Thoughts on my last post

My lost past feels a little overwhelming in my mind right now. I feel very excited about what I wrote, and about how I wrote it. The order I wrote it. Sorta. I'm not sure.

It feels strange because the more I keep reading the more I feel like my interests are coming together. I want to figure out what my dissertation project could potentially be. Most of the programs I am interested are interdisciplinary and want you to have some sense of that.

And what I just wrote about, (informing [historical] simulation theory of mind with a historical ontological perspective as a way to re-conceptualize the humanities around the concepts of simulation, synthetic experience, and intuition), feels like something that I could pursue in a dissertation length work. Most of my posts already correspond to it in one way or another, and would play a certain role. That excites me. I should perhaps start compiling them in a word document that is segmented to be elaborating for more than 100 pages. I think I have that much material by now.

So much more research to do in the future.

One thing i am considering, however, is attempting to change the direction I am taking. The last number of books I have been reading have been really close to my favorite ideas. Collingwood, Foucault, a book on self directed neuroplasticity, Goldman's Simulating Minds, all of it pertains extremely closely to simulation and synthetic experience and historical thinking and all of that.

I am considering reading The German Ideology by Marx and Engels I think that is what I will read next. It is pretty far removed, in a sense, from my direct interests. It might be a little related since I have heard Marx utilizes a sort of historical sociology. I really don't know much about Marx, it's a shame. Jeffrey Herf told me not to finish undergrad without reading Marx. I suppose I should read it now then.

I also want to finish my major edits on my expanded version of my Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde paper. I am close.

I also want to read/am reading The Landscape of History. And I want to read David Shield's The Thing About Life is That One Day You'll Be Dead. I liked Reality Hunger.

The bottom line is that I am reeling a little bit from my last post. It is so large. And it marks such a major connection for me to make and express. I have been contemplating an essay on combining Clausewitz, Collingwood, and Foucault for quite some time now. Then at some point, I forget how actually, the connections solidified and I had to write it.

It feels like such a large and substantial expression of the core of my thought that I feel exposed.

I am not sure what direction to take next with my reading and writing because I feel like I have just expressed something so massive for me that I'm not even sure what it means in the much bigger picture (of a potential dissertation, or something like that).