MUSE FODDER

"A classic example of what we already knew."

2011-09-30T09:01:00.000-07:00

Apparently CERN broke the speed of light, although it is contested. What was the response? Well, of course they broke the speed of light, it should be obvious from souls and cosmic healing and time travel!

This is an extreme example of what I wish to discuss. I am thinking more of "Cultural garbage our own fault" by Dylan Wilks in the Sept 21 2011 version of the Nexus. A new study has been done, Dylan reports, which shows that watching badly written TV shows is bad for children. Instead of explaining the study in detail so that others can have an opinion he quickly remarks "although the empirical evidence may be new, it's actually just a classic example of garbage in, garbage out." Now this could just be bad writing but it isn't only writing. I encounter it in speech as well. Whenever an interesting study comes out people remark 'but of course the Siberians have known that for centuries. Firstly, I'm not Siberian, secondly that isn't the point of testing a scientific hypothesis!

Science is not straight forward. We make big mistakes. We no longer lobotomise crazy people, but we used to. I think it is a darn good thing we realised it was a bad idea, even when people thought that it was. The trouble is this: Whenever a scientific study confirms an opinion of one of these people, they don't get excited and say 'look, now I have scientific justification for believing this, isn't that exciting?' instead they say, 'I already knew that so the scientists must be stupid.' But what about all those things that don't agree with their opinions? Those are just ignored, forgotten, or mocked as the 'evils of modern science.'

Woman home-makers

2011-08-10T15:25:00.000-07:00

I struggle sometimes to be open-minded. There are those still in this world who want a heterosexual marriage with gender roles clearly marked. The man works, the woman stays home and looks after the children and the house. The 50s style suburb but without the Cold War playing on the radio. Now that I am educated and able to defend my ideas I rarely make vitriolic statements against things I disagree with, and rarely even believe those things. Instead I make good arguments for my own side and point out flaws in the other. I do not call someone who wants to be a 50s style house wife a sheep and I no longer think her one either. But this is one area where some of those harsh judgements still remain, and I struggle against them.

I was homeschooled. I am an advocate of homeschooling. I learned how to tell stories, and do art, I learned about plants in the forest and really nothing useful at all. Once I could read, however, I would take a subject I was interested in outside of school and find all the books on it. I loved learning. I think home schooling did that for me. It also gave me a chance to mature in a protected environment so when I finally faced the world my beliefs on right and wrong stood strong. Day Care, to me, is cruel. Children are not supposed to cry all the time. They do at Day Care. What are we thinking putting all these hardly human creatures together in a room and telling them to share? I learned to share by being given too much and realising that I wanted those around me to have some too. Scarcity and obedience do not teach a sharing spirit, they teach greed and secretiveness. Looking after your own children instead of paying someone else to do it seems quite sensible in this respect, although not always possible.

The world is really not that nice a place. If a couple can afford to have someone stay home, that might be a good thing, especially if the person who stays home happens to be extremely shy, sensitive, have some mental disorder that makes dealing with the external world every single day difficult. As a consensual act between two adults having someone to stay at home is not unethical and sometimes desirable.

This is my defense for the bread winner / home maker model. Note that it does not assume women ought to stay at home, but that there isn't anything wrong with one member of a partnership keeping charge of the house well the other works. This assumption is built on my positive experiences as a homeschooler and my observations of friends who had parents contribute positively to their up bringing. I still find it difficult to understand the woman willing to, from how I see it, give up her freedom. But would we still calling it giving up freedom if both members of the relationshio were women? No. So why is it patriarchy if one of them is a man? I'm not saying it isn't. Maybe that is something we still need to work on as a society.

I have a trouble, however, with those who defend a women's right to stay at home. Not the right of a person to become a homemaker, but the right of a woman to look after her family because it is her natural role. It is appropriate to defend women who wish to be home makers. They need defending. They get flack for their choice and should not. The trouble is that you have no right to tell me my natural role, and all those who do not fit into your little box. I am not abnormal for my choices. I am not abnormal because I do not wish to have children.

It makes no sense. These people deal with criticism all the time. People think they are weak or dumb or abnormal for their choice. They should know better then to turn around and try to force others into the same role in which they themselves are suffering.

"If suddenly the majority of women decided to pull out of the workplace, it would cause economy to undergo quite a shake, but eventually, we might all be better off. " How should young women prepare for their future? from Domestic Felicity by Anna T.

We would not be better off. We as women would certainly not. I personally would be a very upset philosophy student running around asking why no one wants a female scholar. Then I would probably change my name legally and try to pass in order to get a job. Thus would begin a repressive and tyrannical society! It would not be better. It would be better if those who desired to stay at home were encouraged instead of discouraged. That is what would be better. This is the trouble with apologists for woman homemakers: They take it too far. They take their arguments beyond what is acceptable, beyond simply defense, and make claims that are meant to apply to everyone, thus encouraging alienation of a different group instead of solving the problem.

Tea cups made of bones

2011-08-06T16:28:00.001-07:00

At a yard sale today my partner bought a belt. I bought a tea cup made out of bones. It does not matter if it was more valuable, because I am unlikely to give it up. There were other tea cups and saucers. I chose this one because the one with pretty blue flowers cost five dollars. It is paragon fine china and cost three dollars.

The British, wanting to make porcelain cups and dishes at home instead of paying for chinese porcelain, ground bones to mix with the local clay. Bones made the clay whiter. In China porcelain was made from a white clay fired at extremely high temperatures. Genuine porcelain glows just a little, is just a little bit translucent.

I am starting to learn that this is the way with history: Tea cups are made of bones. It is so very much the way of the British empire. To say 'yes, these people did great things; yes, it is beautiful, it was heroic, it is amazing' but look again. Look at the bones. We cannot praise the past, but I long to. The sun never set on the British Empire, and it was grand. But the imperialistic policies were used to subjegate the peoples of North America, and I live on land which they stole. In some places the land was fought for. Here we signed a treaty with the local people, and then built on the land which the treaty gave them.

I am a skeptic now. I doubt Plato, who thought that beauty, goodness, and justice were unalterably linked. But every time I find a thing of beauty I also find that other thing, like my tea cup made of bones. I think it adds to the beauty, but it's a good thing I'm not vegan.

Violence in Victoria

2011-07-13T13:08:00.000-07:00

I thought of this in terms of violence in modern North America or contemporary society, but unlike most of my posts it is an observation based on, well, actual observation. Hence I will limit my claim. BC, Canada, is a violent place. Victoria, BC is a violent place. A convenient limitation as I can include some of my own pictures this time. The pictures included here were taken last year, around sunset. I don't bike in the downtown core. I wouldn't lock my bike down there. As a female, I should be down town at night because I could be a target for rape. My male friends also find it dangerous to go downtown because fit, healthy males are the target of people who simply want to fight someone. They are targets because they can look after themselves. I over hear things about the clubs downtown, about underage drinking, fights, and people being beaten by the cops.

Why is this of interest? Because it is Victoria, BC. Victoria is a tourist town, and the capital of the provincial government. It is kind of fake, a tourists trap. It is without a doubt a beautiful little city. It is a little city. Vancouver is big, dangerous, a real big city like you read about in books. Victoria is the most European city in BC. It isn't a bad place. Isn't it strange that there is so much danger?

My second interest is the Vancouver hockey riot. It happened. Set cars on fire, fought, looted, mob mentality type stuff. In Vancouver. Canada is supposed to be a peaceful, up right sort of place.

These things got my thinking. I started to wonder if there was something wrong in our world. Everything seems calm and peaceful and yet famous people are murdered in the middle of downtown Vancouver. How is this an okay place to live? Shouldn't I be concerned?

It reminded me of lyrics from the song "Slipping" in Doctor Horrible's Sing along Blog --a brilliant superhero/supervillain musical by Joss Whedon if you have not encountered it before.

"I bring you pain,
the kind you can't suffer quietly.
Fire up your brain
remind you inside your rioting
society is slipping.
Everything's slipping away..."

It does seem, from what I see around me, that society is slipping. And yet, I don't want to associate with the villain of the piece. I do not want to have those views. I do not want to see society in that way. I must see it differently because I cannot afford to think that this is the end. People have always thought that, but we aren't in the middle ages anymore, there is no definite end. Therefore I can ask, is it really slipping?

No. There has always been violence. Cities have always been dangerous places. Paris is a beautiful city, a night city, and you should not go into the alleys. That would be stupid. It was the same in the 1800s as today. Things are actually under control. The riots occured one day, and the next day people apologised and went back to business as usual. We may have robbery downtown but we do not have a curfew and you are really rather unlikely to be shot by an enemy of any sort when walking downtown. Of course it isn't okay, and we have a long way to go before it will be, but I can still consider Victoria a sleepy tourist town even with the violence.

The slippery slope

2011-07-09T18:12:00.000-07:00

In 1927 the Pope claimed that cigarettes would lead to "the deterioration and destruction of a Christian society and civilization."1 Today we claim it will lead to the deterioration and destruction of your lungs, but that isn't the point. The point is I think the Pope was right. I mean, I am sure it is a collection of factors which have led to a greater freedom of religion and a acceptance of a secular way of life, but all those things put together, they were right! Those people who said that allowing women the vote would lead them to be less womanly were right. I'm certainly not womanly. That might be because standards have changed: I would probably fit better in a world where womanly did not require quite so much make-up. I certainly would not fit well in a world where educated females were considered odd and out of place. I feel like no one comments on this, and I often wonder about it, because often these peoples slippery slopes seem ridiculous, but are actually correct. It doesn't need to turn out this way but in the end it does. The trouble is we cannot see it like that, because what we have now is a good thing. Maybe talking about it is dangerous. We can say 'oh, don't be silly, gay marriage will not destabilize gender norms.' It might be true that it won't, but the trouble is there are lots of people who support gay marriage because it does exactly that. It makes husband/wife a little less clear, a little less the only way to be and we think that's a good thing. It's strange, because their fears seem so ridiculous but are in the end valid. Maybe in the end what is ridiculous is that people feared those things.

1("The Pope's Appeal to Men to Reform Women's Dress," Literary Digest 72 (January 29, 1927): 27-28, 57-59.)

My last year of university

2011-07-04T09:27:00.000-07:00

My last year of University begins in September. I feel that I have put it off long enough.

I spent the first two years living at home and moved out in third year. Part way through third year I realised that if I wanted to cook myself proper meals and remember all the classes I was taking I would have to take less classes. I can do 15 hours of class a week, but 9-12 hours I actually remember and enjoy. I loved learning, so why was I 'suffering through' it? So four and half years became six. Six years is a long time. I feel ready to be done now. Five would have been enough I think, but this way I can be awake for my final year. It certainly feels like a finally year. I will be graduating next June with a double major with honours in Philosophy and History. I wish my mother was alive to be proud of me; I will have to be especially proud myself to compensate.

It makes me queasy.

I am afraid without a constant affirmation of my ideals I will not remember what I believe in, that I will forget to be a good person and to pursue the things that I am passionate about, that I will stop writing and stop learning. I am afraid that I will become cynical and sour. I am old enough now to encounter those dreadful people who believe that they live in the 'real world.' I will say more on this real world of theirs later. Needless to say it is not the real world, but a very particular place. Everyone who lives in this place becomes obnoxious and narrow minded. This is because this reality of theirs is a very long but very narrow place and they must all squeeze past each other all the time. No one ever stands still and everyone becomes tired and overheated because it is unventilated and stuffy in this place. I do not want to go to this place. Growing up I was not interested in humans, except those who were my friends, and I would really rather not enter Sartre's hell if I can avoid it.

I am afraid also because I fear change. I fear what I do not know. It is a grand adventure but it is also frightening. I am happier to finish university then I was to finish highschool, but it still frightens me. Another town, different friends, a new life. These things scare me. What if I do not meet anyone? What if I do not pay the hydro bill and a collection agency hunts me down and drags me off to a laboratory somewhere in the underground of Toronto where they mainly do experiments on rats but sometimes on humans too? I wouldn't put it past the current mayor.

I am also the sort who likes ritual and sybolism. I am writing this because I need a last year of school. It needs to be something that I remember. I have already finished my philosophy degree. After this summer I have seven more courses to take and then I am done my history degree as well. I will audit some philosophy classes, but I will miss my friends and the group of philosophy students that I spent so much time with last year won't really be there this year. My roommates will, however.

I had a friend who I miss very much now. It makes me wish I graduated in four years because she had this special talent for making everything special and important. I need it to be special and important, because I am that sort of person. I will have to try hard to do it for myself. I will probably write more throughout the year.

Dante's Inferno Test

2011-06-24T00:09:00.000-07:00

I took this test a few years ago. I expected I would be much more sinful now, since I have been a student for a few years and do terrible things like have sex with people who have different last names then I do. Apparently not.

The Dante's Inferno Test has sent you to the First Level of Hell - Limbo!

First Level of Hell - Limbo

Charon ushers you across the river Acheron, and you find yourself upon the brink of grief's abysmal valley. You are in Limbo, a place of sorrow without torment. You encounter a seven-walled castle, and within those walls you find rolling fresh meadows illuminated by the light of reason, whereabout many shades dwell. These are the virtuous pagans, the great philosophers and authors, unbaptised children, and others unfit to enter the kingdom of heaven. You share company with Caesar, Homer, Virgil, Socrates, and Aristotle. There is no punishment here, and the atmosphere is peaceful, yet sad.

Here is how you matched up against all the levels:
Level Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers) Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers) Very High
Level 2 (Lustful) Moderate
Level 3 (Gluttonous) Very Low
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious) Very Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy) Low
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics) Low
Level 7 (Violent) Low
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers) Moderate
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous) Low

Take the Dante Inferno Hell Test

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Very High
Level 2 (Lustful)	Moderate
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Very Low
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Very Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Low
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Low
Level 7 (Violent)	Low
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Moderate
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Low

What better place for a philosophy student? Why would I ever want to go to heaven when I can meet Aristotle instead? And Socrates too. We could corrupt the youth together!

Marxism doesn't taste like philosophy

2011-06-13T16:57:00.000-07:00

Neither does feminism**. Neither does capitalism. These -isms are what people call 'a philosophy.' Sam has a Marxist philosophy, which undermines her brothers capitalist philosophy, although they still manage to maintain a coherent feminist philosophy when going fishing on Sunday.

I do not fully understand these things, as I have not studied them. It is a dark area and I think it will come in time. Here are my thoughts on the matter, but I warn that they are strangely formed as the landscape for me is still dark and I cannot quite make it out.

I study in an analytic tradition, bias. Philosophy students today, I have been told, tend toward "eclectic." That is, like an apartment full of bookshelves where some of the furniture is modern, an old couch, an Art Nouveau lamp, an oak dining table. There is art on the walls but it shows no coherent interest. There are many things, and they are all in close proximity and it makes a sort of sense all put together but it cannot be read at a glance. Eclectic philosophy is taking the parts of each philosopher which are appealing and using them to build. I have been told that there are no more Kantians. I've heard that James R. Brown is a Platonist, but that does not mean he follows a school of philosophy which adheres to Plato, rather he himself has studied Plato and chosen to consider himself in line with enough of Plato's views to be called as such.

Maybe this is why Marxism doesn't taste like philosophy, because we have waged war on -isms and everything has to be between the person and the book. Maybe it is simply not what I am used to. People also call such things 'ideologies', which refers to ideas that relate to economy and politics. This seems more accurate. Do I delude myself in believing that philosophy is not ideological? No, it is, but there is a difference here. I suppose it is that, like the apartment full of books, it is not obvious what that ideology is, two different ideologies might exist simultaneously and contradict each other and that does not undermine philosophy because philosophy aims at knowledge, not just system. It isn't just a way of doing things.

That is why Ayn Rand is not philosophy. Ideology does not give you breathing room. It tells you what your values are, instead of asking. It dictates all further choices you make. Novels take you near the truth of things, but sometimes the writer is just as puzzled as to why Sam goes fishing with her brother every Sunday as I am. Ayn Rand does not leave any mysteries. There is nothing secret for her, there is no core that cannot be fathomed.

And that is it. It is not modern analytic philosophy only, but also my belief in mystery that leads me to think Marxism is not philosophy. In philosophy there are questions which may not have answers. Sam's brother, who is a very clever person and has many degrees, could spend his entire life arguing that chairs are chairs because we call them chairs and not because of their essential nature. He could make a very important contribution, and Sam would certainly be very proud to have such a clever brother, but it would not settle the problem. It might settle a new area of scientific study, but it would not prevent some other brother the next day or ten years later from writing something just as certain on the other side of the conversation.

Ideologies seem so certain. You learn the system. You look at the world and see the system in it. The system is confirmed and you proceed to take down the feudal system, cut taxes, divorce your lover. These are useful tools. But I do not quite understand how they are philosophy.

**Feminism, not feminist philosophy.

25 dollars a week on food

2011-06-11T18:47:00.000-07:00

University means debt, grad school means more debt, and I do not have a job at the moment. I joined my partner in thinking that maybe I should keep a tighter hold of my spending, particularly on food because that is the only thing I really buy. I eat quite healthy and rarely go out to restaurants, but nonetheless I have been living a bit beyond my means lately. I like to own various different oils and Asian sauces. Sometimes I want chocolate or rhubarb pie, or cookies with half a cup of butter in them. When I first moved out I would never buy ice cream. Now I buy a 4 l tub when it is on sale at a dollar per litre. This is more sensible then purchasing it at a higher rate, but can I afford it? Am I willing to sacrifice my present happiness knowing that I will be in difficulty in the future when I finish school.

To some degree I am, otherwise I wouldn't be in school. So long as the economy doesn't not fall apart so completely that there is no job for me, I can do okay. I do not have a disposition to suffer unduly. Being poor will not overwhelm me. For one thing I am not willing to risk my health in order to eat more cheaply. That to me is foolish.

So what I will be doing is pulling in my finances, taking a look at what I am buying, and limiting the luxury goods like ice cream. I might up date on this from time to time, but honestly I do not think it is that exciting. I have discovered that various blogs are dedicated entirely to eating cheaply, who report their receipts at the end of the week. Although it is somewhat interesting to know what people are eating it is not something that would keep my attention.

Imagination and logic

2011-06-09T18:10:00.000-07:00

There is a particular style of thinking which annoys me. This style of thinking advocates the imagination/logic binary. It often advocates other binaries along with it, such as women=emotional/men=rational. I never accepted this binary. I did accept that some people are simply not suited to logical, rational thinking. I believed this because I did not understand math. It just did not work. Other things came naturally, but not math. It was not easy and I did not trust myself, as I do now, to struggle with it and succeed. This is to say that the imagination/logic binary is something I consider to have done me some personal harm.

There are a few ideas associated with this style of thinking. Firstly, logic is limited. It can only get you so far. It allows you to get you into a rut and it cannot get you out again. People who use logic are close minded and frightened to go beyond it. Second, logic is dangerous. It can shut people down. If I tell someone they are not being logical it puts all that they claim into question. It is a tool of the bad people.

To the first, yes, it is limited. It can only get you so far. For the second, logic is a tool. But it is not a tool of the bad people, those nasty bureaucrats, who ever it is you want to attack. It is a sword. It is a sword because it can be equally used to fight for freedom against an oppressor, or to oppress the oppressed who are fighting for freedom. Today we do not think killing is ever right and I really ought to use a hammer, but I like to use a sword better because using a hammer to do harm is not using it for it's proper purpose and as such the metaphor is weaker.

From what I can understand when people attack logic they really mean to be attacking particular people. They want to attack bureaucracy, the scientists, and suchlike. Sometimes they want to attack the philosophers. With the other attacks I do not have personal experience, but as I have knowledge of philosophy I can see that their attacks are usually quite ill-managed. Philosophy is not easily understood. Sometimes their points are somewhat valid, but for the most part any complaint made about the use of logic has also been made, more cleverly, within the discipline itself.

By saying this I do not mean that people should not keep talking about logic and imagination. What I mean is that it would be better to seek allies then enemies. My mother, being a non-academic poet, would sometimes discuss how the academic poets did not take her seriously because she did not have a university degree. Logic is present everywhere. She saw them as overly logical. They see philosophy as overly logical.

Most of the time I might agree with half of what the person is saying, but as they are making an attack I have yet had the presence of mind to turn the discussion to more fruitful directions, addressing the problems inherent in logic. These are interesting questions. The imperative that we do away with reason and it's ruler ship over the passions is not a discussion, it is an order given by someone who has not bothered to find out if I have any association with either of those things. Being told that I should be less logical is similar to being told I should "batten down the hatches, and levy the tug rope". I'm just not sure what you mean.

"What are you going to do with a philosophy degree?"

2011-06-07T17:46:00.000-07:00

It's a question I get asked when I report my degree, and frequently. Sometimes it is asked out of curiosity or interest. They have not heard of philosophy before. They have studied some and enjoyed it. Sometimes it is asked because this is small talk and that is what you ask. Sometimes it is asked because the person thinks a philosophy degree is a fluff degree, that cannot lead to 'success' in the world. Success in their sense is having a job that allows you to purchase a house and a car. For me success could also be the ability to attract someone with a house and a car. My part in the success can be raising a good, sturdy family. These people look down on philosophy, as some snobby academic discipline that can never allow you to 'succeed in the real world.'

I think that these people are less common, but I think there is a touch of it in the question each time it is asked. Even if they do not know why they are asking it, there is a general impression from society that a philosophy degree will get you nowhere.

I used to tell people that I would be in debt and live in a cardboard box because I did something I love. One day a man asked me, 'do you really believe that?' No. I didn't believe it. I just come up with something to tell people when they ask 'what do you plan to do with your life?' and I tell the same story to everyone. I told them about how I would be a biologist. I told them about how I would work as a translator. I'm not certain where my future will lead. Many people interpret this uncertainty as a weakness. It is not. I keep changing my path but that does not mean I am flaky or indecisive. I love a great many things. There are many things I could be passionate about. I select based on talent, opportunity, and lack. It doesn't mean I am flaky. It doesn't even mean I'm keeping my options open. I'm not keeping them open, I'm just making changes in the places that have not closed off yet. At the moment some doors are mostly closed. More changes will be made before the currently open options have disappeared. That is how I create my life.

Now when asked I tell people that I want to be a professor. I tell them that I am going for grad school but might not get in. I don't like doing this because it makes it appear as if philosophy really is a limited discipline, a snobby academic thing.

Sometimes I list the jobs you can do with a philosophy degree: Office work, writing, editing, civil service, military. None of these jobs clearly link to a philosophy degree.

Part of it is that the job market has changed. They might have got a job because they finished high school which I will be lucky to get now with my fancy degree and all. Yes, you used to be able to walk into an office and get a job. Now there is so much competition that you most often need a bunch of school or a bunch of experience in order to get that job.

But what does philosophy really give me in the end? The opportunity to read good books, explore interesting arguments, and learn about the world. The opportunity to have classes with talented scholars who are making contributions to the academic world. The ability to speak my mind clearly, present arguments, to hold to convictions. Other disciplines do this too, but one thing you can certainly say about philosophy is that it makes good citizens.

Why we hate principles

2011-05-20T16:38:00.000-07:00

"Why We Hate School Principals: Every adult remembers being a child who was afraid of getting sent to the principal's office. It may have felt like the principal was out to get you ... but only if you misbehaved. Take for example Principal Ed Rooney in Ferris Bueller's Day Off He tried to keep high school student Ferris Bueller from playing hookie. Why did he make it his life's mission to get Ferris back to the classroom. You would have thought he'd be happy to have this troublemaker out of his hair."

From Most hated professions.

I am sure that there are people who disliked their principles because they were authority figures. Personally, I got along with most of my authority figures. Of course it was upsetting to be called out in band class for making a mistake or to have my math teacher ask me why I nearly fell asleep in class, but these experiences point toward the position of an educator. It is their job to point out mistakes and encourage improvement.

The principle on the other hand, I hated. Why did I hate the principle? Because he was stupid. This was not the case at all my schools, I am thinking of high school particularly. I went to a good school. I didn't know it at the time but we had a lot that other schools didn't have. The honours program and specific teachers who helped you through scholarship applications and university choices, a fantastic band program, and well-funded science classes, among other things. The principle was dead set on messing all this up. Every decision they made was out of line with what was good about the school, what the students valued, and so on. The honours program was changed because it was discriminatory. The music program was cut so that we could have more soccer. There were 900 students in the music program. That is a sizable portion of the school, many more then can fit onto a soccer team.

Rant: On being genuine in the workplace

2011-02-14T10:13:00.000-08:00

This rant turns out to be about why if you aren't able to be genuine you shouldn't try because you will end up confusing your philosophy-student coworkers. That isn't really what was intended. The advice it is based on is 'when you see a coworker say hello, greet them by name.' What you should learn from this post, if you are following that advice, is not to assume your coworker is stupid.

'Hel-LOO, Jesse!'

Said loudly by one of my co-workers as I walk into the kitchen.

This should make me feel recognised and respected. The goal of such a greeting, I have just learned, is to do that. Recognising the people around you and using their names makes them feel like they count for something.

It is certain people use a certain tone and suddenly I feel like I am in some sort of psychology experiment, that I'm being tested, that I'm being tricked into believing something that is not true, that this person who is greeting me is disingenuous.

I know you know my name now but I don't really care if you know my name. You can call me miss for our entire acquaintence if you want. My trouble is that you aren't looking at me, and I'm not even sure if you really remember who I am or what I do here.

You show interest in my interests. I try to explain something I care about, although I would prefer you spoke instead so I could understand you. My explanation is poor. I can tell you don't understand but I do not get the opportunity to correct myself.
You agree that that is very interesting and tell me that you are going to upgrade your math, imply that I am much cleverer then you for making you confused a moment ago. You have no love of learning, and so instead of speaking of something we both care about, like how to cook pastries, we have discussed what I am interested in, because you do not realise I could care about the same things as you, because you are only pretending I am a person.

The thing is, you don't need to do this. You don't need to know my name. Other people care, but I don't. I'm here to make sure things go smoothly in my section of the kitchen. That's my job and I'm here to do my job. I don't need you to pretend for me.

But now I know! From now on I will assume those who great me with that certain sort of 'hello, Jesse!' are slightly socially inept and making an effort to do better. Or it is just habit.

Really it is quite possible that they are at work for the same reason I am, to do a job and do it well, and that we don't really have any interest in each other aside from a vague concern that maybe there is another person over there and maybe we should have remembered their name.

New years resolutions 2011

2011-01-06T13:03:00.000-08:00

This year my New Years resolutions sound more like a long term checklist. A very long checklist in fact. I don't know how I will remember to do all these things.

1. ARTISTIC
I didn't do much last year. I don't want to ask too much of myself this year but I am also bothered by my lack of interest in something that used to be, and appears to remain very important. Last year I managed to make art into a reward instead of a procrastinatory technique, now I need to desire that reward on a continuous basis.

☐ Submit to student journal for publication.
☐ Paint three pictures
☐ Write five Poems
☐ Write two short stories

2. ACADEMIC
As with Artistic pursuits I wish to continue on with what I have been doing. I am learning to cope with more work and learning to work on less stringent deadlines.

☐ Read more essays
☐ Improve writing technique.
☐ Second reader for all essays.
☐ Submit one essay to a student journal.

3. ADVENTURE!
I didn't do quite as much as I could have last year and I regret those adventures I did not have, although the ones I did have were quite as grand as I could wish.

☐ At least one day trip per month
AND...
☐ Bike/Camp Saltspring
☐ Hike to Hot Springs
☐ Bike Rural Saanich

4. MORAL DUTIES
The topic of my honours paper was Virtue Ethics. Something was bound to come up with that much immersion in the subject. I am now a more ethical human being, I think.

☐ Acquire first aid kit.
☐ Learn about emergency procedures in my area.
☐ Watch for morally dangerous situations.

4b. VOLUNTEER
These things are in the Volunteer section but my desire to do them has nothing to do with doing my part for society. That is simply a pleasant byproduct.

☐ Philosophy summer camp.
☐ Be a better Peer Helper.

5. GENERAL SELF-IMPROVEMENT
This is the challenge section. The goals here are both for very common and fairly unmanageable.

☐ Get up at 7:30AM every day.
☐ Morning walk/jog. 30 minutes. 5 days a week.
☐ Become a better self-modifier.
☐ Eat healthier. (what does that even mean?)
☐ Try something new.

Reflecting on 2010 New Years Resolutions

2011-01-04T13:03:00.000-08:00

Last years I posted 4 New Years Resolutions. I like doing New Years resolutions because of the ritualistic feeling. It is one of those things that treats the year as a whole rather then important academic dates, holidays, and months of dull work connected only in that they are sequential.

So, how did I do last year?

1. More adventures:
I hiked two of the Gulf Islands. More adventures, check.

2. Pursue my personal projects:
I did okay here. I wrote my first non-fantasy short story. A bit of painting, a bit of drawing. I also had the nerve to let someone else read one of my nano-novels which although not as good as editing is pretty brave. Did the artists way course and changed writing from a procrastination to a reward. Still more to do but improved.

3. Learn social skills:
I did toastmasters so, check.

4. Less procrastination:
I handed some of my work to friends to read over. I modified my study habits. I am starting to understand how I work under pressure and why I stop working sometimes. Less procrastination, check.

I need more work in the personal projects area, and adventures. Lack of adventures last summer most likely had to do with a low level of food for the intensity of labour at my job. Next time, more food. I am quite pleased with this in any case. I like telling people that. I know that my resolutions are sort of like cheating, because they are general and not particular, as such it is easier to complete them then it would be to 'get in shape.' Maybe I should make it harder this year.

This is wrong.

2010-12-28T20:59:00.000-08:00

jessica

The BC NDP is currently engaged in an election to decide who our next leader will be.

To be eligible to vote - join the BC NDP - right now.

Use our convenient online membership form.

Joining by December 31, 2010, ensures you are able to take full advantage of the tax credits of up to 75% for your membership fee.

A $100 membership donation will cost you just $25 after the generous tax credit. A $40 membership fee just $10.

Please join today and take part in choosing the next leader of the BC NDP.

Season's greetings, happy new year and thank you for your continued support.

BC NDP

5367 Kingsway
Burnaby BC V5H 2G1
Canada
1-888-VOTE-NDP (1-888-868-3637) or 604-430-8600

I knew from the start of this email that this was just a silly gimmick to get people feeling involved. I have come to terms with Canadian political parties not treating me as a rational creature. I do not mean to say that I am okay with it or that I do not desire to change it but I have come to expect this. A way to get people involved is good and so is being politically active even in a small way. But, wait... I have to pay to do this?

The NDP wants to charge membership fees to be part of their website. This isn't quite right from what I can see. All sorts of things wrong with this. Higher monetary bracket making choices that the lower cannot, etc. Grr.

Almost a year being vegetarian

2010-12-08T12:45:00.000-08:00

Last year at the beginning of December I stopped eating meat. My father, who does not eat meat and should have been supportive of my decision, said that it was fine that I didn't eat meat but I should eat turkey dinner anyway because he always did. So it is almost a year. I will include some pictures from the past year. Unfortunately I cannot find any of the delicious meals I made, but here is some fruit and pastry, which is my meat replacement in any case.

Picture #1 Apple halves and melon.

I was playing a game on the bus. I imagined my ideal. I could say ideal self, but that isn't really what I mean. I mean the person I would like to be, but I also mean a role-model or ideal human being. Apparently my ideal is a tall, lanky man dressed in a white suite who does not procrastinate, as I am doing now. The most interesting thing I learned from this thought experiment is that my ideal is vegetarian.

Then I asked 'what changes can I make to be similar to my ideal?'

My sister, boyfriend, and roommate were all vegetarian at this point. As such I knew lots of recipes that did not involve meet. Furthermore, I made a deal with myself. I would give up meat in exchange for fruit and cheese. I did not realise at this point that cheese contained enzymes from calf-stomach or that marsh mellows contained gelatine. I discovered these things during my research and decided that my decision was based on not eating flesh and as such I was permitted to continue eating gelatine and calf enzyme.

So I got off the bus at the local green grocer, bought a bunch of fruit and went home to tell my roommates I was vegetarian.

I learned the arguments for vegetarianism: health, environment, cost, animal-torture, respect. I fall under the respect and environmental category if you push me. I believe that the consumption of sentient beings is a religious act at as such should be undertaken with respect. It is a disturbing act and well it need not be avoided it should be taken seriously.

I do not tell people this!

It is amusing to see the confusion of my opponent when they attempt to challenge my choices and hit thin air.

"Your against it because you don't like torturing animals."

No, that isn't why I became vegetarian. Then they manage to be very confusing and ask if I eat chicken.

Picture #2: Strawberry rhubarb pie.

"Why don't you like meat?"

I do, I love meat. I just decided not to eat it. It is fun to talk to people who wish to challenge my views. Sometimes my responses are not as good as I could wish for, but sometimes I manage to make the person sympathetic. Moreover, I am proud to say that I have not attacked or alienated any meat eaters. I do not approve of this method, particularly because non-vegetarians will sometimes approach vegetarians out of curiousity and possibly to consider the choice for themselves. If I want to support my view I should give them information, not attack them!

"You don't get enough protein. You don't get enough iron."

Picture #3: The melon matches the plate.

At this point I explain that if you become vegetarian you need to know what kind of food to prepare. Before I could be vegetarian I needed to be an independent and self-reliant cook. You cannot be an unhealthy vegetarian or a vegetarian who simple does not eat because then you will become ill. When I first became a vegetarian I also went through a phase of not wanting to cook. I knew what I could cook but I had no interest in eating. I think the main danger in being a vegetarian is losing interest in your food. In which case the attacks are correct. If you do not eat you will not get enough protein, iron, or whatever else you might need. This is because you need food in order to get this.

If you do eat, however, you are likely to be healthier then a non-vegetarian. This is because being a vegetarian forces you to explore food, cook variety in order to keep up interest, and pay more attention to your food intake to guarantee you get what you need. It isn't more difficult, it is just more fun.

Picture #4: Frozen desert chocolate wafer & cream.

If must people ate the sort of diet I did before I became vegetarian I would not encourage them to switch. I bought and prepared whole rock cod. I roasted chickens and saved them over periods of days. Then I would use the bones for soup. Once a month I fried up a slice of steak and ate a dining room table dinner. My diet was enjoyable, exploratory, and at times festive.

Most people do not approach meat the way I did. For them eating meat simply means not changing the recipes they know, mixing bacon into everything (not that bacon isn't delicious), and choosing whatever they like at restaurants.

Picture #5: Tea kept warm with a candle.

Recently I had followed the live-food fad. Live foods fascinate me. I explained that being vegetarian was eating only that which was still alive until I cooked it. It is a fun definition, and fairly accurate. It also changes the view on meat. Eating meat is eating things that have been dead for a while, that doesn't sound extremely appealing.

So that's what I have learned over the past year of being a vegetarian. Around New Years I plan to reevaluate my commitment. The year was supposed to be six months. I made it to six months and decided I should do a year. I think instead of being vegetarian I might be a vegetarian in practice but eat fish that I or those around me catch. I also want to decide whether I should eat bugs or not. Buts might be tasty.

Human behaviour in Emergency situations

2010-12-06T12:40:00.000-08:00

In Canada when an ambulance or fire truck is on the road all of the cars 'turn into little automatons.' This is how it was put to me by a British woman I know. She explained that it is one of the impressive points in Canadian driving. We tend to be rude and slopping but as soon as there is an emergency: traffic light off, emergency vehicles on the road we switch into emergency situation and perform the necessary actions. This is not the case with road work or accidents, but in emergency situations we know what to do.

The Canadian emergency preparedness handbook says "when disaster strikes, people usually react in a calm and reasonable manner." We are trained to be input, output machines. We wait for information and react upon it. We conserve the resources we have and make sure those we have responsibility for are accounted for and properly looked after. A booklet on preparedness aims to give information ahead of time and make us responsible for others aside from immediate family: It reminds us to look after our elderly or handicapped neighbours.

From my own experience --that being fire, earthquakes and lots of drills-- this is correct. The alarm goes off or the room begins to shake and I think 'do I go under my desk or do I exit the building?' My mind is blank apart from that question. I wait for input. We are told where to go and we go there. This is how the Canadian school system works. It doesn't prepare us for much but it does prepare us for emergency actions. Once we are outside in the cold we start to wake up. If it is an emergency and I am not traumatised then I will put myself into the group that will help others. If I need help myself I call attention to that fact and then stay calm.

There are three questions I would like to ask:

First, In regard to traffic emergencies there was the remark that this is particular to Canada. How much of this is peculiar to our Country? How much particular to BC?

Second, does everyone wait to be told what they can do to help?

I know I tend toward being the good citizen because I believe others will not be paying enough attention to notice if something goes wrong, does this carry over to emergencies?

Third, and most interesting: If we had a 'minor emergency' mentality at all times, would that improve our societies?

The economic crisis says that it would not be an advantage. We would simply be stressed and unhappy. But that is a monetary and not a environmental problem. If we focussed on making sure the elderly in our community got help beyond municipally funded help, this would be an improvement. If in general everyone worked more closely with their communities and were more careful and aware of the resources, it would be an improvement. The danger is the drain of a constant emergency mentality and the narrow-mindedness that it encourages. Those who lived during the wars and also during Depressions are less able to experiment, less willing to change. The luxury they have is theirs and they will not give it up, their diets cannot be improved, everything they can get they must horde. These would not be improvements. The improvement would be encouraging awareness of what needed to be done. It would be the binary: Are you hurt? Identify yourself. Are you stable? Offer help. Keep yourself stable. Much must be added to make the binary a rich and worthwhile life but as a basic premise it adds a great deal of clarity.

The related question is can we do this? We are not offered as much information when it is not an emergency. What we are listening for is harder to find. The clarity offered by an emergency cannot appear when it is not an emergency because there are many things we must do in order to keep our lives the way we want them.

The Artist's Way puzzle, humanism

2010-11-22T15:51:00.000-08:00

I have solved the Artist's Way puzzle.

The puzzle was religion. I am religious but more in a way that makes me very happy in a forest and interested in talking to rocks. Nevermind! The problem is that Cameron tells you to supplement in your own religion and I can't because how she talks is monotheistic, closed, modern, and inaccessible without the desire to believe in God. I know it works for many people but for me it caused a problem. It made many passages awkward and some weeks I gained nothing because of my inability to accept her variety of spirituality.

So that was the puzzle. The solution is humanism. I was reading Week 7 and decided to supplement human kind for God. What it creates is a giddy variety of humanism which tells you that people want you to write. That you are writing for them. That human kind embraces art. It might not be true, but when is humanism ever entirely true. What is it? Beautiful, glorious optimism. It is Doctor Who saying 'I love people, people are incredible.' People can do everything wrong, cruel, and horrid. The power of Doctor Who is seeing that and still finding people incredible because sometimes they get it right. Messy, muddled, wonderful people!

Not that we do not have a great propensity for wrong, but sometimes it is important to think that we can get it right as well.

Studying philosophy, part 1

2010-11-18T11:24:00.000-08:00

I recently became interested in what it means to me as a student to be studying philosophy. I will try to explore that in upcoming posts. I will begin by sharing a letter I wrote to a fellow volunteer.

Preamble: I volunteer as a Peer Helper. Part of this Volunteering involves being on a Committee. I am on the Student Transition committee. We meet once a week with tea, coffee, and baked goods. Students can come in and talk for an hour. The head of this committee, aware that my mother killed herself, was very upset when the group had a conversation regarding suicide. She emailed me and expressed concern. I thought that I would share my response, as it involves how I see philosophy. It's a bit cheesy because I was trying hard to reassure her. The other thing to gather is my dislike of people being concerned about me, which has little to do with philosophy.

Hello,

The world philosophy day was set in Iran. There was a concern expressed that freedom of thought would not be permitted, as the government of Iran has shut down many humanities programs in the university were the conference was being held. There have also been deaths and imprisonment's. The concern was that the government would use the world Philosophy day (put on by Unesco to allow for a wider variety of philosophical interests.) The group that [name removed] belongs to sent someone to ask the PSU to send a letter to our Chair to endorse moving it (if that makes any sense.) World philosophy day is now in Paris.

I really didn't find the conversation disturbing or upsetting. I find microskills disturbing because it requires self-reflection and self-analysis. Even if I had found it upsetting that isn't necessarily a bad thing, although in that case I would have wanted to talk it over with someone. I study philosophy because it challenges my beliefs, sometimes it can be unbalancing but once you regain your balance you've gained something. You know, we seem to be talking after all. I think I find it confusing when people are worried about me. I don't want conversations to be censored because I am in a room. It'd be missing part of life.

Sincerely, Jesse.

Self Care

2010-10-19T13:22:00.000-07:00

Recently I became a peer helper. There is an emphasis on self-care. Self-care is probably Aristotelian and British Columbia socialism. The socialist part is the important of looking after your own health, being your own patient and making sure you get the care you need. The Aristotelian part is philos. Philos has a different flavour. It is not like love because love has Christian and self-sacrificial considerations. It is trusting yourself and treating yourself as the centre. It is self-reliance.

Self care is weird because it misses these points. It is right but it is not personal and it is hard to get past the flakiness in order to see the useful parts. Why not just put it into words that are true instead of requiring us to dig for it? I do not know.

The Artist's Way

2010-10-17T13:22:00.000-07:00

My roommate is a serious writer. Not like me. She is a writing major. This Summer she fell in with the this book, the Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. She became an enthusiast. I became curious. It seemed the sort of book my mother would read.

She told me about morning pages. Morning pages? Well, I never manage to get up in the morning so that probably would not work. But it did seem like a good idea, except for being encouraged to rant about everything you hate every morning. I wonder if we are honest and happy at the expense of being good.

She told me about Artist dates. You go out and do something by yourself or rather 'take your inner artist on a date'. Sounds like incest. These seemed like a artsie-fartsie (and I use this in the most derogatory way) way of saying something obvious, spending time by yourself in places you love is important.' Time is important. Everything she told me rang both true and wrong. True in that I recognised much of it from my own habits and what I considered important, wrong in that each time the wording was not quite right. I do not think that taking your inner child on a date healthy, I think that going places, forests or cafés or gardens, where you temporarily modify how you view the world, is important. Returning from the café you bring the feeling of it with you, and in the café your thoughts are different. You taken into an atmosphere which requires you to be a slightly different person, and carefully you modify yourself. It is interesting and true. It is not what the book says.

The Artist's Way is useful. I can see that. The stories are good. Her stories about her grandmother sound like awareness of qualia. I like qualia and as such like those. Very existential. Most of the book isn't. What I clearly need is the Existentialist's Way for Art. Nonetheless it bothers me. I know there are others who agree. It is repetitive when it could be embrace brevity. The repetition of the word 'crazymaker' bothered me particularly. That is how mental health patients speak. Assigning all woes and bothers to one person or one idea is dangerous and frightening. In this way the books frightens me. The book is sweetened with artificial sugar and water. You cannot argue with it. It asserts without argument so you must either accept or flail.

Furthermore the religious connotations are heavy and unavoidable. These connotations are not mixed. The religion is not that of many cultures and many viewpoints. It is the God that one meets wandering into the a priori. It is the first idea. It waits in the shadows of abstract reality to devour those who wish to acquire knowledge. It need not be there! It is not even the honest God of the medievals. That God, the God of Plotinus of whom there are slight echoes here, is worthy. The Great Creator is not. Tell me that it is the One, the well-spring of being. The Good, Just, and Beautiful. Tell me to look up and become part of the world soul, ever reaching for pure Parmenidean unity. Tell me to look away from the shadows for fear that I will see beyond them into the nothingness. At least that is beautiful. It may not be true but it has power. There is something there. The other way seems filthy. It is a trap. It is not honest. You are asked to accept a God so that you can be a better person. You are not asked to do so on any rational grounds. Beauty is a rational ground for accepting something. Self-care is not.

I know that I do not live in a stable way. I procrastinate and fumble. I expect too much of myself and achieve too little. I think outside of myself no longer because I love the external world but because I chose a discipline that requires focus and I want to avoid it. I think this book can help me with that. But I also think it is just like Toastmasters. I recognise it as something that might be destructive and as such embrace it. I do not like myself and hope that if I become another person that person will like themselves better. This is both disturbing and strange. Disturbing because it sounds like mental suicide. Strange because I am really a very interesting person.

I see that there is value in this book, and the cover is also very pretty. I plan to find what is of value, and what is dangerous. What is of value I will keep for myself and what is dangerous I will post here. If I become brainwashed please send a troop of flying monkeys to rescue me.

Demotivational poster

2010-10-11T22:39:00.000-07:00

Subtlety of thought

2010-10-07T12:17:00.000-07:00

The Philosophy Student Union holds semi-formal Cafés. Professors come to talk to us about interests and we talk amongst ourselves about philosophy. I am quiet. I do not have much to say. I do not understand what I am learning like the others do. I do not wish to make a fool of myself.

Last year a law student came to visit us. He graduated with a BA in philosophy a few years back. I listened to him talk with the fourth year honours students.

'It seems like, once you've done four years you're done,' he said.

The student agreed. 'You get a view of the subject matter and it doesn't really seem like there is much more to learn or much further to go.'

The law student was pleased to meet this agreement and they continued their discussion for some time. 'Well, there's a lot of reading but I can pretty much guess where it is all going. A few details wrong but I feel like I understand the field now.'

I talked with my tall friend after that. Neither of us felt as if we could understand philosophy like these bright people. We are both slightly incompetent. We are can never read enough. Is that why he is a law student and I am not? Is this man only a few years older then me really brilliant?

I have felt the way those two felt. I have felt as if philosophy as it is seen now is rather empty. I do not wish to spend my career picking apart one passage in one book. That is not important. It cannot be the goal of a whole life because if the passage is really that troublesome it should be discussed by everyone always until answers can be found. If it is left only to one person who only works on that one little difficulty there will be no imagination left.

I am now a fourth year honours student and I still do not understand what philosophy is, but I have a much better idea then last year. A year full of friends and study groups and excitement for my chosen discipline have brought me into the stream.

I can see the clear path set out for me. I can see the methods with which to discover new ideas. I know I must follow these methods if I wish to make a usable contribution, but sometimes I let my mind wander a bit.

We discussed the use of intuitions in philosophy. Intuitions are our means of communication. We confirm that people agree with us about the world in order to continue safely along the path, for philosophers are ever tempted by willow-wisps and sometimes mistake the light of a kitchen window for the light of truth. The trouble is research is being done on intuitions which shows that the way each person thinks can be much different and much less clear then formerly expected.

I do not see this as a problem because I believe intuitions exist to prevent our audience from becoming lost, but this is not what they are used for. Intuitions are used in the place of evidence, and this can be problematic.

For example, if you ask someone to think of a horse there will be huge variation. One person thinks of an experience, one of a brown horse they have never seen, one of a drawing, one of a feeling.

We think we are communicating and we get this!

The world is very complex. The portion of it we use and discuss and understand is only a portion. There are vast lands we do not know of or do not discuss because it is difficult or because they simple do not interest us, or because the difference between what we see as real and what can be seen as real is so subtle as to be almost unnoticeable. It is like think of the South Pole or discussing China. There is a great deal to discuss when we sit down and begin to speak of it, but these places do not enter into our geography in the same way that other places do.

Our house on Braefoot

2010-08-19T11:23:00.000-07:00

Sometime ago I posted about a scammer advertising a house on Braefoot Road. I am glad that I did because I helped others apart from myself avoid this scam and could share my frustration with a few people.

But I thought I should report an odd coincidence, for the sake of pointing out that life is sometimes strange. I will be living on Braefoot. This house actually exists. It very obviously does. It has a bit of history and a bit of glory and a green house. It is strange, though my roommates do not mind it, that the first place we considered (a scam) happens to be the same street, the same block, as the home we will now have.

Canadian firearms registry

2010-08-19T11:18:00.000-07:00

I am Canadian, but I do not often feel pride in it. I find Canada too big and too varied. How can I feel pride in something when I have only ever seen a tiny portion of it? When most of it's people are totally different from me? I could see pride in it's policies but policies do not make a common culture, a common belief system!

There is one thing of which I feel pride. Our gun policy. I have visited the USA. I went to Washington. It is hardly so different from Vancouver Island but I was aware that there were guns there. It is a different way of approaching the world. People are more confident but also less trusting. They do not need to trust if they have a gun.

I was baffled by the controversy around firearms registry. You are permitted a gun if you need one. Why is that a problem? People cite massacres that have occurred because no one on site had a gun. This is idiotic. How do you predict the sort of horror and insanity that comes from pushing people too close together? It is not lack of guns that causes this, it is too many people too close with a great deal of pressure on them. It is a horror but the horror could be put down just as well to midterms as to lack of guns. Furthermore it has happened in locations that have guns such as the USA so that cannot rightly be argued.

I will be the philosopher

2010-07-16T10:10:00.000-07:00

'No, no, I must think. Even if you ought not to I must. It's okay for me. That's my job. They'll have mentioned me. You see, I'm the philosopher."

From time to time I encounter an odd reaction to the way I think and speak and look at the world. My father most of all is bothered by my choice. I do not mind this. It shows that he loves me. It is the reaction of those who have read a little in the Eastern Tradition. They do not know that I will be the philosopher mentioned in the passages they read.

'Leave it to the philosophers,' says the sage. I will be one of the philosophers. Go ahead, chop wood and carry water. Do not take the first step on that thousand mile journey. Try to be in the sense of being. I cannot, because I must be as a philosopher.

It is not those who have read enough to know exactly what harm I do or in what way Western thought fails to understand the world, it is those who know only enough to know that in some odd way it is wrong. It does fail. How? Father do not know this. I know, and as such love Eastern philosophy.

For me and for others like me it is that good friend who is the compliment of our own thought. It is the friend who you meet in a class or well having lunch, who warms you and challenges you and makes your life richer and you can never understand how they can be so wonderful until one day they tell you that they think the same of you.

Japanese philosophy, the only branch I have studied at length, drank deep of Western thought. What it produced is it's own but you can hear the words of Heraclitus echo there also.

They do not know this, the people who fear and question me. Father does not know, and I never thought to tell him that I revel in Western thought without - in fact because I am not -- blinded to it's short comings. I would not dare play as I do if I thought that the goddess of wisdom was perfect. If I thought she her without a sense of humour, put off by teasing and ragging then I would not dare.

It is the same in the East, although I do not with those thoughts quite as often. The East can encourage giving up of the self, which is a dangerous idea in a community of people who do not do the same. There are other faults I do not know. But I know that neither is the East nor the West perfect, nor are they fully divided but for me they are equally wonderful.

Picture by Jessica Kern. Olympic Hotsprings, Washington.

"Wow, that's so deep."

2010-05-28T10:49:00.000-07:00

My brother works on log houses. I came to visit him in his hotel and made small talk with his boss, Frank, well he made some phone calls. His boss, on hearing that I am a philosophy major, responded in the way that many people respond.

"Quick, say something deep."

I was a bit caught off guard. I live philosophy. Not to say that I am particularly good at it, particularly dedicated or particularly clever, just that that is I cannot distinguish between thoughts that are deep and those that are everyday. So I responded with the everyday.

"Is there beer in the fridge?"

"Yes," replied my brother. He did not realise what I was about and assumed I wanted a drink, so he proceeded to recommend one over another, obviously uncomfortable at the notion of his baby sister drinking with the boys.

I bounced over to the fridge and opened it. There was in fact beer in the fridge. "Ah! ha! I have discovered truth." I grinned foolishly at Frank.

So what do people mean by deep? I suppose that the thing changes the way the world looks. Joggles up the senses. That is why I love philosophy. Things look different upside down and backwards.

What changes my life? Carnivorous tomatoes. The fact that picture on the right is cinnamon and on the left, the object I have believed to be cinnamon my entire life, is cassia. I've always wondered why cinnamon tastes slightly different then it ought to. I think my wondering this was simply happenstance, but still. I've been eating cassia my whole life without knowing it's name.

But when someone comments that something I think is 'deep' I feel cheap and commercial. This post I thought on before I wrote. I worked on it in my head. I considered what I could say. This post should be something deep, something meaningful. It is not. What is meaningful? A clever turn of phrase. A twist in the way of saying things. They do not mean the thoughts are deep but that they are witty. It is not wisdom I am sharing with them, but a joke. 'Getting' the joke they think they have encountered the universe.

Why do I hold such disdain? Was I not once one of those people who found philosophy deep? Do I think think that it will offer me those further things I wish to learn about the world? Knowledge of the universe? Yes. But I also hated it. I never thought it was deep, simply perilous and shattering. I knew that I could lose who I was in it. I did lose who I was in it.

When I was in grade ten I came up with the witty phrase 'perfection is a delusion of the mind.' I used it as my tagline on msn. Now I know that it means god does not exist, we can never attain our ideals, and perfectionism is unhealthy. Now I know I disagree. I disagreed then too, but did not say so. My perfectionist friend informed me a few years later that it had mattered to her, that being a perfectionist she struggled with and embraced that idea.

So some of the things said can have meaning, but not meaning that I intend which means, I suppose, that even if I do not think anything of what I say it should not bother me when others do.

Consult your preferences

2010-05-15T11:04:00.000-07:00

I give up. Everyone else has a cell phone. Apparently my not having a cell phone is almost as inconvenient as my not eating meat.

'What, I can't call you whenever I like? But what if I need to get in touch with you when you are in class? What if I want you to work an extra shift? In fact I think you do have a cell phone. You're lying because you don't want to work.'

None of these things are ever said outright, but from time to time they are meant. So I will conform, I suppose, to this unnecessary object. Rather, they do seem like a bit of fun, although I realise I do not need one that is 'fun' but merely functional.

I don't know much about cell phones. I started by quizzing my friends. It turns out there isn't much to know according to them. The most common response was, 'I pay more then I should because I have unnecessary features, I should change that.'

I turned to the internet. What did I find?

'In order to acquire a phone that is RIGHT FOR YOU consult YOUR PREFERENCES.'

Umm? What? I believe these pages must only exist to waste my time long enough that I will click on an ad. I've never had a cell phone. I don't know what my preferences are and that is why I am reading this page. Why are you telling me to consult my preferences? What preferences? What should I prefer? I don't even know what options I have. Yes of course if it is right for me it will be the one I prefer. What I want is information.

This is not the first time I have encountered this inane rhetoric. I found the same thing when attempting to purchase a laptop and a toaster oven. So far I have always found what is right, not simply for me but as a common sense choice. I find the page that says 'get something over this price or it will break.' That's helpful!

Galileo's persecution

2010-04-27T19:21:00.000-07:00

Astrology is only as illogical as my childhood belief that trees created wind. The system, a complicated one, does not come from nowhere. It is based on an Aristotelian cosmology adopted and adapted by the Arabian intellectuals, from whom I believe we acquired astrology somewhere in the 12th century renaissance. When the Aristotelian cosmology was replaced this was not because it was 'hockie superstitution,' but on the good scientific reason of it simply not having as efficient predictive powers when you treated the planets on a spherical orbit as an elliptical one. Astrology was a necessary cost of adopting a more efficient astronomical theory.

I studied Galileo. I did not understand. I know that the Church held certain views. I know that Galileo was one of those men who stood up and said, 'you cannot hold to this, you cannot let it become dogma. It will be your downfall. I beg you. I love my church, please do not say a thing that may show you as fallible.' This in itself might be presumptuous enough to get you dead, but that was not it. That is how it is told in the play of Bertolt Brecht and in the history we read and they do not mention that what Galileo said shatters whole cosmologies.

Galileo was not killed for his work but he was imprisoned, censored, and ultimately died in silence having renounced what he believed to be true. He is considered a martyr of science. He isn't, because he did not die for it. He renounced it and lived to work in secrecy. He is not a martyr and although I respect his practicality I am disgusted by his failure to hold to what he held to be true. We die. It cannot be helped. For goodness sakes die for something if you can!

For Aristotle and as such for most all of the medieval tradition there were two realms. There was a superlunary and the sublunary. The sublunary is earth. Earth is mutable, changing, subject to birth and decay. Earth is imperfection at the center of a perfect universe. Past the vapours of the earth is the moon, the first superlunary body. All superlunary bodies are perfect, never-changing, and divine. The thing of it is the Catholic church still had bits of paganism in it, the worst of them being Aristotle. All we need do is remember that these are people who still worshiped the stars. It is never mentioned. There is a bit of talk about the need for earth to be at the centre of God's plan, but it is never mentioned that these are people who looked at the stars as holy bodies. The Arabic philosophy, which bleeds into western thought, considers them manifestations of God. It was believed that beyond the earth moved the heavenly spheres. These perfect bodies moved on crystalline tracks and made music unheard by any human creature; it was sometimes said that the animals could hear the music, especially birds and nighttime things.

So Galileo's science destroyed one of the last holding places of pagan belief. It forced the acceptance of one more thing not infested with spirits, not alive, not meaningful. Of course they fought him! Of course they were angry!

Whale skin

2010-04-21T10:30:00.000-07:00

It was my birthday on Easter and I asked my father to take us out into the woods for a hike. I live in the city now and I miss having access to the parks and paths.

On Friday there was a huge storm. Trees were on the path in a few places. We had to climb around and over. For a bit we walked on the beach. Coming around a corner I saw a crowd of people. Then I gasped. On the beach in the circle of people was a dead grey whale. Never having seen a wild whale, either dead or alive, I was in awe.

It was definitely dead, although the barnacles were not. The tail was in the water and the barnacles there were still feeding as the tide washed in plankton. It stank. It only stank sometimes. It would be fine and then there would be a moment when the smell would wash over everything.

I watched the people touching the whale, a real whale! I found it disturbing, as did my little sister who watched from a distance. But I have always been curious. I could not bring myself to touch the flesh, but I did touch the baleen. It brought back all my desire to be a biologist, a dream until the first year of University when I realised how unsuitable I am for the sciences.

My boyfriend told the story to his disgusted co-workers. They expressed moral indignation at the importunity of the spectators. He agreed with them and then told them about how he had seen the whale, and touched the whale, and taken some pieces of it's skin. He gave me some for my birthday. A less disturbing gift then last year but only because last year he gave me Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.

I have the same view of this as of the Garden Protest. Wrong but rather wonderful.

My mother is dead.

2010-04-19T16:56:00.000-07:00

This is not a happy post, but one I felt compelled to write.

My mother is dead. I feel angry. I feel guilty. I want her back. I need her back. For her, form me, for her family and friends and poetry. I feel jealous of those who have both parents. There are so many who are less deserving of a mother. I am. I loved my mother. I told her how much she mattered to me and I told the truth. How can she be dead? How can she be dead when others less deserving still live? People are alive who just go on killing time and when they are gone it will not matter. This was not her. Why could not one of them have gone in her place? It is not right. It is unfair. Death always seems unfair, but this one was particularly so. She died at fifty four. I am in my twenties. It is wrong. I should have been 50, not her. She was too young; I am too young to lose my mother and too old to not remember her now that I have.

I know she is dead. I am not in denial, which is the little I can say. I saw her body. I could tell from how it lay that it would not move again, like a soiled bed or a doll left in the ditch or an apple forgotten in the fruit bowl. Once death was a metaphor for those things, but to explain it I used them as a metaphor for her body. The body was no good. It could not harbour human life any longer.

I wish it called for revenge. I want someone to pay. I want someone to suffer for taking her from me. How dare the world do such a thing? But it is life, and no particular person. But there is no one. It is for the best, I would only get myself into trouble. I have a little anyhow. A man on the street was nearly hit by a car in his own negligence. He was angry at the car and I pointed out that the driver was simply upset at having nearly caused a death. He became angry with me. Insisted he was in the right. Following me. I slapped him. All the time I thought, I would like this man to suffer a little. I would like to take this out on him. What right does he have to live in a world that my mother no longer inhabits? There are others like him. I could hurt them too. Angry, stupid people who call attention to themselves when there are beautiful people in this world, people like my mother who would never ask for such attention.

I will not do these things, but I think of them as consolation. I pretend I will because it makes it hurt less.

I knew how lucky I was and I know how unlucky I now am. To lose a parent is devastation. For me to lose my mother is worse, worse in circumstance and worse again because she was so warm and so wonderful and gifted. My mother was Tanya Kern.

Shrine to student housing

2010-04-18T23:40:00.000-07:00

We gave away the household budgie today and I proceeded to rearrange the room. I ended up with what Amber calls an oubliette. It is one of those awkward spaces in the corner of a room that is not quite accessible and cannot quite be used for anything, as such things gather there that you do not wish to use but do not wish to store too far from use. Amber pointed this out and I decided that the corner needed a plant. We ended up with what appears to be a shrine to student housing.

Storage, childhood crafts, and an empty bottle bottle once used to hold candles.

Note the UVic bunny, power cord, and router.

Procrastination

2010-03-29T12:29:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I discovered for the second time phdcomics.com. I now understand that grad school is not only a lot of work it is also a torturous maze of procrastination, self-hatred, and slow intellectual, emotional, economical, and physical deterioration. I am challenging myself as such to build a sturdy foundation before I make it to grad school, because otherwise that will be who I am for the next ten years. I do not want that.

I am unwilling to take drugs so Ritalin, Procrastin-X, and suchlike are out of the question. Hypnonotism is also a bit sketchy. Self-control does not solve the problem because it is the problem.

I shall use a notepad document and a planner. There are many good, free planners online. I prefer software to hardware (hardware in this case being a notebook) because it doesn't get lost and there is always enough space to write. The notepad document, seen to the right, helps me keep track of what I am doing. Right now I have noted that I am considering writing this blog article. Before I do anything I try to write it down. If I do not write it down before hand I write it down after. This is not prescriptive. I do not use this sheet to plan how I will use my time. I use so I can learn how I use my time, because trying to force myself into a schedule has been as yet a failure. Once I have a few weeks worth of these lists I hope to go through them, rearrange, reconsider, and so on. The important thing right now is simply being conscious of what I am doing.

Hobbies and social activities are important. It is true that I am a student, but ten years is a long time. I am willing to make it eleven and be mentally stable at the end. Furthermore I think that it might go up even more if I attempt to do nothing but study. Cooking, dancing, gardening, and writing are an important part of my well-being as is social interaction and some degree of cleanliness. Even my random web-surfing is not entirely useless, as it does at time render interesting results.

Community garden protest Part 2

2010-03-25T12:25:00.000-07:00

The Uvic Courtyard has a number of sculptures on permanent display from the Matlwood's modern and contemporary art collection. Elza Mayhew, a UVic alumna and member of the Royal Canadian Academy is featured with large bronze sculptures including "Coast Spirit". Also featured are the totem poles carved by Tony and Henry Hunt, as well as Charles Elliott.

Around the very ugly 'coast spirit' statue protesters built a garden yesterday. I work on campus. I finished at 7:30 pm and went to see what had been done to the campus lawn. I encountered students planting strawberries in a plot that looked like a pokeball, the tidy beds I had expected, and a girl who tramped through the muck in high heels singing 'I can garden if I want to, can leave my friends behind...' with those around her shouting lines to rhyme with carrot.

With the crowd gone it was a pleasant little garden. All the ambivalence I had felt towards the act of vandalism felt out of place with regard to the garden. Anarchy I may not like, but I cannot resist fresh soil. I joined the students planting strawberries in the pokeball, to the amusement of my coworker who teased me about being a 'dirty hippy' before going home with his somewhat confused wife. Oh those students!

I talked to the people there. They were hopeful that the garden would remain. One pointed out the turtle-like tendencies of bureaucracy, and the others agreed that it would probably take a week or two before the garden was taken down. It hadn't been taken away yet, after all. The police had been by but had not done anything. It might stay for a few weeks, maybe longer.The University could not remove it until there weren't any students around to get involved.

These people are so naive! So hopeful! Did they really think the campus would let us keep it? I got home thinking that I should bring beans today to plant in the garden. When I arrived at 7:40am it was gone. Of course it was gone.

But that's the brilliant part! I do not know whether it was planned or not but it worked perfectly. Hundreds of students who have never been to the community garden thought that this little piece would stay. I knew it wouldn't and I still became attached. That is exactly what the protest wanted and needed. Here in the center of campus the university has taken away the community garden. Not across the ringroad behind a fence. This garden was real, the more so for it being temporary. I still cannot decide if it was ethical.

Protest for the community gardens

2010-03-24T13:19:00.000-07:00

I finished medieval philosophy and my friend and I walked back into the main part of campus together. When the fountain in front of the library became visible we also saw a large crowd. Someone was talking on a loud speaker and the protest band was playing. I feel a moment of pride. UVic has it's own little protest group. That's something special. The protest band is a group who attend various events on campus with drums and sometimes trombones. They attended the career day in protest of capitalism which made me, really not wanting to be there at the time, rather happy until I realised they had destroyed a Canadian flag. It isn't illegal to destroy the flag of Canada but that doesn't mean it doesn't have an effect. Canada for me is like those old friends you have had since middle school who just cannot get their lives sorted out. You love them and you desperately want them to succeed, but sometimes you just cannot stand being around them. So I am not the most patriotic person there is, but I can't see the symbol of Canada destroyed without feeling hurt and upset. So the protest band always puts me on edge, and so do loudspeakers.

The man with the loudspeakers said, 'just keep walking. Go to your next class. Do not look at what we are doing. This is subversive activity. Just keep walking. That's right.' I decided not to make a challenge. Later I come back. As I walk by he says, 'just keep walking.' I stop. "Okay, stay there but do not come any closer." I step closer to him. A girl behind him starts laughing. "Very, well, you can step closer to me but do not look at what is going on behind me." I stand there laughing as he continues his speech. "Just go back to your studies. Study is what is important. Do not look at what is happening here." A little crowd starts to listen to him. He is not so serious and he is not so threatening when people are listening to him. Eventually he gets bored and leaves. I leave too.

I want to tell him I agree with him. I want to ask more questions. I want to talk to the people, but I do not. I leave.

The protest is about the community garden and as I approach I can see people digging to the music of the trombine and pouring soul into little 24" by 24" box plots.

Recently an article ran in our student newspaper: Campus Community Garden calls for support.

So today in protest the students are digging up a section of land near the fountain and setting up a garden.

Isn't it a waste? I ask. It'll be gone by nightfall after all.

"But they are making a point!" Replies a friend. Everyone is so enthusiastic.

I think of how the University will respond. It will lash out not only at the group responsible but also fringe groups. But this is because I am pessimistic right? The loudspeakers and large crowds scare me. I am an incredibly passive person. I hate making a show and making a fuss. I look even at benevolent authorities as dangerous.

Everyone else is enthusiastic.

"It would be great to have garden in the middle of campus."

Yes, I say, but it won't last 'till sundown.

"It's making a statement even if it doesn't last, and everyone is having so much fun."

Yes, I say, they are. It makes me want to join in. Students with big buckets are running to the pond behind the library to get water. Most of the crowd do not even know what is happening. They do not realise it is a protest. They think it is the 4:20 group having a good time. That's what I thought too when I heard the loudspeaker. I'm glad there are people protesting, but I am upset as well. I have all these reasons that they should not be and all of them seem to be things I picked up in passing, and not my own conclusions. Societal bias, it always scares me when I find it in myself.

Being studious

2010-03-22T11:28:00.000-07:00

1. Assiduous in study; devoted to the acquisition of learning.
Const. in, of.
    b. Of the nature of, pertaining to, or concerned with learning or study.
    c. Of a place: Devoted to or suited to study.

2. Giving careful attention; intent on a purpose or object, heedful, solicitous.
    a. with agent-n.
    b. const. to with inf., of, for (rare), in.
    c. Characterized by or exhibiting careful attention.
    d. Planned with care; studied, deliberate.
-OED

I've always been hard on myself. I was rarely disciplined so I learned to discipline myself. Having artistic desires I am well in tune with the impossibility of ever succeeding at perfection, and the failure to apply myself as I should.

This year I started joining study groups. I decided to go easier on myself. I would prepare for the study session. Go to the study session. Take what I could and review it, and be done. I practice lowering my standards to something manageable. I believe that if I set achievable tasks for myself I am likely to become a stronger and more studious person. It has not worked so far. So far I have simply managed to achieve less. My standard seems to be connected to how well I achieve. If I am aiming for perfect I will get 75%. If I am aiming for 80% I will get 70%. I should aim for 90%, then I might get 80%. It really does not work. I am supposed to be a philosophy honours student. I darn well know I'm bright enough, I just can't seem to work hard enough.

In Latin 101 I learned the word estudiar and loved it. This was a word loved by the Romans. It appears as studious around 1350. Studious women are to go to the convent where they may satisfy their love of knowledge. It never goes away. Part of the problem might be the religious connotation. I cannot find the original latin use, and as such I am for lack of a pagan understanding.

I lived with a highly religious girl for four months. She played the piano six hours a day, which was not enough. She worked at night as a nurse. She took classes at the university. Sometimes she even went for jogs with me! I know how she managed it. She has a God.

My beliefs do not work that way. I have always linked religion, writing, and study. I do, however, not have the support of the two thousand year Church behind me and that is a powerful thing to lack. Furthermore I cannot replace God with myself. I like myself well enough but there is no respect and certainly no love. If only I finished that novel, if only I worked a little harder, one more hour, one more reading, one step closer to finishing an essay, then it would be different.

My solution today was to go searching for the concept of studiousness. Maybe if I understood it I would become it. There are very few blogs that discuss studiousness, and even fewer websites. I was redirected to studio. I liked the Oxford English Dictionary 'devoted to the acquisition of learning.'

I am devoted to philosophy!

Philosophy is everything I want to do and be. If I have a soul I have given it to whatever god is the philosopher's God, and I consider giving away one's soul to be immoral so that ought to be a very impressive sort of devotion. My trouble is I am devoted like a dog. Philosophy is my master and I shall do as it says, but it says I must think for myself and that is not what I want. The other definition of studious is 'characterized by or exhibiting careful attention' and this is certainly not me.

People think that I am studious. The people close to me who see me making tea, and who go for walks with me, and see me fall asleep after 15 minutes of trying to read a book think that I am studious. I always assumed that that was the image I gave off, but really if studiousness is devotion to study I am devoted. Everything I do, no matter how flawed or misguided it is, is for the aim of becoming a better person and a better scholar. I am weak of will but I am as a dog, utterly loyal to a day-dreaming master. Half of my life I spend in justification and excuses for my failures at careful and deliberate study, but when I do apply myself and manage to understand something of the world those are my favourite moments.

But isn't that like the woman who tries to write a novel? She sits there staring at the page and cannot think of a thing to do. Is she a writer or just a fake? What about when she cleans the house? Makes dinner? Cleans the fish tank?

Yes, it is like this woman. This woman gets a phone call from her agent. He wants the next chapter. She disappears for two days and there is the next chapter. This is what I do. It is not a healthy way of doing things but there is progress. I am moving forward. I am learning more. Maybe this is a handicap I most accept. I want to be perfect. I never will be, but I want to be. I'm going to aim for somewhere beyond human conception and fail every single time.

People who disbelieve mental illness

2010-03-10T15:41:00.000-08:00

I am interested in the connections between mental illness and philosophy. I am currently studying medieval philosophy. One interesting if not necessarily correct explanation for mysticism is, if I remember correctly, kidney failure. Too much toxicity in the blood leads to visions. Doesn't mean it can't be visions of something, but here is a biological cause and here is a way of understanding that might get us in the vicinity of some truth.

So it is an interesting topic. Unfortunetely I made the mistake of googling it and came across a discussion on insanity on the Philosophy Forums. This is not the sort of philosophy with which I am acquainted. If my professors and peers express an idea which is radical, it is in a gentle and intelligent manner; it is at the same time honest and also inoffensive. I have taken this as my ideal manner of communication and seek to follow it as a model, however, I hold that there are times when screaming and crying are the only appropriate reaction and times when the only appropriate reaction is silence.

Anger in an intellectual discussion is not appropriate. As such I knew when I read that forum that I could not respond. People believe that mental illness is simply a fabrication! Real, intelligent people who can spell and forum coherent thoughts and yet still continue to believe such a foolish and destructive thing.

I once assumed that the only homophobic people were misinformed rednecks off on the cattle ranches. I did not really believe that misinformed rednecks existed and as such managed to disbelieve in homophobia. Then I went to university and encountered a boy who was openly homophobic. Now I know that many people share this view although most will deny it or do not even realise it.

Why would people think that mental illness is a fabrication? Psychology may be somewhat new and sometimes it is wrong, but that is the nature of what it is to be science. If it were cut in stone it would be a religion and that is no help to us at all. It frightens me that people think this. It frightens me because I know there are people suffering because people who I cannot call anything but stupid and ignorant. These people do not need to be victims on top of what they have already. Why should you be so unlucky as to have a mental illness and the disbelief and scorn of those around you also?

Thought

2010-03-08T11:38:00.000-08:00

I recently joined Toastmasters International. My first speech is an icebreaker. I need to tell the club about myself so that they can appreciate the context of my later speeches. From attempting to write the speech I generated a great deal of material that, well fascinating, completely ignored the question at hand. The most interesting portion was a phenomenological description of abstract thought. I think that telling a group of people this tells them who I am, and in a sense it does but not directly. Through this exercise I learned a great deal about how I think about people and why it is useful to tell a person things like your birthday and your maiden name, which I had always before considered useless information the purpose of which is to make conversation for the sake of conversation instead of communication.

The first time I remember thinking it was summer. I was wearing nothing but a really big shirt that went down to my knees. I think I swore off dresses sometime before that, and this was clearly not a dress. I was in the forest, I think, and thinking about myself and probably the fact that I needed to go and take a bath because my hair was full of dirt and twigs from wandering in the forest. I have an image of thought at that moment. I do not quite remember the content but there is a certain way that thinking looks. You take objects and separate them in your mind, and order them, and draw them together. These objects are fuzzy rays of light, or circles and lines or real things and concepts.

For example I can think about a try. You have this branch. Now separate it from it's name. You have the name of tree and the tree itself. Now separate it from it's shape. Separate it from what it means to you. Have any of you succeeded here?

I can't, really. I try to pull apart these things and they stick together. This is what abstract thought is for me and what it might be for everyone, separating things that cannot be moved with the hands. Although it does feel like touching and feeling them.

Inner demons

2010-03-05T13:39:00.000-08:00

Some people have the inability to function in particular ways. Some of these people call their problems inner demons. Thus objectifying they attempt to overcome their inner demons or keep them to themselves. There is a trite saying that we all have our demons. It does not mean anything taken either figuratively or literally. It is the sort of thing you will be given you write on if ever forced to write a provincial English exam. Meaningless. It gives you so much room for creativity! For once I shall take advantage of that.

I would like to kidnap that word for a moment. I do not have any inner demons of the sort that these people worry about. Some minor ones yes, but no major ones. The thing I do have is a very tedious inner editor. It isn't really an inner editor because I can usually shut it off when writing, for better or worse. I shall call it a demon, or daimon to borrow the Greek sense of the word. That is the sense I want. Daimon relates more to spirit then creepy thing lurking about wanting your soul. In this sense it need not be negative, and it still carries the negative connotation, which is important as you will see

So I have this daemon. 'Hello daemon.'

"Hello Jesse, you sleep too much. You have readings you should be doing right now."

'Thank you daemon. Now I not only are those things true about me but I am also upset about them.'

"Oh, also your essay sucks. You can't plan anything. And you should feel terrible about all those dishes."

'Thank you daemon. Now I shall wash dishes instead of doing anything else.'

See? It's terrible tedious. The poor thing has no imagination! It has no wonder of the world. It only cares about me. Me. Me. Me. Why can't it leave me alone and work on something more important for a change?

I think a lot of people have this problem. That rational part of ourselves instead of being focused on the world is focused on self-improvement. That is a very powerful piece of the human mind. Do you really want it turned on yourself at all times? I certainly don't. It is far more productive to send it off to think about Plato so that I can do well on this test.

Seven things about me

2010-03-05T11:02:00.000-08:00

I read a beautiful blog called Sixth in Line. Recently Elisabeth won the Kreativ blogger award. It is not difficult to see why when you read her writing. Go and do so!

The wonderful musician and writer, Mike McClaren from Annotated Margins has honoured my efforts with a Kreativ blogger award. My second ever. I am grateful for his recognition and will respond as I must but only in part. I will list the mandatory things about me but I will leave it up to all those wonderful bloggers whom I follow - I cannot choose among them - to take it upon themselves if they so choose to list seven things about themselves, here in comments or on their own blogs.

I am willing to take up the challenge, although there is a level of reality I do not quite feel I can attain in listing things about me. It seems like the things I list are simply the things that everyone would write in one of these lists. They evoke the same feelings, call in the same memories, share the same sense of belonging or not belonging. It is good to know I am in the same place but it makes this somewhat redundant.

1. I have a phobia of helicopters and airoplanes flying over my head. Even as an adult try to hide under a building or a tree until they pass. My boyfriend suggests that this is because I grew up near a military base. It might be true. I sometimes have nighmares about our harbours being full of ships at war.

2. My name is Jessica but I have gone by Jesse since childhood. For years I regretted being born a girl.

3. I could not read until grade seven.

4. I realise that there are certain people in the world who are very fashion conscious. I have sympathy for those people but also enjoy subtly breaking fashion rules in order to drive them crazy.

5. I've never been drunk.

6. The moment I can pinpoint as a freedom is riding over a hill on my bicycle and seeing the Olympic mountains. I like to pretend that if I peddle fast enough I can get there.

7. I started to take philosophy in order to understand it so that I could defend myself against it. In Spring of 2008 ingested such a quantity of philosophy I became a different person and I can no longer remember what I found so threatening.

On a more positive note, cabbage.

2010-02-24T14:01:00.000-08:00

Cabbage is big. It is easy to grow. All the dishes made from it have the taste of the old world or that of the east. If I imagine a garden I will imagine cabbage and turnips on a cold grey day, still growing despite the weather. Gardening is amazing because it actually works. I do not yet have the delicacy or the money to grow more difficult crops perfectly or sometimes even imperfectly. No greenhouses are available, nor fancy mixtures. But things will grow in spite of this fact. Part of this is because Vancouver Island is fairy land. There is some magic to it. The soil is rich. Nothing is prickly or harsh here, unlike the interior.

I looked at a seed chart today. It turns out that if I do not plant cabbage transplants by early march there will not be time for them to mature. I mentioned this to a friend today and he encouraged me to get some seeds, so I sent off an order to West Coast Seeds in Delta. Hopefully I will get an envolope soon, full of exciting time-oriented objects.

This is my second year gardening on my own. I used to grow things but my mother was in charge and knew when to plant what. One of it's main challenges and rewards is time. Time-as-a-being: It is a way of living with time. I deal with deadlines at school and at work and with bills. Why is it not the same to garden?

If I do not go outside in time it will be dark. I will not be able to work in the garden. If I do not grow these cabbage in time there will not be enough time to grow them at all is different. On one hand it is discouarging. Many gardens are not planted due to missed deadlines. On the other hand it makes you more aware of weather, season, and light. That is the difference. Deadlines at work and school, bills and dishes, these things are enforced by human systems. The deadlines I am following when I grow things are not really deadlines at all. They are not set but simply are. I get both time and nature.

Dealing with passive-aggression

2010-02-22T11:56:00.000-08:00

Sometime in late August 2008 I found a whiteboard sitting on the side of the road. It was a giant whiteboard. I needed one of my roommates to help me carry it home. We put it in the kitchen. Unfortunately whiteboards attract the nefarious, ever waiting, and continually irritating passive aggressive note.

It might have happened anyhow. Maybe we would have ended up with all sorts of stickies everywhere. But this made it very easy.

Ever since that day my household has worked on dealing with passive-aggressive note issues. Our house is too small for 5 people so it is hard to avoid space issues and respect the common areas in a way that everyone thinks of as respectful.

I look at passive-aggression as a form of bullying. You make the other person feel guilty and incompetent so that you have power over them and so that you can control them and make them behave like yourself. The problem is that people do not like to be controlled. As such they will attempt to fight back. It gets even worse if they continue to bully. The problem with passive-aggression, like other types of bullying, is that it is hard to recognize. Unless you know the signs you will not realize that the person leaving you a friendly little note full of smiles and hearts is actually attacking you. Recognizing passive-aggression for what it is helps. As such when our resident psychology-turned-philosophy. student moved in she labeled half the board as an area in which to write passive-aggressive notes. Whenever our friends come over we teach them how to be passive-aggressive. Making it into a game or a joke helps both victims of passive-aggression and victims of the desire to be passive aggressive realise what is happening and attempt to prevent it, or maybe it was just funny.

Happily we no longer get notes like the above imaged, but that has less to do with us and more to do with no longer living with crazy people.

Swing dancing

2010-02-07T13:49:00.000-08:00

I took a class on Sartre last year. We watched a video because my teacher was slightly incompetent. Various people who knew Sartre talked about the time in which he lived, the atmosphere into which he was accepted, and the strange freedom that the Paris youth were then embracing. Thousands of people came to his funeral. He was not only a philosopher or an adored public figure, he was one of the spirits of the time. He exemplified the thoughts of a new era, and offered further thoughts to expand that era. I don't know if he was right, what I do know is that in the video there were people dancing. People about my age in a black and white video. They looked free. We don't have that feeling of freedom anymore, but we still have swing dancing.

My roommate did swing when I moved in with her, and she convinced me to come along to a Saturday night dance with a live band. Because of the band the room was packed. First there was a lesson. Two teachers instructed us to get into partners. First we learned the basic step, and then a few simple moves. You meet a few people and learn a bit. There is nothing grand in it.

Once the lesson is over the instructors turn out the overhead lights and turn on a reddish spotlight. The DJ puts on a song and everyone starts dancing. It isn't just the things from the beginner class. Throwing or jumping is not permitted because of limited dance space, but many of the people dancing are impressive and skilled dancers. Seeing all these people in the dim red light I realised that swing is still alive! After almost a hundred years this dance is still something that brings people out. I have been dancing for about a year now and I am always surprised by the enthusiasm. I can tell my friend about swing and she will ask me to take her along. It seems so esoteric but it isn't. It isn't just a few people playing with the past. It's alive.

If you live on Victoria please come out to Nothin' but Swing on Saturday nights. It's pretty amazing that this exists, so you should see it at least once.

Getting scammed

2010-02-06T08:12:00.000-08:00

We are moving out in August and I decided to start advertising now in order to avoid the last minute panic.

I got an email for a really nice place in a somewhat rural area, which I like. My roommate ran a scam check by putting the address in through craiglist and seeing if there were any hits. There were. It is rather clever. They took an ad for two bedroom and made it into an ad for a four bedroom. Which is the greed hook. $300 per month would have been very nice. The scammer didn't even read my ad. I'm a little hurt, because it was a good ad and gave the information he wants in his list. Come on scammers! At least don't use a form document. Oh wait, maybe I shouldn't tell them that.

It didn't look too scamlike, apart from the rooms looking like B&B rooms, until I asked for a face to face interview.

Re: 4 bedroom for August 1st (Near uvic)‏

From:	Ryan Joe (roarthur3@gmail.com)
Sent:	February 5, 2010 10:58:46 PM
To:	Jesse ... (vesuvius@hotmail.com)

thanks for your email..i own it and its located @ 1435 Braefoot Close, Victoria B.C. and also want you to know that it was due to my missionary trip that makes me, my wife and Daughter to leave the house and also want to give it out for rent and looking for a responsible person that can take very good care of it as we are not after the money for the rent but want it to be clean at the time and the person that will rent it to take it as if it were its own. So for now, We are here in the United Kingdom, our new house and put all my worries off concerning the maintenance of the House , i have the keys to the House and it is right here with me, and also the house documents....... Which I can send to you after all necessary agreement has be accepted.. Also I will like you to know that the rent charges is not really the issue ,but your absolute maintenance of my House is most important thing so i want you to get back to me with the Application form below

RENT APPLICATION FORM

1)Your Full Name

2)Your Full Address & Phone Number

3)Age

4)Are you married

5)How many people will be living in the house

6)Do you have a pet

7)Do you have a car

8)Occupation

9)When do you want to move in

10)How long do you want to stay in my House

11)Reason for moving out of Current home

so If you are still interested, and Note that rent is $1200 per month and Utilities is included in the rent .I personally will actually come visiting you some time during the year as our new tenant. Looking forward to hearing from you with all the details so that i can have it in my file in case of issuing the receipt for you and contacting you. Await your urgent reply so that we can discuss on how to get the document and the keys of the house to you. The address of the house is 1435 Braefoot Close, Victoria B.C.

I was considering sending them the money in domino currency. Oh well, no chickens for me. It wouldn't have been that convenient anyhow.

Living like my mother

2010-02-03T13:29:00.000-08:00

When it is cold and wet I keep a big pot of chi on the stove. I make a new batch every three days. It boils over and making a mess on the stove, but my roommates apparently found it an endearing quality. We have acquired at least one roommate by offering them a cup of spicy honey-laden tea. My mother taught me how to make chi. She did not learn from the internet. She learned from an Indian woman who lived next door to her when my older brother was a baby.

I got it into my head that I should live in a commune at least once during my life. My mother told me about her experiences in a communal house. It seems like she gave me all her dreams about what life can be. I also learned that I never wanted to have children, because that is a lot to give another being.

When I was a child we lived in a little log house and had a huge garden out back where I hung worms on a tree I called a worm tree. I was a heartless child. We had chickens until the raccoons ate them. I cannot remember a time when the moosewood cookbook did not inhabit our homes. I believe I might have been vegetarian as a child but I cannot be sure. I homeschooled until grade five. By the time I got into high school all these things were gone. We moved into an five-plex. Our only garden was on the deck.

I have only lived on my own for a year and a half. It's so short that the halves still count for something. When I moved out I made note to take responsibility for myself. I have took responsibility for my diet and decided to stop eating meat, my health care, my expenses, and all those other things that make some one an adult, so far as I can tell. Every time I reflect I find myself moving towards the life my mother lived when I was a child. My boyfriend convinced me to get a compost program. We both kept little gardens last year and plan to do so again this year. If I get a big enough yard when I move in the summer I plan to keep chickens as well. Someday I will live on a farm. My grandmother commented when my sister stopped eating meat that it seems like it is the thing to do at this age. Mother did it. Sister did it. I'm going it. It's just a phase.

The garden and the chickens, and living in a community of people, not eating meat are all things that my mother did and then stopped doing. It is the same for my boyfriend. Eventually you grow out of it. Eventually you settle down into a normal life. That frightens me. The idea that I can grow out of my ideas frightens me. I will have to work in the great world as Forster calls it and slowly the things I think about what it is to be human and to be me will disappear. I will not live out doors but I will not live in my own home either. Just a impressionless cell. The bright electric lights of a career will make them so hard to see that sometime I will just stop looking. On the other hand I cannot remain a student forever, and some of these ideas I am sure are a product of being a student and young. I will look like a fool if I act the same as I always did. I shall once again be incomplete.

Cross-disciplinary work

2010-01-30T18:44:00.001-08:00

There is talk in academia. People are unhappy with the segregation of the disciplines. Philosophy will be my example as it is what I know. Biology, physics, medicine, religion, psychology, astronomy, alchemy and anything else you can think of were once the domain of philosophy. Now our powers lie primarily in ethics, history of philosophy, and metaphysics. Metaphysics is a good foundation on which to work. Ethics is useful in other areas and as such taught outside of the philosophy department, and history of philosophy is blatantly cross-disciplinary.

Professors and students from time to time inform me that a cross-disciplinary approach is best. No one says anything more. Either we must learn as much as we possibly can or correspond with people in other disciplines. It was bad enough that we are out of touch with the lay people, now we are out of touch with each other as well. But whenever people mention cross-disciplinary work they commit an error to which up until now I have been unable to respond.

Cross disciplinary work is useful, I am told, because it is a different way of looking at things. This is not always but often false.

It's a bit romantic. Look at the world through the eyes of another. How different it looks! How strange and new. This implies that we are simply narrow. We cannot see across the hill because we are so focused on the flower growing against this tiny stone. The chemist is not looking at the flower. They are off on the other side of the hill blowing things up. It is not simply a different view, it is a different part of the world. It is not as if I look at the forest and talk to the biologist who looks at a certain tree, it is as if I am listening to the stream and the biologist comes running out of the forest to tell me about something they discovered. We are not just looking at the same things in different ways, we are looking at entirely different problems in different ways. That is why it is useful. A superficial knowledge of the tree will let me see things differently, but I need a deep knowledge of the tree in order to really know it and use it.

For example my boyfriend is a physics student. He teaches me something and we can discuss it, but only through him. I couldn't go and discuss physics with someone who knew less then me, I wouldn't learn or advance in any way, and he does not advance in talking to me.

Ideals and reality

2010-01-28T08:15:00.000-08:00

Ideals are not solid things. You cannot catch and hold one except maybe in words, and always there is the danger that it will escape. When Rickie sees Agnes and her lover kissing and calls them the ideal lovers he sees the ideal of the lover momentarily alight on their shoulders. Like a butterfly it stopped there for just one moment. Like a ray of sunlight that chanced from a cloud. It is not solid. It is not permanent, not because it does not exist but because it does not stay.

Some philosophers, whose names I do not remember, hold that the soul does not stay with the body but only visits. I think this is true. The soul is our ideal. It may come to us in certain moments. It may speak to us but it will not stay. We cannot hold it. It is not the same as a chair or as my hand or even as a piece of bark or a melting bit of ice, although to that it is closer. It is not closer because it lacks, although if this is reality there are times when it is not real, but it returns. It will be real again. It will be forgotten and remembered.

I never held to images of romantic love. Candle lit dinners make me awkward and slightly queasy. But there are times when I am with Thomas, such as the first time I met him, when our actions invoke universals, ideals. I first met him Swing Dancing. We did not know what we were doing. I really had no interest in him. But somehow we were dancing and it was perfect. There were no clouds and the stars were bright like stars in the rural municapality where I grew up. Some baby bunnies were huddled by a sign and we stopped and tried to catch them with my beret. I knew if we were not careful the spirits would flit away. That moment was an ideal. That moment was what the writers write about. We are not that moment. It is separate from our bodies. It might even be separate from our souls, although I think they must have been present at that moment.

But maybe there is no soul. It could be that those moments when someone would declare a soul present is a moment when some god or spirit passes by. It is not the same soul each time but a different entity. The body and it's breath, which can give words to those spirits, are as much as we have of a soul.

Trust

2010-01-26T10:16:00.000-08:00

I moved out in 2008. I understood that my mother sheltered me a bit and that I did not know a lot about people. I never had the sort of friends who spend all their free time together and never dealt with the sort of fights which arise from that kind of friendship. So I knew that having roommates would be a challenge for me and that I needed to be respectful of them and take care to know their boundaries and realize that hurt feelings do not equate to lasting hatred. I trusted that my roommates, all of whom had been on their own before, would be a reliable source of information on how to act in the world. We all want to be good people and do the right thing, right?

No. We don't. We want to do the easiest thing. We don't want to do something that is seriously wrong. No murder. No cruelty. But what about the grey areas? Rent money is an issue that is slightly grey. How to treat people when they have treated you is an area that is grey. What to do when you break someone's possessions accidentally is an area that is grey. What? Those aren't grey areas. But what if the person is a jerk? What if they had it coming?

I am now very careful who I trust to make judgments. Those are not grey areas. I knew they weren't. But I had never lived on my own before and thought that I just did not understand how these things worked. It is a bit of a nasty lesson, learning not to trust people's judgment. But it is a good one.

My sister phoned me the other day. Her friend was on academic probation. His life was a mess and he was depressed. She had asked all her friends if she should stop being friends with him, because it was creating a lot of stress for her and she did not feel like she could help him much anyhow. Everyone had told her yes. Then she asked a mutual friend of ours. He is a on call teacher and as she put it, 'an authority figure.' He said to wait it out. When she called me I told her to discourage him from discussing his problems with her but to continue being her friend. We were the only people who said she shouldn't drop him. This upset her, because it felt wrong.

It is rather sad. Idealizing people is wrong. People are people, not embodiments of a priori thought stuff. I am happy to say that the issues I had to take up in first year no longer exist. My roommates and I care about each other and want to do right, but this is from natural sympathy. How do you avoid the world becoming grey? Getting into a muddle. It worries me that what seems so clear now could fade in the wrong situation with the wrong people.

Emo utilitarian

2010-01-22T21:39:00.000-08:00

The idea was better then the execution. I meant for him to be jumping off the roof after some villain. Emo amuses me. It seems like a sensible way of displaying emotions that otherwise end up hidden or ignored, but the poetry! Oh, the poetry. Also it encourages attempts into the land of mispelling and impossible grammar.

Talking too loudly on the bus

2010-01-22T14:15:00.000-08:00

I am a loud person. When I am in a crowd of people I do not know or do not feel comfortable with I speak quietly and politely. But as soon as I have a friend I get loud. I know it is rude and I try to be considerate but sometimes I am so interested in the conversation that I forget about the people around us who may not really want to know about carnivorous tomatoes.

One episode particularly stands out for me. During National Novel Writing Month I talked about my novel a great deal. My roommate and I were on the bus. We were going to a Butcher's shop to buy five quail for a potluck. We were both in good spirits having just attended a talk by a brilliant teacher of mine. But my novel was giving me a bit of trouble. My characters lost motivation and my antagonist was mostly reacting at this point and as such could not himself be a motivation. So I was running through various was in which I could get my novel started again, with intermittent bursts of conversation about the talk on biomedical ethics we had just attended. I had just solved the problem with help from my roommate when a man a few seats away said, 'excuse me, do you realize you are very loud?' He was antagonistic. It is understandable because he had not wanted to hear our conversation. Say 'shush' or 'you're being loud' in a firm, quiet voice.

Understand that I do feel a bit guilty about the following. I do not always react well to people being angry at me and this is definitely an example of a poor reaction.

"I'm sorry," I said, "did something I said bother you?"

Here I learned that my poor reaction was somewhat more understandable. I don't mind people shushing me. I do mind them misjudging me. "Yes," he replied. "You think you are intelligent. But you're not. You're stupid. You are pretending to be intelligence and you are so stupid."

I was a little bewildered at this. "I don't think I'm intelligent," I said. It's true. I have rather low self esteem when it comes down to it. It's something I'm working on. I am happy when I understand something and unsurprised if I don't. But that conversation had not been one of self-awareness. If it had I would have known to keep quieter. As it was I was entirely wrapped up in ethics and stories and had no idea of myself or anything else, except possibly my roommate.

"Then why would you be talking so loudly?" He asked, "Obviously you want everyone to hear you because you think you are so intelligent. But you're just pretentious."

Now what he says has a bit of merit. In first year I had Latin 101 at 9:30am. I lived far away and the bus ride took an hour. Every day my friends and I would give up studying for Latin and have absurd conversations. More than once I was approached when riding alone by people who had heard our conversations, found them interesting, and thought it pleasant to speak with me. I was embarrassed by these encounters but also slightly pleased. So I had good reason to suppose that if people overheard our conversation they would know it to be what it was, two happy university students discussing things they loved.

I muddled the poor man, I think. I kept quiet until I stood up to get off the bus. Then I told him not to be afraid of intelligence, and pointed out that it is only a danger if misused and that ignorance on the other hand should always be feared. He disagreed and informed me that intelligence was dangerous and ignorance right way. He actually said that! I think he was terribly confused at this point or he would not have made such a blunder. I do realize that I was in the wrong, but I also see him as an example of a failed attempt to control the thoughts and speech of others. He felt threatened by me and that was why I responded so poorly. Had he known that he was in the right in asking me to be quiet I would have responded positively. That brings up an disturbing issue of how easy it is to control people with the right attitude and at the right moment.

I'm a witch, burn me!

2010-01-18T16:46:00.000-08:00

Today in our Rationalists class my roommate and I discovered that I am a witch. The teacher commented about how in the past witches were supposed to be people doing harm or mischief and now it tends to be people into organic gardening.

I organic gardening. I attend old growth rallies. I am a vegetarian.

All these things are presently the activities of witches in BC. Therefore I must be a witch.

I am also a dualist and a moral realist. I think this is why I have problems talking in my philosophy classes. Because I'm crazy.

Dreaming Aristotle.

2010-01-15T16:57:00.000-08:00

The acorn has a the potential to become an oak tree. It may not succeed but given various conditions it can actualize that form. A cat cannot become an oak tree. If the animal dies and rots the soil can fertilize the oak tree but that is not the same. It does not contain within it an unactualized form. Nothing about a cat can be enmattered such that it will become an oak tree.

I like Aristotle's ethics. I like them because I feel as if using them I can actually aim for being a good person, as averse to simply knowing the appropriate thing. In a given situation I will talk as if I am a Utilitarian, but in my moments of reflection I think as a Virtue ethicist to the degree that I can. In my reflective moments I realise that a month's study of the Ethics isn't really enough for a forgetful creature like myself, but no matter.

My Medieval History teacher keeps talking about causes for the renaissance. There are various types of causes necessary for a renaissance, he says. He talks as if he has read Aristotle. I do not think, however, that he has done so. I dislike self-help books, but I find the Aristotle in them interesting. Self-actualization is a lovely concept. Why? Because it's got Aristotle in it. The only trouble is the Self-help people confuse it. A sparrow has the potential to fly. If it does not there is something wrong with it. If I have the potential to make friends but never manage to actualize it I cannot defend myself with, well I had great potential! Potential says nothing. It cannot speak. Lack of actualization can make us less human, but potentials are equal to everyone and do not make us more human.

The same goes for many people. People keep talking about actual and potential, various causes, the nature of the caused, the essential qualities of things, and so on. But I don't think they have read Aristotle. Aristotle is in our way of thinking. Hume may come along and talk about cause and effect. We may have overthrown Aristotilian logic and science and cosmology, but we still dream Aristotle. I often have vivid dreams. I have dreampt of streets and buildings but I have never dreampt of using a computer or being in a car. I think it is the same way with Aristotle. Our knowledge and our tools advance but unless we overhaul our entire conceptual framework we will still have Aristotle in there. We give him breath and voice two thousand years after his body is gone to dust. Now that is immortality!

Omnivorous tomato plants!

2010-01-11T15:24:00.000-08:00

Last Fall I put off pulling out my plants. It seemed cruel in some irrational way. They might keep growing! Maybe they were happy! But I knew if I put it off too long I wouldn't have time to prepare the bed before the ground got soaked. So one day I picked all the remaining green tomatoes and pulled out my plants. I had to scrub my hands clean afterwards because they were covered in this green goo from the stems of the tomatoes. I was somewhat surprised but nothing came of my curiosity until last Friday.

On Friday I read about carnivorous tomato plants. It isn't true. They are actually omnivorous if anything. It is never good to ignore a plant. Tomatoes are the worst. A recent study has shown that a tomato plant's use flies as fertilizer. The theory is that without a high enough nutrient content the tomato goes carnivorous. See those little hairs on the stem of the tomato? When a fly lands there the hairs close on the fly and hold it until it dies. After that the fly is released and acts as fertilizer for the plant. Why didn't we know this before? Because tomatoes kept in captivity don't need to function as omnivores, much like people. Also on the list are some potatoes, petunias, tobacco, and maybe eggplant but I can't remember.

But you probably know all that. Why? Because in a very short time this information has spread across the internet and between people. It is the epitome of random knowledge. I may not know about the wars and the floods and the fires but everyone around me is now talking about carnivorous tomatoes. When it is something that will change our conception of the world we spreed it as fast as possible. Maybe because it fascinates us. Maybe because it will disturb others. But the important question here is does this pose an ethical dilemma to vegans? And is this why the macrobiotic diet bans foods in the nightshade family?

Why don't you blog about it?

2010-01-08T14:09:00.000-08:00

My roommates and I are loud overdramatic people so when I disagreed with something my roommate said instead of responding politely I yelled, "you're weird!" and ran into my room.

He yelled back, "Why don't you blag about it?"

This is his usual response when I comment on or complain about something. If I take his advice I'll be blogging about the dishes next.

I sometimes mention that I have a blog. I do not particularly want my friends reading my blog because there are only so many things I can be excited about on one day. It just gives us less to talk about. But that isn't the issue. The issue is that people often react negatively when I mention blogging. Somehow each time it happens I forget, because the reaction just doesn't make sense. If I told them I had been writing poetry or working on some personal work they would be fine, but somehow blogs are different.

There are issues in blogging. Sometimes people are always looking around for a new topic, or spend all free time reading other peoples blogs and updating. But those aren't issues everyone has. There are many worse things to be doing with spare time. Really that doesn't sounds like being a writer.My friends don't think I'm spending all my time working on my blog, so that can't be the issue.

No, it's the perception blogging a sign of mental ill health. In spite of all the great blogs out there most people still think that blogs are a place for high school kids to rant and moan about how hard they have it and how no one understands them, and assert their pretentious understanding of the world. This is a sign of ill health because it displays a level of obsession with personal experience that prevents any focus on the external world. I have always believed it is better to focus outward. There is only so much you can understand, and like a windows os there is much more that can go wrong then right.

Me and my Nanonovel

2010-01-05T14:10:00.000-08:00

I got a letter from Chris Baty (from National Novel Writing Month) a few weeks back. He said he ran into the novels all us nanoers write. They miss us, I guess. He told me I should give mine a second chance now that the heady November writing spree is in the past. That in that little novel I might just will a lasting relationship.

I loved 2009s novel. I wrote the better part (and the best parts) of it in three bursts. I sat down from time to time and spent eight hours typing and plotting and losing my sanity. Somehow this year I ended up with protagonists that I love. I write fantasy, and every time I want my characters to be heroes. The more so because somehow whenever I write they turn into this horrid creatures who betray their friends and destroy themselves. It is rather depressing. But this year I managed to write characters who were not exactly heroes, but were close to it. I think it is probably because I did not aim to write heroes. The characters I chose as my protagonists weren't meant to be from the beginning. The story was about the antagonist and a bunch of people trying to get rid of him. But these two characters just ended up being so lively and interesting that they took over the story.

So I think I will start editing. To be more accurate I think I will start some major surgery and then grow a bunch of new story-matter. At that point I might start editing. I have a bit of hope. I knew going in that what I was writing was not necessarily worth publication, because that is what everyone knows going into Nanowrimo. But I did feel that the story was good enough to try for, and I came out feeling the same.

So over the next few months I'll post a bit on my editing adventures. This is my first time with major editing. I guess it will be good practice for my thesis. Eep!

"To Harvard."

2010-01-04T15:55:00.000-08:00

I took a philosophy of film class last Summer. One day before class I was siting in the corner reading the newspaper.

"Anxious for class to start?" Asked the student sitting in the hall. I recognized him from class He was dressed in a suite, like the law students do, and obviously took care of his appearance. Most of us are scruffy. All us girls seem to have the same sort of casually messy hair, and the boys never have time to shave. Whenever I see him I am startled.

I remarked that I usually felt too shy to talk to the other students, and he discouraged this. He pointed out that there are lots of us who are shy, and that is why the classes tend to be so quiet. So it isn't that the other students are aloof, just that we appear aloof to each other. Over the last year I have seen this to be true.

But this story isn't about me. It is about him. There is a scene in certain movies where the father pours his son a drink and toasts 'to Harvard.' It does not need to be Harvard. But somewhere with equal prestige. No one toasts 'the the University of Toronto,' and really who would toast 'to Uvic?' I might toast 'to Victoria' but as great as these schools are it has to be better then that. But these are movies. This is the American dream of higher learning. Sending the son off to law school. Off to Oxford. Off to somewhere where anyone who gets in has a grand future ahead of them.

My roommate and I arrive early to the Philosophy Christmas Party. There aren't many people yet and there is a loll in conversation. Over by the bar the student who encouraged me to do things like go to Christmas parties is talking to his friend. I glance over in hopes that someone I know has arrived and see them raise their glasses. I hear over the noise of the room, 'to Harvard.'

New years resolutions

2010-01-02T14:21:00.000-08:00

There are times for originality but New Years is not one of them. In other words I couldn't think how to meta-blog New Years resolutions so I'm just going to post them.

1. More adventures: I have a bike now, which makes this easier. Adventures of the physical and mental kind. Somewhat equivalent to Nanowrimo's 'big, fun, scary.'

2. Pursue my personal projects: I need to edit my novel, paint more (I haven't done much art in a while but my grandmother sent me water colour pencil crayons for Christmas and inspired me to start again by telling me how much talent she thought I had,) write some short stories, and suchlike.

3. Learn social skills: I'm going to take a public speaking class and I might consider going to some nicer parties and trying to smooze. I also want to make sure I stay in touch with people better.

4. Less procrastination: I am going to very slowly increase the amount of work I do and encourage myself to use my time productively. I have come to terms with the fact that this is not something that just changes. I did better last semester and I will do even better this spring.

Kitchen garden planner

2010-01-02T14:04:00.000-08:00

Gardeners.com provides a lovely online planner.

Select the space you have available and the plants you want to grow.

It provides planting time. Spacing. Days to harvest. Hints and tips, temperature, and more depending on the plant.

If you are thinking of gardening this spring it is a nice little applet to check out. Kitchen Garden Planner.

Fantasy gardens

2009-12-31T19:05:00.000-08:00

As a child I played many imagination games. My sister and I stole flowers from the garden at our house and took foil pie tins from the kitchen. Then we would layer the flowers in the pie tins. We always saved the prettiest ones for the top. There was a greenhouse where we would leave our pies to dry. Eventually all the flowers would rot together and we would end up with a crispy cake. I do not think there was any logic behind it. We liked flowers and making things.

I loved huge gardens. I still do, although I am more critical of them now. In one particular instance in which I got it into my head to design a maze garden. The walls were thickened with grape vines and at the centre there was a little pond, if I am correct in remembering. I drew diagrams and sketches of this garden. I picked out the sort of plants I wanted for it. Of course, such things take a huge amount of money and I settled for the little bit of dirt in my mothers garden. I grew radishes and little roses.

We moved and there was nowhere to have a garden. My mother made due with the deck and managed wonderful things with pots but we never grew vegetables, which disappointed me. When I moved out on my own I decided to have a garden. I finally got up the courage to ask the landlord and he gave me permission. So last year I had my first garden. I live in fairy land so almost everything grew without much addition to the soil or my having any idea how to deal with pests or what each plant needed.

I am moving halfway through the summer this year, which causes a bit of trouble. But already I am collecting pots. Two of my roommates have never gardened before, but one plans to build a cold frame and the other is incredibly excited about doing the day to day gardening with me. My boyfriend and I are starting to plan our spring gardens now. The given reason is that we will get terribly busy, but really it is an addiction to mini world building.

Boxing day in the mall

2009-12-27T14:29:00.000-08:00

Why would you go into the mall on boxing day? I don't know. Maybe it is masochism. Maybe the more obvious greed. For me it was neither. Seven of us met at the north entrance to the mall and went over the rules. Tagging is progressive so in the end one person will be left. We weren't allowed in any gender specific places. We were not to do anything that drew attention such as running or shouting. We were to behave exactly like the other shoppers. No getting in trouble, no getting kicked out. We still stood out so much, even when we made an effort. You could pick out the seven of us from different floors and we kept meeting each other to compare information on who had been caught. Instead of shopping on boxing day I played mall tag.

Escalators are death traps, as are elevators. The first game we played I was going up the escalator and saw another player. I couldn't tell if he was tagged or not but they started walking away. I figured I was probably okay but I should have walked in the opposite. I followed him for a bit and then decided that it was a bad idea and turned around. Another guy came up the escalator as I turned around. I suddenly had a strong desire to purchase a pink sweater from a guys clothing shop.

I went in and stared at the sweater but I knew it was useless. I turned around and he was come into the shop. I tried to move around to get out but realized I could not leave without drawing attention to us. So I gave up.

"Hey, I haven't seen you in so long!" I said and shook hands with him.

"Yah, how are you?"

"Oh, I'm good." We hugged and he said, "Yah, you are so tagged."

"Guessed as much." I follow him off to hunt other people.

If you are in victoria come check it out. Our facebook group is http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=16989937139&ref=ts.

From Christmas Eve

2009-12-24T23:25:00.001-08:00

I wish you a HAPPY CHRISTMAS!

It is appropriate to be happy on Christmas, and as such everyone should do so if possible. So I hope you have a fantastic Christmas!

Student life

2009-12-24T00:08:00.000-08:00

I feel that there is a lack of literature surrounding student culture. There are a few mentions here and there, and there are bits of advice but nothing like the stories and art that surround the upper middle class woman or the high school. Therefore I was very excited to discover Wasted Talent. Wasted Talent is a comic by a very talented engineer in Vancouver, who used to be a student at UBC. Before I get anymore details wrong I'll just say, it is fantastic and you should read it.

A further comment is that I will be attempting to do more on the student life section of my blog, as I think it is being rather ignored.

Society of Individuals

2009-12-23T22:03:00.000-08:00

My moral philosophy professors seem confident that we can make the right decisions. In fact we can do better than formerly believed because we are not hindered by an idea of guilt or original sin. We are burdened by something we cannot change, but we are incredibly responsible (I still can't believe my philosophy professor is a real Utilitarian! I thought those didn't exist.)

But that has to do with action. I want to know about being. The reason that being is done away with, I suppose, is that it was associated with sin and guilt and egoism. Either we give up the self or live for it alone. False dichotomy! I just want to be my best. I don't think that means hurting others or forgetting myself. I do not see why it needs to mean these things. I gather that there is a break in my education. Something about the world wars and the modern view of the world means that the way I think is not permissible. I do not know what it is. The best I can guess is we thougth we were gods, but that's egoism so that just means we were wrong. It doesn't mean that all philosophy to do with what I am is wrong.

Our solution is no better then what we are trying to avoid. It is not healthy to raise people to think of themselves in the way that we do. On one hand we are telling them that they are special and unique. On the other hand we are telling them to conform to a system they do not understand. Doing the latter only is slavery, the former the sort of evil we no longer permit. Together it just makes a mess. Is everyone reallly so special as we tell them they are? No. Special is the wrong word. We can be unique in that we are ourselves and no one else, like a unique point in a chart. But that does not mean that we are unique. In order to be we have to separate ourselves off from everyone else. Is that really something that each of us ought to do? I'm not sure. But I believe that in order to be properly interdependent there ought to be a separation. Once each of us understands that we are a separate entity, that being the period of solipsism that many youth suffer from, we can re-enter an interdependent concept of identity well maintaining ourselves as a part of that whole. Then we will understand both specialness and the need for a system. But unless we can do that we are not special and we should not follow the system, because we will be following it improperly and entertaining a lie.

Being authentic

2009-12-21T01:23:00.000-08:00

E.M. Forster is a supurb author. I have reread each of his books since I discovered him two years ago. Tonight I rewatched 'Room with a View' on Youtube. The movie does not quite capture the book but only because with it's limited capacity it cannot do so.

I love George Emerson. He seems to push against all the boundaries of the human mind. He romantices atheism as a clean version of being human. Reset all attributes. Back to default before we messed people up with the idea of sin and god and society. He is not muddled. His vision is clear. I love him for it, and I wish to be like him. I cannot bring myself to deny the existence of gods, but I wish to have vision that is clear and a mind that abhors muddles.

I decided to search 'being authentic' on google after watching the movie. Hey, I'm a student during Christmas break. What would you have me do?

"When you live an authentic life, you are living the life that resonates with your inner being. You will not bind yourself with destructive habits, relationships or lifestyles. You will gain inner strength and let go of manipulation, power plays, cruelty and hatred." Selfgrowth.com

But this is all wrong! Being authentic isn't about what is inside you. You aren't special. This is the problem with most self-help work. It is all about the self! Or maybe that is just me thinking self-help is idiotic. But seriously!

Being authentic will not necessarily help you. It will give you moments where you feel better about yourself. But it does not help you because your life will be harder. Being honest doesn't make life easier, it makes you more alive. Being more alive is sometimes painful. Sometimes you will succeed but there are other times when

you will suffer, and suffer all the more that you understand your suffering.

Why follow a path that will lead to pain? Because I want to know! It is like the choice between living a life plugged into the experience machine or living in reality. I don't care if reality isn't as enjoyable, I want what is true. I shall start exploring the borders now. Hopefully there will be no raids on the city well I'm gone. The roads will probably be improved in the process.

I would like to draw the metaphor back, to see that I wish to secure the pathways of knowledge and understanding within my own mind. Not build up a wall and say 'this is where I can no longer understand' but improve the areas in which I feel secure in order to make raids on the ones I do not and to return with the rewards.

No one in the world today is ever really happy

2009-12-17T12:40:00.000-08:00

A Rulebook for Arguments (fourth edition) informs me that it is important to start from well-supported premises. For example the premise, 'no one in the world today is really happy' is not a very good premise because even when well defended it is quite unlikely.

Sometimes, on certain rainy afternoons or in certain moods, this may almost seem true. But ask yourself if this premise really is plausible. Is nobody in the world today really happy? Ever? At the very least, this premise needs some serious defense, and is very likely not true.

You can tell that this writer realizes they are writing to philosophers and philosophy students. The conclusion is only that this premise would need very good support, not that it is useless. Because knowing the sort of person an undergraduate is nothing is more tempting then that which they tell us is impossible. Of course we can argue from that premise.

Watch me!

Happiness as defined philosophically is different from the emotion. It isn't an instant of pleasure no matter how powerful. It is not passion because passion includes pain. Taken the Greek it might amount to being human.

Here is my theory: early societies form such that each member can understand the purpose of their society and the role that they play within that society. These societies are organic and as such will shift according to needs, such as oral story telling changes through generations. Once a society becomes larger and more complex it ceases to be a group of humans and becomes a system. Members of this society will have difficulty understanding the purpose of their society and their role in it. Philosophy becomes prevalent. Philosophy tries to explain why people should continue to behave in a human manner even though they are now within a system.

If being happy is the equivalent to being human qua human, then very few if any of us will be considered really happy. For the modern world is not an extremely human invention. We are surrounded by things which trascend being human, such as computers and cars and global warming and frozen pizza. In using technology in our every day lives we cease to be human and become something else. As such we are not happy.

This seems almost plausible. But I shall admit it: defending this premise is quite near to impossible. If we accept the idea that humans are a tool-making creature then our use of technology is part of what we are, and using it to the best of our abilities will lead us to be more complete. I view my computer as an extension of myself. It's that part of myself that eats electricity. Furthermore, there are many ways that we can be human apart from our use of technology. But if we accept consider the world 'really' we will see that the bar can be raised to any height as to what 'really' happy is, as such the premise requires something that is impossible in a finite world and is useless.

Why do newlyweds put flowers on Kant's grave?

2009-12-16T01:19:00.000-08:00

Kant is buried in Kaliningrad, Russia. Recently I learned that Newlyweds place flowers at Kants grave. It is a superstitiuous act done in hopes of a long and happy life. I searched every article I could find and I cannot figure out why.

My roommates suggested it might be that they like the travel distination and need an excuse to go there and a reason to cross the border. But that still means the tradition is being used as an excuse, and that it already existed.

My theory is that some people read a little bit of Kant and mixed philosophy up with spirits. Thinking he was a saint they proceeded to make offerings to him, and because he is not there was no trouble with them continuing. But that this theory is still somewhat unfulfilling, more then not because I have absolutely no evidence to back it up.

Why create the illusion of height?

2009-12-14T11:27:00.001-08:00

I haven't been bothered by fashion culture stuff since middle school, but I had a sudden curiosity. I like the idea of wearing white pants and grooming oneself meticulously. If I had time I swear I would do it! But that isn't what fashion is about. It's not about paying attention to your appearance so people can tell the energy put into it and admire that. It is about following rules and matching up to one idea, even if you don't find that idea attractive or interesting. This has been said, but not by me until now.

I am 5'4. I am not that short, but from time to time people comment. If I wanted to I could create the illusion of height. But I don't want to. Why not? Because it is fake. It says something false about your facticticy (those facts about your self). It's inauthentic. In other words to consider my appearance I go existential. But the existentialists were all about appearance and essence, and about adopting appearances. Nietszche adopting Socrates. Kierkegaard made up many pseudonoms.

So, if you are short, be short. Here are some suggestions I derived from idiotic ways to pretend yourself into something you are not:

1. Wear big bright belts or sashes. If you cut the figure in half it draws attention to proportions.

2. Long, baggy skirts that cover the ankles.

3. Don't let your pants cover your shoes.

4. Mix colours and patterns.

5. Wear flat, simple shoes.

6. Wear short skirts and dresses that draw attention to the length of your legs.

Or just don't bother. But don't try to trick people. It's dishonest. I have no idea what is wrong with being a small person. I think it is especially suitable for the trickster role and by connection being a philosophy student.

Modern Emanation

2009-12-13T21:28:00.000-08:00

Emanation is...

Emanation is the streaming of existence from some single source. It is the sun lighting the moon, and the moon flooding the earth and reflecting in the sea water of the bay. That water must be our soul, fluid and always moving.

In the moonlit water I watch myself until we get far enough from shore to use the motor. Then the boat tips up, and the air fills with the faint smell of gasoline. We leave the harbour. I lose sight of the moonlit beach as we go out into the Straight of Juan de Fuca.

During the Christianization of the Western world and the collapse of the Roman empire, there was a philosopher named Plotinus. He studied Plato and Aristotle, and taught them to his pupils. Plotinus wanted a certainty separate from the crumbling ideals of the crumbling empire in which he lived. So he fixed his sight on the Philosophers ideal, the immutable one. This is Plato's Good, Heraclitus' logos, Parmenides Being, and the water of Thales.

Plotinus says that the One is the well-spring of all things, and that all things are part of the One. Think of the Universe, then the galaxy, then our solar-system, then the place you are right now. These are different levels of particularization but it is all the Universe. The One is like the Universe. Plotinus says that the One thinks of itself and from that gives rise to particularization in the form of the Active intellect. The Active intellect contemplates it's existence and as such gives rise to Anima Mundi, the world soul. The world soul at each particular point is one of us. The souls of creatures are just the world soul experienced from particular points of view. Now the souls of creatures thinking themselves give rise to the material world, but the material world cannot give rise to anything because it is too particularized to contemplate itself.

Plotinus wrote the Enneads. His manner of thinking and writing is highly esoteric so although I gather that exploring them is worthwhile it is also nearly impossible. Even his students, after having spent years studying under him, could not always figure out what he was going on about.

Apparently emanation comes into conflict with evolution. This is obviously false: Emanation is a non-temporal process. We can deny it on the ground that it is bizarre, and on the ground that souls do not exist, but we cannot deny it on the ground that things evolve. The issue is that of causal process. Evolution requires causality. But the material emanation obviously displays change, which we can observe and categorize. The fact that scientific knowledge is not on this view considered as real philosophical or religious knowledge is a ground for irritation but it does not necessitate conflict.

Carrot Juice Constitutes Murder

2009-12-08T17:17:00.000-08:00

This song was my introduction to The Arrogant Worms. I love them. This is brilliant.

I like to argue. I like to argue things that do not have ethical implications, because that way you can enjoy the argument without getting the opposing party upset. If I say, eating meat is wrong I cross into the ethical. If I say, eating vegetables is wrong I cross into the absurd. As a young philosophy student I love nothing more then the absurd. It is our version of humour.

Now you must understand, the fact that everything is alive is not an argument against being vegetarian. The fact that some vegetarians eat fish is not an argument against being vegetarian. Just because people are hypocrits doesn't make them wrong. Let us assume Aristotles definition of the soul. Aristotle defined the soul as the propensity for motion.

When you eat a vegetable you are eating something which has a soul. A carrot planted in the ground will still grow, as will a potato. Beans are little sleeping plants and hold within them the essence of life. It isn't even safe to eat dirt because dirt contains tiny microbes. So you are left with water. But wait! Don't you know that tiny life forms have been killed to make your tap water safe for consumption. All food was once alive, and anything that wasn't isn't really food. I'm eating living things. I'm monstrous. Living is wrong! Anyone have a rope?

The solution is, as my medieval philosophy teacher says, 'completely obvious to the meanest intellect on the briefest reflection.' Aristotle is Greek. Greece didn't have vegetarians. Greece had Pythagoreans. Pythagoreans were against 'feeding flesh with flesh.' It is a simple and beautiful definition of what I wish to embrace.

A mess of misinformation

2009-12-08T16:26:00.000-08:00

I am rather new to this whole vegetarian thing. The people close to me are vegetarian, but it is apparently rather the same as watching someone else ride a bicycle. According to the International Vegeturian Union "[f]or the purpose of membership of IVU, vegetarianism includes veganism and is defined as the practice of not eating meat, poultry or fish or their by-products, with or without the use of dairy products or eggs." But I had a hard search to get this little answer. It is what I need in order that I can define myself and my choices in relation to the world. Along the way I discovered that being a vegetarian is a very messy subject. I will be taking up a few issues I have discovered on my adventure.

i. Whatever you do, do not go to yahoo for answers!

A commentator on Yahoo Answers says,

"Your correct, it is hypocritical [to eat fish. At least I agree with him there!]. Most things Vegetarians say and do are hypocritical [Most things everyone say are hypocritical]. Some believe they can eat chicken and fish. I never new fish was a vegetable. A lot of Vegetarians are PETA supporters. [A lot of vegetarians don't support PETA because it is inhumane and disgusts us.]

P.S. The reason your getting a lot of harsh answers is because most Vegetarians are angry and mean [False cause. Most people on the internet in ethics debates are angry and mean.] As we know, [we do?] when it needs food, our body indicates this to us with the feeling of hunger. But there are also other signals if specific nutrients are deficient. Meat is the best source of several of these nutrients. When our bodies are deficient in these, we become irritable and aggressive. [I'm both sides and believing neither. Some people are saying that Vegetarians are peace loving because they don't support killing. Now this guy is saying they are violent because they are nutrient deficient. Lots of people are nutrient deficient. It comes from only eating meat. It comes from not eating. It comes from thinking all you need is protein powder.]This is why strict vegetarians tend to be so vociferous. Look at Hitler and Charles Manson (both Vegetarians)."

Beware of appeal to emotion. People know you are angry and take advantage of this fact. When you are angry you will not ask for rational argument but only to have your beliefs affirmed. Always demand facts! Always demand arguments! Even if you cannot understand them it requires the person you are talking to to make an effort and use their brain instead of taking advantage of your willingness to listen.

ii. Vegetarians are malnurished.

Even my mother advised me not to become malnurished. I thought she knew me better. Anyone who goes vegetarian without first learning how to live without meat is stupid. I am not stupid. I did not do that. But you must understand that there are many people in this world who do not have the same advantages I do. There are many people even here in Canada who have no idea how food works. Make it a project to educate them, not damn their choices. Being vegetarian is cheaper and requires you to think more. Those are both good things for the malnurished. My only stumbling block so far has been cheese. I am now on a quest to find rennet-less cheese.

iii. There is an ethical divide.

Hey, guys. I want to be on your team, okay? Nope, you're on the other side of the line now miss vegetarian. I had no idea! I had no idea that in becoming a vegetarian I would become a walking ethical challenge. I don't want to be labelled. I don't want to challenge peoples beliefs with my existence. I just wanted to make a good decision for once. Why is it such a mess?

iiii. Farming animals is monstrous.

Appeal to emotion! Look how dreadful it is. Nasty little pen. You know what? I don't care. What don't I care about? Well, I'm not sure because I never bothered to find out because I know that when faced with those images I won't be able to think logically. I don't want scare tactics to change my way of life. That's stupid.

See the trouble is that if I am a vegetarian due to the monstrousness of animal farms then if I go out and kill the cow myself it is okay. So 'happy meat' is better. Yep, it's better. But I don't want to consume flesh. I thought that was what it meant to be vegetarian.

House of the Future.

2009-12-07T16:55:00.000-08:00

I've never been to Disneyland. Maybe it's better that way. This does have it's appeal. It's weird, and in some ways idiotic. It is deliciously archaic. But the kitchen is pretty darn awesome, ignoring the fact that eating in it would make you dead. But imagine how oily it would get after a few years!

Interpreting Greek spirit/soul distinction

2009-12-07T15:09:00.000-08:00

I've just discovered that the daimon I was refer to is actually a guardian spirit and separate from others conceptions. I was wrong, never mind.

---

So we have the Breath, which is the capacity for life within a body. That is the person. The person exists in the world and can act upon it. Then there are the ghosts. Let us take a story because it is easiest. It is necessary to carry the story within us, so this concept works better in an oral culture, but there are a few stories all of us can tell. I know the story of Cinderalla, for example. I can get all the points down, and some of the magic and beauty. That story exists apart from me but it needs me. It needs my Breath (this is why the word is so suitable) to actualize it. I make it part of myself and as such make it a living thing.

Although fascinating it is also very irratating to muddle through such a mess, and keep in my that this is my interpretation only. Partly I note this because it's true, but also because this concepts are so bloody hard to deal with I am probably making more of a mess.

Firstly, in every language I have explored there is a word for something like spirit and it translates to breath. The Greek definition calls it the propensity for movement and life. Under this definition Aristotle declared that potatoes had souls becuase they have the ability to grow upwards.

Secondly, I must define the spirit. I would prefer to use the word daemon, as in the Aristotilian Eudaemonia or 'happy spirit.' That word, however, has peculiar connotations in our language. To avoid confusion I will use 'ghost'. In this context I will expand the definition of ghost to: that which lingers apart from a body. Ghost could be concept, story, supernatural being, idea or anything else of that sort.. Anything that has potential but needs a living body to actualize it. So there is a ghost of an oak tree in an acorn. It would be better to use 'form' but I don't feel comfortable with Aristotilian terminology.

I take the inner editor as my ghost. As soon as I start to write I will attract one because of my mental state. If I do not I will be taught to through the criticism of others. This means that not everyone will have that voice. In order to acquire it, and allow it to live through you you must be in a certain state of readiness equivalent to Aristotle's Ah-hah! moment.

But what does your inner editor do? Bother you all the time. So you tell it to behave according to it's element. Instead of looking down it acts as a way to draw you up towards the place where other ghosts exist. It does much better bringing in new material and solving the issues in your story then mourning it's mutability and imperfection. So it's a gateway ghost. Having it allows you to access the rest of the a priori. Just watch out for God, I hear it has tentacles.

The spirit and the inner editor

2009-12-04T13:30:00.001-08:00

National novel writing month is over. Where is your inner editor?

My wordcount calendar advised me to kill mine and bury it in the greenhouse. I know that Chris Baty advises the somewhat less violent method of sending it on an all expenses paid cruise for the month of November

First I would like to note that my inner editor is not buried in the greenhouse. Why not? Well, when I write creatively (essays are another matter) my inner editor becomes quite friendly. Sometimes I worry it goes too easy on me; my inner editor gets very excited when I write. I feed it all the little bits of twisted up plotline, all the nasty plotholes, and all the unrealistic characters. It stalks around for a few hours, and then comes back with a fully digested version of my story. I've found that the happiest parts of my life are when I have that little voice talking in the back of my head, working out the problems, and finding solutions. I like being happy, so I decided to see how I could apply that to other parts of my life.

I find my inner editor is great when it has a story to work on, but whenever I try to study or write an essay things fall rather to pieces. What goes wrong? I'm sitting there with the voice in the back up my head saying, why didn't you get up earlier? You are procrastinating. You are so lazy. You will fail and then life will be pointless and why don't you just go off and kill yourself. That is abusive, and the sort of behaviour one finds in disturbed and unhealthy relationships. So why do I let this happen? Because I've always believed the darn thing. If I know I am messing up maybe I will get better. Maybe, but no. It does not work that way.

Henceforth I have a project. I want my inner editor to behave the same in all areas of my life. I want it to be that little voice in my head workings things out. So my project is to turn it away from my personal failings, and toward what I love. I love writing and philosophy and living properly. The last being a big issue for someone who has only lived on her own for a year and a half. So instead of it telling me how much my essay sucks I want it to be preocupied with the ideas I am working with. Instead of being cross that I am not studying I want it to be thinking about Plato's conception of the spirit and how that applies to his metaphyics. Much more useful and I am keeping myself interested in the task at hand instead of thinking about myself all the time. The best way to improve any skill is to put it to use. Seems like it should work, right?

Yes, it should. But I gave it a funny purpose. I now understand Plato's conception of the spirit. Plato says the spirit should look upwards towards what is unchanging instead down towards the material. I've always thought that to be rather silly, slightly disturbed anti-materialism. But that's what I am trying to do with my inner editor! That's the way I am happiest. My inner editor is my spirit! So I believe in spirits. What interesting things I learn when I don't focus on getting up in the morning and sitting down to do my readings at exactly half past eight.

Watch for my next post, where I will discuss the difference between the Christian and the Socratic Spirit and show why the latter fits my definition and not the former.

I'm a vegetarian. Now What?

2009-12-03T19:33:00.000-08:00

I've always been bothered by the way we eat meat. People have often mistaken me for a vegetarian before. I eat meat once or twice a week, instead of with every meal. So it wasn't a challenge of what to eat or what options were available for proper nutrition. But people have also often mistaken me for an English Major and that doesn't mean I'm going to wake up one day and switch out of Philosophy.

I love philosophy, so I would not give it up. But I also love eating meat, which is why it frightens me that I made this choice. It means my character is less permanent then I thought. It means that I can change major things about who I am without the world turning on it's head. That worries me because it could mean I could stop wanting to be a good person, or that I could give up my religion and become Christian. It also means I can do good things, like become a good friend.

I went through this before when I set my mind to being tidy, and also when I gave up a few of my more prudish beliefs. But that was over a period of time. This is an on/off. Either I am or I am not. It does actually feel like my world is turned on it's head a bit. The way I look at the world and the way people interact with me has changed in the course of a few days. People look at me differently then they did before.

Blog post post

2009-12-02T01:08:00.000-08:00

Every time my one roommate does something melodramatic my other yells, 'why don't you post about it on your blog.'

I gather that is is an example of a general rule. Furthermore, in the pretentious circles one is to use a selection from a philosopher to prove a point. As such I shall now attempt to be emo.

Plato says that there are certain natures that readily accept philosophy, and those ought to be philosophers and not any other. He also says that to avoid being corrupted even if one does have such a nature requires intervention from the divine.

I do rather believe in a spirit world, and that there are things beyond here. Unfortunetely I somehow made the mistake of believing in such things without believing that I was special enough to be granted them, because that's just egotistical. So if I have a philosophical nature I still need divine intervention to get me to any useful sort of knowledge.

Obviously I should be a writer and not a philosopher. Then all I need is the second! It isn't necessary to know the form of the Good to write a good story after all.

Click 'next blog' without fear.

2009-12-01T10:25:00.000-08:00

Blogspot has just announced that we will now be able to click next without fear! I often wished that this were possible but every time I click that darn bottom I end up with something about breast enlargement or various other blogs that only exist to advertise. I am extremely happy now that I can click next and find a blog that actually exists as the writing of a real person, and more then that a blog related to what I like. No more sports blogs for me!

Check out the article here: Coming up next.

On into the future.

2009-12-01T10:13:00.000-08:00

Well, I finished National Novel Writing Month. I also finished my story. Somehow all nanonovels end up being exactly the length they are required to be, which makes me wonder if National Novel Writing Month cripples one's story.

I have a good sane plan for this year. I will be putting my novel away at least until I am done exams. When I look at it I will for once force myself to read through it. That's the hard part. It seems so very overwhelming. I'm considering recommending to other nanoing friends that we have a reading party. Then on to editing! I plan to build a skeletal structure out of what I wrote and what I should have written. I'll save the pieces that I love or seem useful and find homes for them in the edited story, and toss the rest. I once read a recommendation to use an 'odds and ends' folder. Anything that's good but doesn't fit elsewhere ends up there. Then when you need inspiration you choose a fragment and fit it. That might be where most of this novel ends up, but I love the characters so much that even if the text doesn't come out alive they will. This is a new experience. I have never loved my characters before.

Until that point I will try to keep to the three day a week posting schedule. I will probably talk a good amount about philosophy because that is the only thing I think about, but this also might turn into a blog about student culture. I feel like I ought to do some writing on that before I cease to be a student.

I win nanowrimo!

2009-11-30T22:21:00.000-08:00

I wrote 12,000 words today and 6000 yesterday. I think I would not recommend this to anyone who has any ounce of sense. But it can be done.

It wasn't a happy ending, which was my goal because beginner novels tend to turn depressing for effect. But everything came together quite well at the end and I was very happy with that.

The one thing I am disapointed about is that this celebratory icon isn't very awesome. The participant badge was lovely and steampunk and I don't think the Winner badge lives up to it at all.

11 minutes to midnight

2009-11-17T23:50:00.001-08:00

I have finally caught up for my nanowrimo novel. That means from now on I only have to write under two thousand words a day. It also means that I just wrote around eighteen th0usand nine hundred words in a span of two days. That is far too many words. Possibly more then I ever needed to write in my place, or will ever need to write. Oh, except that I will be doing my thesis. Hopefully that will be on something worth writing about.

5500 words behind

2009-11-17T20:52:00.000-08:00

Well, a little less then that. Hopefully I can take care of that tonight without losing all my plot line to the all-consuming monster that is Write Or Die. Somehow I always start to run out of ideas when I try and write large portions at once. The story seems to burn up faster then it should. Probably because I'm not taking time to get new material in between.

Unfortunately the nice folks at Write or Die still haven't got elecritc Shock mode set up. A shame. I think it would be a real motivational tool. They have published a desk top version though so maybe it is somewhere in the future.

But that is beside the point. What I would like to say is watch The Guild. It's an awesome web series with Felicia Day in it, who you might know from Doctor Horrible.

thirteen thousand five hundred words

2009-11-16T23:59:00.000-08:00

In one evening. I need braaains.

7000 words behind!

2009-11-10T22:41:00.001-08:00

Hello, my name on this blog is Liosis and I am 7000 words behind on my Nanowrimo novel.

I was three days ahead and then a few things happened.

1. My plot morphed into something else and I had to put a bit of time into figuring out how I could keep writing when the story in my head was so much cooler then the current story on the paper. No editing, which created big problems. In consideration it might have been better for my story to go back and add some stuff to allow me to continue, but rules is rules and I think that would be breaking them.

2. I decided to learn how to use imovie for mac and make a teaser, as seen below.

3. I went to Vancouver for my boyfriend's birthday. Sky trains are very cool but somehow did not inspire me to write my novel. In part this was because I forgot the power cord for my computer and didn't want it to die.

4. Also the course readings and the midterm.

Yep, so there's my reasons. Now all I need to do is catchup. Either I write 350 extra words every day or I try to write 7000 all at once in the next few days. 350 doesn't seem like that much, so maybe this isn't so bad.

Coming this Novem--

2009-11-06T00:09:00.000-08:00

what? It's too late to make a teaser for my novel? But what if I want to trick people into reading it? Or get really behind in my readings for class?

I'm going to assume that that argument convinces you, and offer without further rhetoric my attempt at one of those funky teasers people were playing around with a month ago.

Novel cover generator

2009-11-02T18:36:00.001-08:00

Lots of people on the NanoWrimo forum want covers. I would like one too, of course, but I can hardly justify the money that will leave my account in the form of a donation, much less something so insubstantial as a cover for a book that will likely never be published.

Happily there are generators for my sort. I give you Glass Giants Romance Novel Cover Generator. If your story actually is a romance you are in a bit of lack. If not it's still rather cute and something to put up on your blog and profile if you do not have the time or expertise to make or own, or the money to buy one.

Nanowrimo has gone Steampunk!

2009-11-02T18:23:00.001-08:00

You know what I adore? Steampunk.

Apparently so does the rest of the world, because even a site catering to such a numerous fan base as NanoWrimo has gone steampunk. I direct you to the steam coming out of the novel machine in this participant badge.

For anyone who does not know what Steampunk is I suppose I can tell you. It is a sub genre of fantasy. The setting is a fairytale Victorian era. For those who don't realize this the Victorian era was the industrial revolution. The dates coincide. All the absurd creations of the Great Exhibition is from, historically speaking, the second half of the industrial revolution. Steampunk manages to look at the horrors of industrialization with the awe and wonder usually reserved for hurricane. It grew out of Cyberpunk, as it's fantastical sister. The results are giant machines powered by steam infested with goblins. Really you cannot go wrong.

Fairy tales

2009-11-02T15:28:00.000-08:00

I've got two down and hundreds more to go. For some reason my story seems to be turning into fairy tales. Now I've heard of stories turning into smut without proper outlining, but fairy tales? Apparently that's just where my mind goes to when I'm confused. What a failure of a dirty minded creature I am.

So far I accidentally started little red riding hood and had a minor character as a cursed equivalent of Rapunzel's lover.

We feel fine

2009-11-01T21:57:00.000-08:00

I was looking for an applet I used to have when I came across We feel Fine. It is an incredibly entertaining program, which promises hours of procrastination. Okay, well maybe a few minutes. Everyday it searches for recently updated blogs with the words 'I feel...' or 'I am feeling...' or some similar thing and takes your age and locality and such if possible as well.

It's cool, but somewhat creepy. It is also somewhat depressing. Maybe it was just today but everyone sounded unhappy.

Midnght kick-off!

2009-11-01T01:13:00.000-07:00

There is nothing scarier then writing a novel in a month. Okay, that's a total lie. But it is rather scary an hour before you want to start writing, trying to cook pumpkin to make into pie and staring at the clock every few minutes to make sure an hours hasn't passed well you are looking away. There is something of suspense in there. And the realization that it is finally midnight and now it is November and you have to write starting now is rather scary, especially when there is the enforced deadline of 'go to sleep now or be very tired at work tomorrow.'

Well, it's 1:15 and I've written over todays quota. My characters so far introduced are brighter and more alive then I could have hoped. November looks good.

Nanowrimo 2009

2009-10-30T15:34:00.000-07:00

For anyone who hasn't heard of Nanowrimo it is a month long novel writing competition. The goal is to write 50,000 words in a month and anyone who does so wins. Oddly enough there are prizes this year apart from self-esteem. You can get a free copy of your book if you win.

I plan to revive this blog for the month of November to keep track of my success and failure, because good luck posting it on the forums.

Action words

2008-04-20T16:06:00.000-07:00

It is generally accepted that any proper story should include a bit of fighting or general action-doing. Problematically neither I nor many other writers seem very good at action-doing. It might have something to do with our tendency to hide alone in dark places and write for hours on end scribble-typing away. I think movies did it. When we think action we think movies and images. When we write with movies in our heads we end up with stage directions instead of a good fight.

To that end I made a list of all the words that turn up in action scenes so far as I know. It helps...somehow.

A
B
C: Cut, claw, clench, close, circle, crash, crunch, clink, catch
D: Duck, dance, dodge, draw, dive
E
F: Flinch, fall, face, flail.
G: Grab, growl, grate
H
I
J: Jump, jab, jar
K
L: Leap
M: move
N
O
P: Pull, pick up, punch
Q
R: Run, rise, race
S: Side-step, skip, spring, spatter, shoot, smash, stab, slap, slam, swing, slump,
stumble, strike, struggle, scream, spin, spar
T
U
V
W:Whip
X
Y
Z

Not THAT sort of fantasy

2008-04-17T00:17:00.000-07:00

It’s great being a fantasy writer. How can magic and adventure ever be boring? Fantasy writers can probably produce some of the dullest stuff on the planet, but it cannot be boring to write. If it is, you are doing it wrong. If you are a hermit like any good writer ought to be you will not have encountered the horror of being a fantasy writer. Sadly most cannot afford that and the problem with being a fantasy writer the possibility of accidently mentioning it in –gasp- public!

Now, if everyone did as they ought and read fantasy it would not be a problem. Sadly, the world tends not to be as it ought. Most people do not read fantasy; Most people do not seem to read much of anything at all aside from magazines and newspapers and those books on the best seller’s lists. (I know, insulting people is bad, but they make more money on those books then I ever will, therefore I may insult them if I like.)

Most people I’ve talked to do not even know what writing fantasy even means. It happens to everyone:

Stranger/Friend: “What are you doing?”

You: “Oh, just a little writing.

Stranger/Friend: “For school.”

You: “Nah, part of a novel.

Stranger/Friend: “A novel. Can I read it? What is it about?”

You: “Oh, it’s fantasy.”

Stranger/Friend: *blank look*

“…I see.”

And thus the nice interested person never speaks to you again. It is good way to get rid of unwanted company but nothing else.

I thought the peculiar looks and confusion meant a dislike of daring heroes going on quests. I assumed it had something to do with the deeply rooted hatred of elves. It turns out only writers know that hatred. I don’t often write about daring heroes because they are far too sarcastic to make obliging characters, but I could deal with people thinking I did. After a few questions I figured it out. People don’t assume fantasy means daring heroes, they assume it means sex. (Disclaimer: I do not write about sex. I do not hate people who do. I do not plan to stage riots against them. I’m just not the sort of person who writes about sex or romance, it gets in the way of my plotlines.)

Therefore, my recommendation to those of our daring number planning to admit that they write fantasy: don’t say you write fantasy. Tell people what you write about. Tell them that you write about elves, or questing heroes, or insane hell-bent necromancers planning to summon the dark forces to aid him in the stopping Gnomish Liberation Front. Tell them about what you write, not the genre. Genre matters. Genre makes every difference in the world sometimes but they don’t know that.

Blog closed - unclosed

2008-04-05T11:01:00.000-07:00

Yep. No more blog. Don't seem to be updating, so no point in pretending I am. Bye now.

---
I'm back.

Writing about nothing about writing

2008-03-30T00:43:00.000-07:00

The danger of being a writer is that as writers we are supposed to write about the world, and if we become completely involved in writing then writing becomes our world. At that point we are writing about writing, which means we are writing about nothing because there is at no point a proper subject matter. At this point we build our subject matter, and it looks rather silly because it has no grounding in anywhere but our own heads. We take it apart and try to figure out what went wrong. Once it is taken apart we find we have no glue and therefore we are left without any subject matter at all.

Therefore we buy black hats and wander about at cafes talking of how we cannot speak. Happily this gives us subject matter and so we hurry off to write about our experience. We send it off and everyone loves it because they are having exactly the same problem, so they write the same thing. At this point we aren't writing about art, but writing about writing about art...or something down the line.

Now to be serious: Draw the line at some point. If you are to write you must love more then writing. Do not quit your day job, become a mathemetician, go for very long walks, or work in the garden. There is no harm in loving writing and if you do not you ought not to write. But I love writing too and I say that those who see it as the singular aim of life do it great harm.

Of course they say that us fantasy writers are foolish and dishonest fools, so I suppose I cannot do much good here. If I'm writing about writing does that mean I'm writing about nothing right now?

The Gutenberg Project

2008-03-23T12:40:00.000-07:00

Project Gutenberg is the first and largest single collection of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971and continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today. - http://www.gutenberg.org

I love the Gutenberg project and it deserves all the attention and support we can give it. Therefore, attention. Any book with an expired copyright falls into the knowledge commons, and anything in the commons is candidate for this collection.

Drawing lines and Artistotle

2008-03-22T22:11:00.000-07:00

Since I ought to be writing a paper on Aristotle right this is a most fitting topic. His writing on ethics discusses Eudaemonia (how to life well as a human being). I am discussing how to write well as a fantasy author. I should point out that I am not discussing either how to sell your writing.

Steve Thorn's comment on my previous article reminded me that I tend to sound like an extremist at times. I am very much for the history and precedent of things, so much so that a book can be spoiled for me is I think they have written about elves in the 'wrong' way. Still not sure what the 'right' way is, but according to my tastes it isn't that.

< utterly meaningless)----------------------------------------(completely unoriginal >

The best place to be, for life or writing or both, is somewhere in the middle. I tend to balance in a rather more peculiar way. Half of the things I write would be utterly meaningless without the other half which happen to be completely unoriginal. I'm not really sure that is the proper way to go about it though.

Werewolves, vampires, and orginal content

2008-03-18T21:34:00.000-07:00

Now the obvious flaw of inclination is that people are often inclined to write fanfiction. I shall not here condemn fanfiction, I admit that I am not in favour of it but there are good arguments for its creation and its existence does not do us harm.

The trouble here is who is choosing to write. Inspiration is a wonderful and powerful thing but that does not make it useful. It is amazing what power stories can have over us and if all we desire is an emotional reaction to a particular story then fanfiction is acceptable. If we desire to be writers then it is a different matter. There is a drive for originality and no one who wishes to be a writer can allow themselves to fall completely under the power of anothers stories.

So we must not fall under the power of other writers, we must write stories that are our own. This falls into the originality debate. I like tradition and I like structure and I have a great affection for literary allusion. Therefore we can say that we do not need complete freedom from influence (which leads to scary things like postmodern toilet art) but instead we need to draw upon pure sources.

Clearly another writer, one writing in our generation cannot be a pure source, it is impossible to tell what is lasting and what is transeunt. So, to be specific, what is fantasy? It is stories that draw on other times and ideas, that permit things which cannot exist within a basic scientific understanding. It is not breaking new ground but reiterating old. Such, at least, is my view of fantasy. Therefore the appropriate source material is that of old things. Ancient culture, ancient mythology, and old folk and fairytales, along with general history and the various understandings of the world make up the material with which fantasy can play. Therefore to avoid the trap of influence we look to the past, and isn't that why we write fantasy to begin with?

Derisive originality

2008-03-17T20:44:00.000-07:00

Despite my hatred of word murderers I still have a tendency to play with meanings, often to my own detriment. Derisive originality is one such toy.

Originality, as the creation of a new or primary thing, cannot be called bad. It is, by necessity of our situation if nothing else, inherently good.

That said, 'originality' is a damaging ideal and one that I find more reason to hate then to love. I sometimes enjoy using 'originality' in a derisive manner, to refer to something that is sub-standard or unworthy of my consideration. I did not realise see anything amiss in this tendency until I used it outside of the writerly context and found myself an object of ridicule. Or, to be more precise, I was accused of being a communist. My opinions of communism are varied but that is not the issue at stake. The point highlighted the negative aspects of both communism and my apparent view. Conformity. Conformity, of course, is a very bad and nasty thing, especially when created at gunpoint.

Oddly enough this was precisely my point. Originality, innovation, this is conformity. It is not conformity in its denotative value, but in application. It also seems strange that we would become original at gunpoint, considering this is not a communist state and no one is holding the gun. But such is the case. We, we as writers and we as students and we as human beings, are told repeatedly that we must be new and different and shiny. And if we are not? Then we are not good enough, and we are not living up to the standards of society, and we are in general degenerate.

When I call someone 'original' in a snide and derisive manner I am saying that instead of doing what they wanted to do they allowed this invisible gun to control their actions. Such people do not follow their natural inclinations and abilities. Instead they listen to that incessant whispering which tells them over and over what is acceptable.

I shall speak as a writer because that is what I know. It is not acceptable to write about elves. It is not acceptable to discuss idealism. It is not acceptable to have heroes, and it is even less acceptable to have villains. Such things are clichés. Over done. Dead (because you shot them?). You must go somewhere else, you cannot stay here. Do not write of fairyland; make up your own world instead. Do not write about elves; make up an alien race instead.

True, writing of elves is not new. True, it is difficult to do it well. That does not matter. What matters is that I want to write about elves and I do not care if I am shot in the dead because I do not believe that they gun even exists. I mean, an invisible talking gun? Come now, be rational.

If you are truly desire to create that world, to create those people in every loving detail, to make them your own, heart and soul, then that is originality. That is how I feel about elves, though I do not create them. If it is, however, not the desire to explore a strange land breathing under purple but merely the compulsion to be original then you are dishonest. If you are not dishonest, if originality is the only thing that you love and live for, then you are truly a sorry creature. Those who pursue art for arts sake I respect: those are called artists. Those who pursue originality for its own sake well deserve my contempt because they deny themselves.

How words die

2008-03-16T20:42:00.000-07:00

I took a course last year on the history of western thought. My professors told me many things that stuck in my mind. One was that evil is dead, according to both Nietzsche and Derrida, and the other is that we live in an age of profound skepticism.

At the time I was surprised. I wondered what the average person would say if they were told that we are profoundly skeptical. I’m still quite sure they haven’t noticed.

As a writer I am rather disturbed by the death of words. It is like finding the grave of a friend you never knew was dead.

Take morality. The Greeks, particularly the sophists, began to doubt the existence of morality. Those who lost the reality of it sought to convince others of it. It died for some that that death was spread to others until all were infected by it, then it was cut away to allow for new growth.

The trouble is that morality can die for some without dying for others. Why should reality be destroyed completely just because in one man it is dead? Why should reason be killed completely just because it is dead for me. Is it even dead for me? Yes. If I can question it it is dead. I said that dissecting an idea kills it, but it seems that the ideas are already dead when they are dissected.

Unless...unless we are like Aristotle, digging up the bulbs to look at them because they die every spring. Maybe reason will return when it is warmer and we are closer to the sun. Not for me, but for others. We are rational and we are a-rational. I must accept that I am part of the latter.

Doldrums

2008-03-16T20:38:00.000-07:00

There is, of course, no excuse for inactivity. My only defense can be that I did not only give up blogging for some other activity, but in fact gave up all creative activities. I was supposed to edit my novel, I was supposed to finish a story, I was supposed to paint. I did none of these. I did write, but not by choice. So I make my inexcusable excuse and say that I have been concentrating on my studies.

I did, however, write a study-relevant poem:

Oh, Justice, creature good and noble!
You who love the littlest creature
who protects the old, the young, the weak,
the dreamers, the workers, the else.

Oh, Justice, I invoke thee
(in the vocative!)
creature good and noble,
come smell your way to us
return to us, for we love you
you are our teacher, our protector
you are good and you are kind.

Oh, Justice, blindfish, mole,
protect the children of the words,
the children of democracy,
the old, the young, the dreamers and farmers,
we, together, call thee forth.