don't need to write or compose or paint to add to the human play. If we find something, within ourselves or with direction, that we find we can pour out what we are, what we have to offer, then mankind is better off for it. It's what we are meant to do.
Another E.E. Cummings:
maggie and millie and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)
and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles, and
millie befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;
and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and
may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone
For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
It's always ourselves we find in the sea
Life. Don't talk to me about Life.
I was reading a book in the library just now titled
The Ideology of Biology. I forget the name of the author, but he claims that much of Biology (he mostly focuses on the idea that we are deterministic creatures controlled by our genes) is not scientific or objective and is ideological in nature. He claims that we should not be looking at genes as the key subjects of biological study, but the organism and its interaction with its environment. Mimicking my Efficient Society Hypothesis, (yeah, right) he also claims that organisms largely create their own environment instead of having the environment shape them. I just had a few thoughts while considering these claims.
First, he attacks the way biologists come up with a theory based on a few observations, and then go on to explain other phenomena using that theory, without testing it, when there could be alternate explanations for those phenomena. He's absolutely right; this is where scientists get in trouble for saying that philosophy is "B.S." (take that Richard Feynman!) because they would have learned logic in their philosophy class. There are some instances where you cannot determine unknowns from known facts only because there are more possible explanations than the model you are using. It is still very common to do so, though, and it gets science into trouble because it becomes a platform for agendas rather than being actual science. Biology is the perfect example. Anyone who attacks the current model gets branded as ignorant, and is informed that the 'top minds in biology' back it. That is, they are defending the system, not because it is necessarily true, but on the basis of authority.
Second, the author of this book makes the same mistake that his opponents make. When he claims that the organism creates its own environment, I wanted to ask him "from what?" Obviously, an organism
influences its environment, and that that influence has a major role in what that organism becomes. But isn't it true that the influence of other aspects of an environment on organisms has a greater influence? Let me put it a different way. A classical Oriental philosopher or biologist would never come up with this concept, because for them the whole has more influence than the part. China, Japan, and India didn't come up with biology in the same way the west did: what they had would be more akin to sociology or ecology because they placed more value on the community than the West did. The fact is, any model we come up with to describe anything is exactly that: a model. It will never perfectly describe the real thing. It's placing a three dimensional world on to a two dimensional map: distortions are going to be created. I, of course, have shown how people can say various aspects of the same thing, so that they are both, in all essentials, universally true (in their own frame of reference) while seeming to conflict using my model of 'stacked' realities. Yeah. Go ego.
Third. As for his biology, I think he's mostly right, or at least let me say that I mostly agree with him. I have always had a hard time reconciling the idea of genetics that I got from Biology (RNA comes in, copies DNA, out come proteins. Lather Rinse Repeat.) with the all encompassing qualities I hear attributed to them, that they determine our intelligence and personality. While the answer that it is both nature and nurture seems laughably simple, many scientists find that it is far too difficult to consider. The fact is, it is far trickier to try to determine what part is nature and what part is nurture, which scientists would have to do if they wanted to build a more and more accurate model if they go on the same track, than it is to attribute everything to one important aspect.
I have to admit that most of my antagonism toward Biology was founded prior to reading this book. While in England, I visited the Natural History Museum and was able to go on a tour of some of the research areas of the associated Darwin Center, where much of the work goes into Taxonomy, or the classification of organisms. While there, it was fully drummed into my mind how arbitrary the process was. If a new specimen is found, only an expert in the field can accurately determine whether or not it is a new species or a variation of an existing species. Since there is no objective dividing line, one expert may label the specimen a new species where another may not. This is not science.
Anyway, Maren, next update I'll talk your post, I promise.
It's pronounced "Neat-She"...er, I think...
It's been a while since I last posted. I'm still suffering from the same afflictions I was complaining about at the beginning of my last post. I have a midterm test in English on Friday and I'm not looking forward to it. I have an oral exam in Japanese on Thursday, and I'm
really not looking forward to it. On the plus side, I was one of the few people who got an A on our first English paper, and I also got an A- on a philosophy test I took, but that's more annoyance than pleasure. Stupid ego.
Anyway, though I wanted to put up a post to let everyone know that I'm still alive and okay, the thing known as college has taken up a lot of my time and energy, so I'm not getting the opportunities to come up with ideas. I've cut back on my reading, and I haven't gone running in five days. You non-runners have no idea how terrible that is.
I won't leave you without some things to think about, though. Though lessened, my reading still continues. Today it was some Nietzsche. Some of you may be familiar with that name. He is most famous for his statement, "God is dead, and we have killed him." I have to laugh at him, though, because while it may have seemed in the late 1800's that the evidence was against God's existence, mankind's concept of Him continues to flourish and survive. I think he would have been surprised at how things turned out. And, while he certainly disagreed with most Christian doctrine, I think that the concept of 'God' that he was challenging is one that we would disagree with and attack also.
But that is not where I wanted to go with this. If you're interested with disagreeing with him, go look up some of his works or find an edition that has selections of his work; he was not the kind of philosopher that could be summed up in one book, and writes many things that are contradictory and paradoxical.
This is what I want to discuss. I like Nietzsche as a challenge: I find he has the most potent response for many of my beliefs and opinions, not just on religion and ethics but also philosophy, history, and aesthetics. He is also willing to put forth opinions that other philosophers are scared or unwilling to admit to. I admire that, and find that his writing is refreshing. But I want to attack some of what he says anyway.
The statement that really caught my eye today is one on a subject I have considered before. Nietzsche says that philosophers study men and postulate universal truths about them from what they find. But, he says, this is flawed because men are different today then they were hundred years ago, or a decade ago, or a millennia ago, so no universal statements about mankind can be fully complete because the philosophers really only describe the present day. In some sense, I have to agree with him. A lot of what philosophers do is exactly that, as I've said before: putting a modern spin on things. However, with my model of reality that I've recently discussed, I can address his argument more fully. Certainly, at one level, the theme of philosopher's works hold the silent premise "in this day and age, such is true," but on another level, there are assertions that are true (or false) for all humans. We have a basic nature that is common to all of us, otherwise we couldn't find any connection with the past in the literature and artefacts we discover. On the other hand, we are also different, because otherwise all humanity would have one culture. In both scenarios, the idea of global community that we see throughout history would not exist. We have to live in a paradoxical reality, and while Nietzsche usually realizes that, he hiccoughed on this one.
Another thing that he says, while I'm at it, is that there is no 'truth' that we can access using language, because all statements is merely "a mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms" ('On Truth and Lies in an Nonmoral sense') combined into patterns that we try to fit into saying things with meaning. But, looking at words the way I've described, we find that Nietzsche (and all the postmodernists who follow after him) are barking up the wrong tree. Words are not fundamental to meaning. While language can certainly not describe everything, it is the higher levels of reality where fundamental truth can be found, not in naked language.
His ideas on morality are difficult, but something struck me about today's reading: he mentions the idea that 'sleeping' morality can make later morality deeper and richer. It seems odd to think that acting barbaric for a time can make you more moral later, but think about this: some of the most moral people did indeed used to be barbaric before they grew out of it. I wouldn't put it like Nietzsche does; I would say that morality means more to the people who have experienced immorality for themselves. Does this make immorality good? No, of course not; but it can end up with good effects. Nietzsche applies this to larger things too: he says that war can be a good thing because it means that culture is asleep for a time. We can see that this is applicable in the actions of the Mongols, who slaughtered thousands in a desperate attempt to become cultured. Again, I think that in this case culture means more to the people who have not experienced it.
One other thing. I've considered my "efficient society" hypothesis, and realized that its most useful application is the analysis of (historical) people in terms of the times they lived in, and the analysis of a (historical) period in terms of the people it produces: essentially, there are no famous men who are ahead of their times. Nietzsche is an example of this: in nearly any other age his work would have been rejected and he would have been forgotten, unless he wrote it and his work was used in a later age: this would, of course, mean that he was a man of that age instead. On the flip side, we can tell, from who Nietzsche is and what he says, what kind of place late 19th century Germany was. But I'll leave that to you to decide.
Okay. I've written more than I expected to, and it was mostly stuff I'd said before. I'll get better after midterms, I promise.
Efficiency is overrated, my friends.
I'm getting swamped with schoolwork, and I find that I have less and less time to spend posting new stuff on here. I think you guys all are feeling it, too: the feeling that midterms and other responsibilities are getting in the way of stuff that we want to do. Still, whenever I have a new idea, you guys can be sure that you'll be some of the first to hear it.
As you probably have noticed, most of my ideas come when I talk to someone, or read something, and the idea just pops into my head. I consider it for a while, modify it, and come up with examples that support it. But the genesis of the idea remains fairly simple. What I'm going to talk about here doesn't have such a simple beggining: it came up out of a sea of scrambled notions in my brain. There is, however, one concept you must know before we go on. This is the 'Efficient Markets Hypothesis' in economics, which says that the stock market reflects all the new information about it already. That is, it is useless to go look for tips in the Wall Street Journal because anything you get is already being considered in the market price of the stock. This is not true in all cases; still, the statistical or general representation is of an efficient market.
If that messes with your mind, check my application of the rule. My rule is the 'Efficient Society Hypothesis.' As you may be able to guess from the similarity, it says that a society already reflects all the new information about it, perhaps especially the ideas that are intended on changing a society. That means that revolutions don't erupt: the forces that cause a revolution are in play in the society usually decades before they happen: otherwise they couldn't happen.
Most people think that the cause and effect works the opposite of what I'm claiming. They see a leader, or group, that rallies people to a cause and leads them on a crusade to bring about change. I say that by the time such an organization shows up, the society has already changed in proportion to the popularity, power, and radicalism of the idea. Again, if it were otherwise such a group could not exist.
How is that? Well, in general, most of one's ideas comes from the society they grow up in, or are in now. Even if they reject the system, they become rebels in terms of the system they are opposing. Rebel kids today get piercings and tatoos, where in some countries in Africa tatoos are an essential part of livelihood. So to consider that an idea is wrong and needs change means that the concept that that idea is wrong must come from somewhere. The rules that make up society are flexible, so interpretations come up, and with interpretations come disputes. Sad but true. Those disputes lead to various currents of thought that permeate a society, especially a complex society such as ours. It is these currents that cause change, rather than the people in the spotlight who take hold of them. Russia was already Communist when Lenin took over the Bolsheviks. America was already at war years before the Declaration of Independence, but the royalists were always there, too.
Now, there are quite a few exceptions here, mostly because there are a multitude of outside forces that people can get ideas from. Take the Civil Rights Movement. That is a movement that mostly agrees with my analysis, but the idea of nonviolent resistance as advocated by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. came from his knowledge of Gandhi's similar tactics, (and yes, Gandhi got it from Thoureau, but don't confuse the issue, here) and so that opened up a branch of the Civil Rights Movement that wouldn't have occured otherwise.
Here's a different example. Do you guys remember Mr. Harris talking about elections? He likened them to a freeway: choosing between candidates is like choosing between exits. You might end up miles away from where the other exit led or even from where you started. Well, I have to disagree with his analysis. (Sorry, Mr. Harris, but it isn't the first time I've disagreed with you.) I say that by the time the candidates are in the running, the election is essentially over. People are going to vote in certain predictable ways, depending on the society and the layout of the forces within it. Also, the candidates have to work within the system, and are susceptible to these same forces that other people are. So by the time the election occurs, the car is already off the freeway, and the election is the effect of that shift or continuation in thought, whatever it may be.
I have just realized that this could be useful in history. I haven't gone into the history of it yet, but I certainly could. The French Revolution springs to mind. Actually most revolutions spring to mind. I'll look into it after midterms, maybe.
How this concerns me right now is the idea of whether societies are even able to choose their own paths, whether societies have free will. I wonder if it is even worth asking, or whether it would be beneficial to the individual one way or another?
Signs and the Nature of Reality
This is a copy of a letter/paper that I am going to send to my philosophy proffesor regarding some subjects I have considered recently. I've done some editing to it so that it makes more sense here. If you are sick of my last posts then this will not help. On the other hand, I may change subjects again pretty soon, so relief is on the way.
I noticed that in Sartre's essay, "what is writing" he distinguishes between two types of written word: poetry and prose, and claims that the two are fundamentally different in their outlook and origins. He notices that the use of signs are different in the two, also: in poetry, the meaning is not the words on the page, but the signs that are pronounced in the mind. In prose, the meaning and script are one and the same. This led me to two lines of thought.
First, the difference between signs and memes. I came at this problem at first with the idea that they were actually the same thing, one coming out of the line of philosophical thought and the other the result of scientific and linguistic analysis. I was both right and wrong. The difference is noted by Sartre, although he doesn't say it in as many words. There are two uses of language: one to project statements, and the other to wrap our minds around a concept that we don't have words to describe explicitly. Both are interrelated. I don't really think that Sartre thought that only writers who worked with line and meter were poets, and that all those who rhyme aren't really just saying something in a lyrical manner. For writing to be poetry, it must signify something within the reader's mind beyond the mere words on the page. This is the idea of signs. The literal or denotative aspect of writing has more to do with memes, the entities that are copied and repeated. This is the nature of silly jingles. But there is some overlap. The poetry does have its denotative aspect, that can lead to it becoming a meme. On the other hand, authors who do not mean to write poetry often manage to create material that gets meaning attached to it from some outside source. This is especially true when we analyze material from outside our own semiotic realm: we can find significance in a story from the past or foreign authors by trying to understand some of their thought for which we have no words. Imagine listening in on a conversation. If you are trained in linguistics, you can analyze the shifts in subject, the general point of view of each of the participants, and attribute meaning to their every move, but if you cannot do the same when you participate in your own colloquial conversations.
Second, the nature of reality. I just mentioned the difference between being on the outside and being on the inside in terms of a conversation and realizing meaning, and the same holds true with reality. 'Reality is what we make it' goes a popular saying. But for something to be real for you, you must be 'inside' it. This leads to a division in the reality of language. We can be inside language when we use it literally, but we cannot attribute any meaning to it. Realities come at us with various levels of complexity, and we can only attribute meaning to that reality by using signifiers that are part of the nature of that reality. The flip side of this is that the levels of signs or memes within each succesive reality become more and more complex, and leave us less and less likely to be able to understand them directly. Let me give some examples so that it becomes more clear.
Take nature. It is what I would call 'physical reality.' Its signs are very complicated and we are unable to attribute meaning to them, although we can often understand it directly: "it's cloudy, therefore it is going to rain." or "his forehead is hot, therefore he is sick." (This is, of course, based on a human understanding of cause and effect, which Hume pointed out was flawed, but it's how we work, so I'm going with it.) Okay, so natural reality is too complex. The next less complicated form of reality I see is social reality. Between the bonds of any group, like a family or club, a 'spirit' of sorts is created that has life of its own. (Ed. I will probably be doing a post or two on this later) This alters the behavior of the individuals that compose this superorganism but also gives them a sense of belonging and extends their influence much the same way machinery extends their physical capabilities. The signs that compose this reality are the signs between superorganisms and the meaning of the connections between the people involved. This is the level that meaning in ordinary language tries to engage: the universal nature of humans and their connection to other humans. Thus, the next level of reality is the level of thematic reality. There is much dispute on this, but I believe that here is the level of poetry, of music, and of art. These activities have different kind of spirit of their own, but it is a created spirit rather than an extended one. This is the level I should call meaning reality, but that doesn't make much sense so I call it thematic reality. We can't say what these things mean in words (despite what our English teachers say when they ask us to explicate poetry) but they contain the themes that the words we use manufacture. Then we have linguistic reality, the simple reality. If I have been unconsciously using value terms when describing these descending realities, then I apologize, and ask that you don't see them as descending in goodness, but only in complexity. Here we can see the advantages of simplicity. Namely, it is only here that we can explicate explicitly: we can say exactly what we mean. This means that we can create a shadow of the other realities in this one, and then explain them in different terms. We will never get the exact nature of the other realities, but we can get approximations of one view.
This has, I think, applications for everything. Or at least applications for everything academic, which is the only semiotic system I'm interested in. But I think I'll hold off explaining them all here and wait until I write a book, or do a thesis paper or something.
Golems!
This post may sound a little odd to those people who don't like the idea of memes, and who think that I dislike them, also. You certainly would have reason to believe that, but since I am defending them, or at least assuming that they exist, in this post, I wanted to make sure everyone knows that it was not the idea of memes that I was attacking previously, but merely the idea that memes are all-encompassing in the realm of mental activity, and the idea that memes create our selfness. So, with that out of the way...
The history of science has been filled with some very strange coincidences. It has also been dogged by the history of thelogical explanation of the phenomena that science has described. A lot of the latter versions of these histories have been written with the angle that some scientific development had brought enlightenment to these poor deluded theists. What the histories fail to realize is that at every instance there have been theologians saying, "but that is what we've said all along!" While this may partially be because the theologians are trying to cover up their own inadequacies, I believe that in many instances they are correct. There are two parts to this: one is the idea of insight that I have mentioned previously. The religious texts are so full of rich ideas that they cannot explicate them all directly, and so things have to be interpreted. Often the interpretations correspond with modern ideas in other fields. This is where the other explanation comes in, that corresponds to the coincidences we find in science.
If memes are ideas that are meant to be modelled and spread, isn't it obvious that we can 'build' some memes from other memes? Leibniz and Newton had the same information and the concept of the calculus erupted at two places at the same time. For the theologians, it is a little different. They can get the same memes, but with a different angle. If you get the same information with a different emphasis, it reads differently. The theologian would build the same world-view, but with a spiritual emphasis. Other theologians would have said similar things in the past, and so the new guy gets to say that they've been saying it all along. Or you can think of it as an aspect of the eternal truth that transcends through history and is now revealing itself in a different guise. But you see, that the two discriptions I have given are the two different contentious views!
Okay, it's time to stop; I've just combined a bunch of my old posts together and nothing new has come up. But we can call it application.
