August

August has flown by. I'm not sure what I've been doing. For the most part I've just been socializing and looking for a new job. I've been reading a little bit. But I had to take a break from philosophy.

I read Naked Lunch and honestly didn't like it very much. It was a pretty frustrating book.

Right now I'm reading a book called Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy And The Specter Of Inverted Totalitarianism.

It excites me because it gives me a sense of a concrete line of historical and political research that I could carry out. I find the relationship between government, corporations, the military, and the universities. Really fascinating stuff.

Compelled me to buy a copy of a book called The Cold War And The University. Really really interested.

I may end up researching something like that for graduate work.

But yeah. Practicalities are dominated my life right now. A job hunt. Ordinary living.

Oh well!

I have an idea for an essay.

It would be titled 'Atonal Worlds, Master Signifiers, And Clausewitzian Theory Of Choice'.

Zizek's book Violence was what really clicked and made me feel like I could write something extended. Especially the chapter 'Sexuality In The Atonal World'.

I look forward to writing it. But I'm not sure when I will.

Over and out.

NO POEMS RIGHT NOW.

I Only Feel My Own Pain

This one is for my friend.

Because I believe him.

And I don't believe myself.

I want to be able to feel everyone's pain.

But I'm so locked in to my own world.

I'm not able to escape it.

I am in such a rut in my life.

I'm lying in my bed waiting for the morning.

I'm hot.

I'm listening to the people walk by. I listen to them talk.

I'm envious of them.

I'm jealous.

I am NOT okay with them walking around.

Mainly because I'm not walking outside with new people these days.

I've settled.

I've settled into something and I need to become unsettled again.

I'm unsettled in my settledness and I am only feeling my own pain.

My world is shrinking.

I'm fussy and irritable and I don't care because I need to feel those ways in order to change things.

I need to get a little bit pissed because I need to do something different.

I need to change my god damn life.

And I can't do that unless I'm a little bit pissed off.

Because if I wasn't pissed off then I wouldn't feel the need for change.

Where did all this anger come from?

I wonder when I first felt it or worried about it.

I wonder how angry I really am.

A big part of me says pretty angry.

Pretty furious. But in the stupidest ways. In this way in which I state blankly. In which I wait and wait and wait and just explode internally. Implode externally.

Just silly words.

I don't feel your pain. I can't afford to think about your pain right now.

But of course I can!

And of course I feel your pain!

I feel many people's pain.

But I will admit that I'm feeling my own pain more than feeling other people's pain.

My capacity for empathy is not at its peak right now because my own perspective is consuming me.

I've been listening to my headphones on the bus again. And we all know how much that contributes to an isolated perspective. Not only are we living our own movie, but our movie has a soundtrack that no one else can hear.

Oh well!

OH well!

I feel your pain.

I do.

But I don't want to right now.

Because I'm feeling my own pain a good bit.

Thanks.

Aspects Of The Philosophy Of History

I'm trying to slowly return to working on my essay on Mediums and Relationships.

The third section, where I left off, is on the philosophy of history.

I have been struggling to even begin to think about the philosophy of history.

But tonight I have written a page or two and I have been able to parse the philosophy of history into several different questions. By clarifying the questions posed by the discipline I am hoping to understand how those questions will help me with my questions.

I've decided that there are at least four different problems in philosophy of history.

One question regards the proper object of history: what is it that historians study? Is it events? Is it actions? Is it thought? Another regards the proper purpose of historical study: do we study the past because it is valuable in its own right? Do we study it to understand ourselves? Do we study it to make better political decision? Do we study it to help us create ourselves? Another question regards the epistemological foundations of historical study: how do we know what we know about history? And finally, I’ll say that another regards the meaning of history: when we study history do we see the linear development of rationality? Do we see the movement of cycles? Do we see human nature being played out? Or do we see a process by which human beings create themselves?

That is what I wrote tonight.

I'm undoubtedly treading on well-worn territory. Other people have wondered about these things. But now I need to keep wondering about history.

Contact Lenses And My Imagined Self

I've been wearing contact lenses sometimes lately. I'm wearing them right now.

I see better with glasses on. But I still like it.

But I walk in front of the mirror and I'm like 'WHO IS THIS STRANGER IN MY APARTMENT'.

Well it isn't that dramatic.

But I do experience this moment where I don't quite recognize myself.

I imagine myself having glasses. I'm comfortable imagining myself that way.

I just got new glasses, too. I have to reimagine myself.

I have to reconfigure my model of myself.

Modeling. Imagination. Collingwood. Frith. All these people. All these ideas.

This post is nothing to think about.

But the issue of modeling, of imagination, of the self, all of that is to be thought about.

But not right here or right now.

Looking

Looking for something is a fascinating experience.

I am looking for a bottle. I know it is blue. I'm look around my apartment. I don't know where it is. I want it. I'm going to find it.

But how do I go about looking for it?

What does it mean to look for something?

It means that we don't know where it is and we want it and are going to attempt to find it.

But how do you do it?

How do you explain to someone how to look for something?

Does it involve focus? Does it involve reasoning?

Or does it involve something a little more subtle?

I think it involves something a little more subtle.

I think it requires an open field of vision in which you are looking at everything without focusing on something in particular.

I think it is about dispersing your attention.

It would be possible to intensionally rationalize and to focus on all the little spots that it 'should be'.

'Oh, well I always walk this way, so it must be along this path.'

I read once that we misplace things because we break our routines, because we go some place and put something in spots where we don't usually. But then we confuse ourselves by thinking about our routines. We decide to look in the places that we normally go. We looks towards familiar spots. But we should be looking in those places that we don't usually go.

It is like that famous joke about a man who is looking for his keys under a streetlight even though he lost them somewhere in the dark. He looks in the lit area because he can see.

Once I lost my headphones at work. I was walking around outside looking for them. I retracted my steps multiple times and I finally found them somewhere.

I talked to a friend about how it was a fascinating experience. How it was an interesting mental/phenomenological experience. He asked if it was a good exercise in controlling my emotions. I told him that it was an interesting experience in controlling my rationality.

Because I think that looking is harmed by too much thought. I think that looking means abandoning ideas and just looking. It means keeping your attention wide, keeping your focus dispersed. You look at an entire room and you trust that your unconscious is going to pull your attention to the object you are looking for.

I once told this friend that I thought that thinking worked much like the National Archives (where we worked together): You fill out a request slip, you hand it to the archivist, and you wait for the information to be retrieved for you. Sometimes it comes quickly. Sometimes it takes a while.

I think that at some point I have a question. And then I wait for my minds answer. Sometimes I coax my mind along by thinking logically. But often I have no idea what sort of logical trains to follow. I have no idea how to continue thinking.

How to continue thinking. How to think differently.

That is the problem.

And I think that looking requires an openness to think in many different ways. To transcend or shed thought. To just look.

Maybe that is why John Gray asked "Cant we not think of the aim of life as being simply to see?" Maybe Gray didn't mean the same thing.

But maybe he did.

There is something going on with looking. With paying attention. Zen. All that. Whatever.

I found what I was looking for tonight. It was a blue bottle.

I wonder if I can starting looking at my life the way I looked at my apartment tonight.

But I don't know.

Because in life, unlike in my apartment, I don't know what I'm looking for.

Wild Beasts

So lately I have really been digging on Smother, the new album by Wild Beasts. I am really excited by the cd. And I'm excited to be excited about the cd. I love when I love music.

And this album is super cool.

The song 'Loop The Loop' might be my favorite so far. It just pops so much. Fascinating vocals. Writing about music is hard. But I love this one part around 2 minutes in where the song hits the beginning of the climax. A cymbal splashes and the song gains a new momentum. You can feel it working towards something stronger than it has shown you yet. Then he busts out an intense vocal performance. Saying:

"Forget now

How many must I
Forget now
How many must I
Forget now
How many must I forget?

Remember
As many as I
Remember
As many as I
Remember
I must forget.

Regret now
How many do I
Regret now
How many do I
Regret now
How many do I
Regret?

Slender
Oh there are some but they're
Slender
Oh there are some but they're
Slender
Oh there are some but they're
Slender sums I regret."

Something about the lyrics, and especially their delivery, really hits me. Really makes me feel good. Makes me feel emotional. And that is what I really like about music. That expressiveness. His voice really does it.

Those lyrics make me think about choice. About living. About loss. Oh well. Just vague issues to deal with.

The song 'Albatross' also sticks out to me a lot. It is so hard to capture the song in words. To explain it. I understand a friend's project a little more trying to write about a cd. Because it is tough. But this song sounds like it is about relationships to me:

"I, I blame you, I blame you
For all of those things I've been through
Don't feel bad, not a pang
It's my neck around which you hang
Like a chain or a tag
I flinch and you fall through the cracks
To the sea and all it bears
The secrets that I should've shared
They drowned then and there
Yeah drowned then and there
Yeah drowned then and there"

Again, his voice is so powerful. It really is inseparable from the lyrics for me.

The last song on the album 'End Come To Soon and Death' is also really interesting. It is longer than the rest (7 minutes), and is very interesting. It makes me think about death.

I would like to try and write about music more regularly. This was an interesting exercise.

But I'm very tired, and didn't even write very substantially on this album.

But I really like it.

The Absurd

My dad recently sent me an article by Thomas Nagel. It was titled 'The Absurd'.

It made me think about a lot of things.

My thinking is still focusing around historical ontology and the philosophy of action.

It seems that the notion of the absurd plays a role.

I'm still lost.

I'm still thinking a lot.

I'm glad my dad sent me this essay because I fucking loved reading it.

I fucking love reading philosophy.

Reading this thing I was like 'oh my god I love reading stuff like this'.

I just eat it up.

I want to start reading more philosophy.

I'm almost done with Naked Lunch.

After that I'll turn to reading some more philosophical stuff.

Then hopefully my writing will take off.

Whatever.

I just love philosophy so much.

Get over it, Riley.