Day 90
New books are terribly overrated. I don't know why anybody buys new, at least when used is an option. Today I picked up five books, all classic fiction, for 18 bucks. I hope to read them, plus two or three others, over the summer.
I've read so much this year so far, but almost exclusively philosophy. I am looking forward greatly to opening up fiction, especially since my recent conversion to the belief that fiction, and poetry, have as much to offer philosophy (if not more) than analytic journals do.
Sometimes I feel like I'm searching for something, but I'm never quite sure what that thing is. As time passes, I am more convinced that the most important things in my life will not occur on account of my deliberation, but on account of happenstance, luck, or coincidence.
An ex girlfriend recently said to me that after four years of philosophy, I'm not one inch closer to figuring it all out. "what out?" I asked. "This whole mess of existence," she replied.
On one level I was deeply hurt, because figuring things out is the essence of much of what I've devoted my education and spare time to (this, as opposed to absorbing pre-confirmed facts and information, as is done in most departments).
But, on another level, I was indifferent to the remark. Frankly I don't know what the girl was even talking about. Seems to me the 'thing' I wasn't closer to was such an impossibly constructed mixture of intellectual feat and nonsense that there was nothing to take offence to.
And finally, on a whole other level the girl was right. Not for the reason she thought she was right; the comment was only out of bitterness and frustration; but for the very simple truth that enlightment (as it is often called) simply does not occur. At least not in my opinion.
There is no finish to knowledge, there is no end to the process of learning and growing, for it is a process. In reproduction, we slingshot a massive part of ourselves into the future. We are alive. Like the trees and animals around us, we do not stop growing, regenerating, moving, processing, feeding and excreting, not until the very last moment. And here I do not mean enlightenment.
So I guess the best response to such an odd accusation from a bitter ex (as opposed to the equally bitter one I probably gave at the time) would be to agree, and note that reaching a grand intellectual end point has never been my aim. The aim is to learn and understand, which is as much a product of age and experience as it is of burying the mind in well-organized silent phonemes, or latching ones self onto the apparent wisdom of previous generations.
Yes, it is all very paradoxical.
Well, paradoxical for those who deny that the soul, or the mind, is immortal! It is in many ways a position of reconciliation between the mind and the world. But I do not imagine it is true; when I mourn the death of a loved one, or when I shed a small tear over nature's destruction, I feel a loss because I know when a living thing is not only gone as in inaccessible, but also gone as in no more. The point of view that the conscious mind has; that intangible state we call consciousness that seems immune to quantification or spatial location, it simply ceases.
It seems tremendously selfish to me, the notion that one can wail over what they believe to be the immortal soul's simple release from its worldly body. Should not a funeral be a celebration in such a world? But it is not selfish, because people don't really believe it in those moments.
Or perhaps they do, and I just don't understand how, or why.
I've read so much this year so far, but almost exclusively philosophy. I am looking forward greatly to opening up fiction, especially since my recent conversion to the belief that fiction, and poetry, have as much to offer philosophy (if not more) than analytic journals do.
Sometimes I feel like I'm searching for something, but I'm never quite sure what that thing is. As time passes, I am more convinced that the most important things in my life will not occur on account of my deliberation, but on account of happenstance, luck, or coincidence.
An ex girlfriend recently said to me that after four years of philosophy, I'm not one inch closer to figuring it all out. "what out?" I asked. "This whole mess of existence," she replied.
On one level I was deeply hurt, because figuring things out is the essence of much of what I've devoted my education and spare time to (this, as opposed to absorbing pre-confirmed facts and information, as is done in most departments).
But, on another level, I was indifferent to the remark. Frankly I don't know what the girl was even talking about. Seems to me the 'thing' I wasn't closer to was such an impossibly constructed mixture of intellectual feat and nonsense that there was nothing to take offence to.
And finally, on a whole other level the girl was right. Not for the reason she thought she was right; the comment was only out of bitterness and frustration; but for the very simple truth that enlightment (as it is often called) simply does not occur. At least not in my opinion.
There is no finish to knowledge, there is no end to the process of learning and growing, for it is a process. In reproduction, we slingshot a massive part of ourselves into the future. We are alive. Like the trees and animals around us, we do not stop growing, regenerating, moving, processing, feeding and excreting, not until the very last moment. And here I do not mean enlightenment.
So I guess the best response to such an odd accusation from a bitter ex (as opposed to the equally bitter one I probably gave at the time) would be to agree, and note that reaching a grand intellectual end point has never been my aim. The aim is to learn and understand, which is as much a product of age and experience as it is of burying the mind in well-organized silent phonemes, or latching ones self onto the apparent wisdom of previous generations.
Yes, it is all very paradoxical.
Well, paradoxical for those who deny that the soul, or the mind, is immortal! It is in many ways a position of reconciliation between the mind and the world. But I do not imagine it is true; when I mourn the death of a loved one, or when I shed a small tear over nature's destruction, I feel a loss because I know when a living thing is not only gone as in inaccessible, but also gone as in no more. The point of view that the conscious mind has; that intangible state we call consciousness that seems immune to quantification or spatial location, it simply ceases.
It seems tremendously selfish to me, the notion that one can wail over what they believe to be the immortal soul's simple release from its worldly body. Should not a funeral be a celebration in such a world? But it is not selfish, because people don't really believe it in those moments.
Or perhaps they do, and I just don't understand how, or why.
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