Creeping out of the Cave

I creep out of the cave, and when I reach the top, there is a blinding light that keeps me from making out anything around me. Slowly but surely, my blurred vision starts to give way to shapes, and in these shapes I find many details. When my visioned has sharpened, and I have adjusted to the light of the sun, I am capable of perceiving shapes, colors, and textures. All of these things make the world I once new in the cave seem petty, incalculably mundane and unimportant. This new knowledge grants me with supreme enlightenment and a broader understanding of the universe.

I suppose there may be a point to the story (Platonic in essence) that I've drawn out here. Over the past two months or so I have managed to come out of a dark and repressive cave. One that has kept me for so long staring at shadows on the wall. Having been fixed in a position of supreme ignorance I leave myself with a question as to why I could not have seen the path out of the cave sooner. With my new knowledge and fortitude I leave the cave, stronger than before. I, in a general refusal to return, have found myself bearing a new relation to this world. The existential conundrum is over, and I am now free to be an agent that does not bind himself to the binds of experience. I have attained the rationality necessary of being a human in a human world. I can engage in that supreme act of creation given to men by fate, or God, or that ordering principle responsible for our being on this planet. I have retained my academic doubt (my agnosticism) while being able to pursue a new end in life not driven by the expectation and mediocrities of the world around me.

At this point, one might wonder what all this means. Well, it means I've opened up and have decided that awkwardness, and shyness are not the ways in which I need to approach my social life. Hopefully I can put that to the test this weekend.

Waking Death

I am not sure as to what the title of this particular post actually means, however, I feel that maybe it could apply to something. I suppose "Waking Death" could apply to the people I meet on a day to day basis. They are the reverse of discovering life, or their place in the world they live in. They consume themselves with petty concerns (How big will my paycheck be?) or simply unthinkingly pass through time and existence without any concern for the questions which could re-orient and even shift their priorities. Living unflinchingly in such a world seems to me to be a waste of existential potential. Oh well, I suppose I'm not here to tell anyone else how to live their life (just that they're wrong).

Genuous and Vacuous

This semester I've found myself to be a kind of misanthrope. I'm not finding myself to be this way to the extent that I've abandoned all human contact, but I am certainly exhausted. Mentally, emotionally and intellectually I am exhausted. I find myself tired, and I feel as though I at least need to jot down a few of my thoughts about how to approach my studies. This is because I'm for some reason under the impression that there are those who would believe certain things about me only based on what I've said. While using the words of another person is by no means a bad way to come to grips with understanding this person you must understand that within the setting of a classroom, or within academia in general it will not always be the case that what words one shares will always be expressive of their values, or I should say their "core values"; at least, this is not true within a certain sense.

Whether you're measuring independent and dependent variables in a science experiment, or you are making deductions based on a set of premises, it is often the case that your values need not enter into your judgments about what you are studying. Yes, this brings into question the idea of a "value-free" science, which, for all intents and purposes, is not something that can be so easily subscribed to. This is because of the term "value" that we are using. We think that scientists have particular "values" in use when making their own studies. These values might be something like "being parsimonious" or "being purely empirical". So, then science is driven by values although not "values" like "moral values" in terms of how we judge the moral rightness and wrongness of our actions. There is a normative element here however, and the problem comes in distinguishing one normative proposition from another. In claiming that we have a "value-free science" you commit yourself to say that science is the kind of thing not driven by values, and that the claims made here about what a scientist ought to do is qualitatively different from the kinds of sentences uttered by people making "value claims"(normative claims). But how? I don't believe I see that such normative propositions can be so easily precluded from being "value statements" since they are indicative of a particular approach to science. That is, we may check in our baggage at the door to some extent, but we must keep our scientific baggage to insure the integrity of our own work.

So then, we would probably be better off saying that we leave certain values at the door before actually diving into our scientific meanderings. If we are studying a religion with which we have few sympathies, we attempt to insure that no pejorative language is permitted within the realm of that study lest it taint the study. We wish to step back an simply observe how one thing has affected another, or how one will continue to affect another. Perhaps this is a value in itself? A value science has could be maintaining "objectivity" and by objectivity we simply mean the absence of any language apart from those to which we are assigning our language the "job" of describing a situation in as favorable terms as possible. We may come to the need for a neologism or two, but by creating a theory, or hypothesis that avoids emotionally laden language we still have some way of working within our own "value-laden" system of science and still manage to provide fruitful theories.


"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. "--Aristotle

"How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech." - Soren Kierkegaard

"The whole problem with the world is that
fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves,
but wiser people so full of doubts." -- Bertrand Russell

Salience in the Uneventful

Oftentimes one might think that because the weekend has arrived that this means there is room for many events to take place. Instead, I am here at 2:35 in the morning on a Saturday night/Sunday morning only thinking about how nothing has been happening. Perhaps that is not a completely fair assessment of the way things are, since I did have some minor things happen this weekend. So I suppose I will transition into the activities of this weekend.

Friday night, after eating at Subway for dinner (great turkey subs), I went to Barnes and Noble and invested heavily in some reading material. It was probably more compulsive than anything else but I walked out of the store with four books. I bought a copy of the Koran (I thought it would be nice to have with my middle eastern politics class this semester), a copy of some "essential" readings of the famous psychoanalyst Carl Jung, a classic book in sociology by a man named Charles Wright Mills called the "Sociological Imagination", and a copy of William James' "Pragmatism" (a piece of American philosophy by a renowned philosopher and famous psychologist responsible for the "Varieties of Religious Experience"). In passing, I will just mention today that I picked up a copy of G.W.F. Hegel's "Philosophy of History" -- it's apart of a longer term project I'm going to engage in to study Karl Marx and fully understand his thought.

Other than the mass purchase of books something else happened, I was approached by a woman. Honestly, this rarely happens to me so I think it might be kind of fun to summarize. I was standing in the Psychology section looking for a copy of Carol Gilligan's "In a Different Voice" (a classic study in human moral development) and I suddenly I'm being spoken to. Honestly, I was too trapped within my own thoughts to really remember much of how the conversation began, or even what it was about (or even her name at this point), but it was still interesting. I found myself being rather strict and picky though. She seemed like a sweet girl, but she seemed as though she was attempting to emulate me in some way. After asking me some questions about my own opinions I began to notice just how careful she was trying to be in selecting her words. I was flattered in a way -- I guess this meant she wanted to appeal to me maybe in the way that I may have appealed to her, but I felt that if she needed to do this then I would probably be better off without having to pursue it any further. And anyways, as all of you who would likely be reading this would know, I just had a rather rough break up and the idea of even having to conceive of taking a woman seriously at this point is nightmarish at best. Also, I spent an entire year being in a relationship with a parrot, I don't necessarily believe I need to approach anything that would resemble that again.

So, the salience in the uneventful seems here to be the calm, tranquil peace of life without the trouble of insanity or instability brewing overhead. I've felt ecstatic lately, I have my projects I want to work on after I graduate (basically to keep me sharp until I begin graduate school) and I'm wrapping up my remaining semester. Other than the chance (and self-esteem boosting) experience with the woman at the book store, nothing else has happened. I'm a little more irritable tonight over an entirely separate slew of issues, but I believe it would be best to leave those for another day's entry.

State of Flux

The World is observed as constantly changing. Change is observed and often unobserved but later discovered. Therefore, even when we are not observing change the world is changing frequently -- in fact, the world is never staying the same.

This is a Heraceletian argument for the nature of change in the world. He claimed that everything was perpetually in a state of flux. Is it? When you consider things on a subatomic level, the molecules, that form bonds are constantly breaking apart and starting new bonds. At this level there seems to be something to the argument -- everything is in a constant state of flux. Everything we see is something that is in a constant state of change, although we may not notice. Decay, is the constant state of being. Even human beings age; cells die, they divide and after a few years you have an entirely new body (so to speak).

Today was good, and I was just reflecting on change because I realize that the human being is a very adaptable creature. Whether we suffer from the caustic pain of our emotions running through our minds at the heights of human drama, or if we need to heal and repair through fierce physical strain; the human body, the human being, is remarkable. Even the most pessimistic individual, using her pessimism, can establish some means of coping with the world around her.

So, "Things change, or are in flux" and "the human being can cope with this change". I believe this tells us a little about the human condition. Yes, sometimes being "stuck inside" of your own head, limited to your own perceptual experiences can feel alienating. Not knowing what is happening in your own life can be that much worse. But if we need to, we can pull through and fight against the adversity in our own lives and form, through the madness, a sense of purpose.

It follows from these claims that this change is not to be feared. Coping with the change should serve as a motivating factor for believing that it is not to be feared. For the average, "balanced" (using the term loosely) person there should be no cause for concern over the vicissitudes of life.

In fact, perhaps we should concern ourselves more with separating ourselves from those things which produce pain. Perhaps the Buddha's answer is the correct one. Focus more on helping your fellow man (like Jesus) and take worry not about the drama of petty, fickle, and often morally bankrupt people. You can live your life in a more productive way without sharing in their petty concerns.

Managing the Ridiculous; The Philosophy of Richard

I don't necessarily mean, by the Philosophy of Richard, my own practical outlook on matters. Rather, I mean my own self as the subject of philosophical inquiry. You see, I take it that everyone has their own "philosophy of ..." in the sense that I've made it out. We subject ourselves to analysis, and we have our own analysis for others. So, in my case, I could be said to have some views on the Philosophy of Chace, the Philosophy of Ryan, and the Philosophy of Adam. I am not restricted to those people, but you get the picture. So, I'm going to be somewhat ambiguous here and, until the end, not let on as to who this is the philosophy "of" in my collection of thoughts today.

I'm fairly bitter, but I'm also fairly happy in regards to where my bitterness finds its origins. This could not be more true than with my own enlightenment yesterday. Coming to find out that not only was I right (my own predictive powers are quite astounding, I possess some level of perspicuity on matters about the behavior of my friends and ex-girlfriends), but to have it confirmed that I have been fully betrayed is cathartic. I find that the further along I find myself the more I'm going to find reasons with which I can more easily part with the broken promises of the past.

It is difficult to say why what has happened, happened. I do not completely understand the motives, nor can I. I would only like to say that I harbor no hostility for this man. Chace helped me come to a specific realization, this man probably has a fairly limited perspective on what has happened here. So, because of this, I'm going to place an online record of how my relationship flowered and wilted (and whomever reads this can do what they will with the information).

Basically, the relationship seemed as though it was going well. Surely, we had our disagreements, but I wouldn't have believed they were any greater than they were with any other couple. So, time passes and with the passing of time many words are shared. I'm told that we would be moving off together when I found out where I would be attending graduate school that she even wanted to go so far as to get married, and eventually have children (you know, the stereotypical picture; which I have no problems with). While at first this made me very uneasy, I came to accept, and even believe, that this is the way things would play out. I came to believe that I was in the last relationship of my life -- that this person fulfilled me in such a way that I needed no one else.

However wrong I was, I believed it, and she continued in this charade. It was when she began working on Fort Benning that things began to look strange. She suddenly developed and vociferously expressed (often as paroxysm) her "love for our troops" and would constantly expect my own opinion on the matter. After roughly a month of working there things began to change rather rapidly. She would not spend time with me above and beyond a couple of hours on some days. Also, she would cancel plans, or 'override' plans we made during the weekend. Finally, I could no longer make plans with her period. I was not going to accept someone that I actually referred to as my "future wife" simply disappearing without a trace, so I constantly attempted to confront her. To no avail, I would find myself often wrestling with persuasion in order to be in her presence.

Things reached a sort of climax when one night I finally became angry, and found myself at her house shortly after she canceled plans yet again. We spoke, and I was persistent, but the closest I received to her acknowledgment of what was happening was the comment that she guessed she "wasn't my girlfriend." After this yes, I shared some hateful words. I never, however, approached the level of a threat, nor did I ever come close to "following" or "stalking" another individual. I would never stoop so low. I felt as though some injustice had been administered in the situation, that I was not treated fairly. So, without closure, it seemed as though I reacted (however bad this may have been) negatively and said some things that I suppose I do mean. I do believe she is what I said she was, and in terms of past relationships, she is no better than Brittni (and my friends know exactly what that means, this is not a compliment).

Ultimately, I was lied to and cheated on. That a sense of security was inveigled from me simply for the sake of self-gratification makes me sick. Knowing that she will simply repeat the mistakes she made with me, as well as with Ryan and even Bryce is why I feel bad for this man. So, in formulating a Philosophy of Anne Marie, one should begin with only one axiom. This axiom states, "The ethical is not a question, the only matter of importance is one's own self-interest, their own ability to attain self-gratification." Once this axiom is accepted, an understanding of her behavior, her every motive, becomes possible. I only wish to give a fair warning. I will likely never speak to this man, but as angry as the threat made me, I realize this probably came from a filtered and one-sided view of what was taking place. In the end, I don't want to see someone suffer from the machinations of a petty, insecure, and selfish human being. We are far better off without such people in our society.

A Beginning with which to be Reckoned.

A long time ago I started a blog on this website under the same address, and now a couple of years later I have decided it is time to restart this old hobby of mine. Blogging was once a fun venture, although it became stressful given that it was transformed into the "Richard-circle-of-friends-drama-forum". Much took place in that particular blog, and perhaps it will on this one as well. However, until such duress must be suffered, I will be writing. I have a predilection nowadays for writing overly wordy, and "pensive" blogs on my other websites, but I am hoping to do nothing on here but discuss the day's happenings, and perhaps sharing my opinions about recent events, whether they be in my personal life, or even on the news. So, there's my first post, and hopefully I will have something to write about soon!