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Today has been one of the most enlightening days of my life. Oddly, I am so full of thought and feeling at this moment I can scarsely think what to write! Well. The day started with Psychology 100; it was video day, and I was fortunate enough to watch a fascinating video on group psychology. According to several well-performed studies, it turns out that regular folk are suceptible to all kinds of horrible actions all in the name of conformity, or in the name of appeasing an authoity figure. Scary stuff! The early afternoon brought some interesting material in Philosophy of Mind (seminar class). We've spent the last two weeks resurrecting and discussing various dualist theories. Dualism is the philosophical position that the mind is separate and distinct from the brain, and that the stuff of which mind is made is not physical stuff. The later afternoon brought with it for me what I can only describe as the most horrifying train wreck of a breakup I've ever expe...

A very determined boy went to the store and bought the biggest jigsaw puzzle he could find, composed of several thousand pieces. It was a mystery puzzle, the kind where they do not print its picture on the box, so the boy did not know what picture he'd eventually get. Excitedly, the boy opened the box and poured all the pieces out onto the floor, only to find that every single piece was completely blank. There was no colour to be found; the only thing differentiating the cardboard cuttings was each of their individual shapes. But the boy was determined. He spent hours, days, months trying out every possible combination of pieces, slowly putting together the edges and filling the puzzle in toward the middle. The process was arduous - a deep challenge for the boy's sense of determination in the face of what appeared to be a picture of futility and meaninglessness. Finally he finished the puzzle: a complete blank square with every little piece in place. Unwilling to accept his end...

It seems unnatural to count numbers upward as each day passes. The most recent work of physicists tells us that time itself really did have a beginning, and it seems fundamentally odd to me that time should begin but not end, in the same way that those lines in high school geometry with one fixed point on the left and an 'infinite' length to the right. .---------------------------------------> Is this an infinitely long line? As opposed to... Time is supposed to be best represented by the top line. Is not the bottom line somehow longer? Does it not pop into your head occasionally that the top line's right-hand stretch will eventually circle back? At any rate, the very thought that time isn't a continuum analogous to the second line makes me seriously doubt my own conception of its "is-ness" (for lack of a sensical phrase). When we say time slows down in a moment of joy or sadness, we mean it only as a metaphor, but why should ...

I do fear, sometimes, that the act of pondering aloud has become a cathartic experience and nothing more . It is hard in this town to find a diversity of thought, because we've all been raised in very similar ways with the same norms, experiences, and conventions. I find that the mightiest opinions of some of the the twentysomethings I know are so damningly narrow that they cannot possibly stand to the slightest breeze of doubt. Often the biggest theory is the thinnest. Our shadows grow long and starved moments before they disappear under the sunset. The natural world has cursed us with its indifference, its vaccuum of conscience in which deeds neither good nor evil subsist. I find the urge to view our species of conscious and conscientious beings as alien. It is as though the world we inhabit was never intended for us to inhabit it. In short, this town is a box. This country, political system, individualistic ideology, humanist dogma, faux rebellion against imagined authority; it ...

Ralph Nader, again, has decided to throw in his bid for president! We all remember Nader from back in 2000, when he ran for the Green Party and gained thousands of votes in Florida; votes that, had he not been running, would almost certainly have gone to Al Gore instead. Since even by the official tally (which was highly questionable) G.W. Bush only won by a few hundred votes in the deciding state of Florida, it is often said that Nader ruined it for the democrats by running where he knew he'd never win anyway. Likewise in 2004, when he gained several million votes nationwide in an election that was decided by a margin of less than 1% nationally, and ultimately by the swing state of Ohio, in which if Nader's votes had all or mostly gone to Kerry at the time, we may well have had a president Kerry. And here we are. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are highly critical. Hillary more so, as she's been quoted as saying Nader is "responsible for George W. Bush," an...

I am writing again from Tofino; this is day two, and tomorrow I'll be home again. Like most students at UVic, I've done nearly none of the "getting ahead" homework I intended to do over this reading break. But that is okay. After all, it is called a break.  But then, it is also for reading. Perhaps UVic has accidentally given this week a paradoxical title.  At any rate, school goes back into session monday morning. It is the final stretch for graduating students such as myself. I am honestly a little bit worried; this is by far the most work I've ever signed up for in a single semester, and while I am certain none of it is beyond my abilities either in quantity or quality, I am not certain that it isn't beyond my particular proclivity to procrastinate. It is one of these circumstances in which I am finally forced to follow the same advice I give to everybody else: just get it done, and get it done right!  The rain is pouring down. Yesterday we had glimpses of ...

       I'm writing tonight from a B&B in Tofino. It's been since childhood that I've last been to this neck of the island, and I do wish I came more often. The nature is wonderful, the air refreshing, and the elements truly awe inspiring.        Sunday's upcoming entry (day 56) will hopefully be another photo gallery, as I've already managed to capture several wonderful shots in the short few hours that I've been here thus far.        I imagine it is an experience common to all of us, that after a day out in the wilderness, whether it be at the beach or on a hike, the night's sleep that follows is always particularly deep and satisfying. Perhaps the reason for this is not the physical exertion involved in the day, but the sheer quantity of input the senses receive. The wind is constantly changing, the temperature rising and dipping down, the sun waxing and waning, the trees rustling and the waves crashing up against stone and sand.       Compare this wit...

For the more elitist folk among us, there is a strong greivance against the new kind of language that has spreaded from internet communication. "MSN-ish" we'll call it for now. Acronyms and shortened words reign supreme, since people (mostly kids and teens) can't be bothered to type out entire words or phrases. What I want to say so often is that when people are speaking online, they ought to mimic their own personalities however possible in type format! This, at least, is what I try to do, but admittedly some of the countless signposts such as brb, cya, laters, sup?, sry, and of course lol have become a part of my language online. And the fun part: The truth of words, much to the dismay of said elitists, is that they are transient in their nature. The reason dictionaries re-publish every year is that unused (or 'replaced') words must be removed, and new words must be added. The lexicographer is more akin to an anthropologist than a historian. He maps the use ...

Unfortunately today is one of those days where I simply do not have the time to think of something to write much about. But, I would like to wish a happy birthday to my little sister, who (believe it or not) turns one today. Happy Birthday Erin! After some celebrations, I'll be off to the opera tonight. For any of you who've not been to an opera I'd recommend it highly. Think of it like a musical with good music, and good singing, and a full symphony to suppliment. Plus, if you like a good tragedy, opera has been all over that for several centuries now.

Numbers are milestones in and of themselves. We like the evenness of them, or the internal patterns or repetition of them. I suppose the last 'millenuim' new years would be a good exmple; what fuss there was made about a day that in truth is the 2000th anniversary of nothing in particular. Millions of people expected nothing short of a complete and total apocalypse. Whether Jesus (the man, religious figure, or however we want to characterize him) was actually born that day is extremely unlikely. "Numberization" might be a word we could invent to describe a human tendancy to view numbers with particular significance in and of themselves. At any rate, day 50 is here at the blog :-)

I heard a story about about someone who went on a safari tour in Africa. The animals in the park (ie. protected wildlife area) were so used to the safari trucks full of tourists that they would come right up, eat nearby, and generaly regard the tourists as though they weren't even there. On the same tour, this person told me a story of a lost baby wildebeast. A few of the people nearby assisted by directing the creature back to where its mother was. That is not nature. That is not a safari. That is nothing more than a very large zoo.

So yesterday we watched a video in psychology, in part on attractiveness. A test was done wherby participants were given a picture of a very attractive woman, and then told they'd be speaking on the phone with her. They were then told to make general judgements.. was she nice, smart, happy sounding, etc...? And there was a second goup of participants who were each given a pciture of a much less attractive lady and then told they'd be having a phone conversation. They were in turn asked the same personality questions. The lady on the other end was the same the whole time, who had the same lines and pre-arranged responses to general questions, and who tried to be uniformly herself for all participants. She wasn't the lady of either picture, and she did not know which callers had seen what picture prior to the conversation. So, the participants who saw the attractive picture rated the lady on the phone as being considerably nicer, more friendly, more intelligent s...

I feel invigorated when I see that this site actually generates a little over 50 hits per day. I was expecting 10 or 20, tops! Granted a few of the 100 hits so far have been me, checking the hit box, but still! This evening I want to present a guest writer, Jordan. He's an old buddy, fellow philosophy major, and someone who I really do feel should be a career writer in some capacity. So, Jordan (aka jr when commenting) on language: Looking back, in my experience, I've always had an affinity with 'the trouble that is language' view of philosophy, characterized here-- the idea of the futility of words trying to capture too much (i.e. implicating entire contexts, or ways or of life, to those who are unfamiliar with those contexts) or, conversely, containing so little that we are apt to take meanings for granted far too quickly, unwittingly attaching some idiosyncratic or superfluous significance of our own. This view resonates with me on a personal level, because it arises...

What do we take a day to mean? We take Mothers day and Fathers day to be those days upon which we take a little extra step to show our parents what they mean to us. We take Christmas to be a day of generosity and togetherness. We take New Years Eve to be a time of reflection upon fond memories, and New Years Day to be a new beginning; the start of a reinvigorated life and new commitment to personal successes. We take Halloween as an opportunity to be confident; to take off masks of social convention and put on something silly, something which allows us to express ourselves more freely. We take election day as an opportunity to contribute to the ideological formation of the world. We take the anniversary of our country's inception as a chance to be proud of our mutual governance and individual contributions to it. We take our Birthday as a time of celebration; a joyful anniversary of that which it is to be alive. We take the anniversary of a death (or a war) as a day of remembrance ...

I installed a small hit counter on the left hand side. I set it to zero, not knowing how many hits there've been so far this last couple of years. My main aim is simply to see if all this regular updating eventually generates more hits per day, as I hope it may. So today and tomorrow hold for me a swath of philosophy work. The going will not be easy - like many students at UVic I feel much like a fish washed up on the shore, flapping and gasping its way back to the ocean. It is so close, so vast, yet so very far! I'll write something more interesting tomorrow, perhaps on the topic of Valentines.

I used to find that penning a title for each blog entry was the hard part. This system has been very nice in that one way. Too much philosophy these days. Every time I think I've got something figured out, I come up with what seem to be equally good reasons why it's all wrong. What I have begun to solidify as a belief over the last few months is the belief that language itself is often the problem, and not the 'problems' it works on. Language, often, doesn't so much elucidate issues as it does generate them. Again with the Wittgenstein: We try to cram too much into mere words. A word or sentence is like a teacup, as the analogy goes; it will only hold a teacup's worth, even if you pour a gallon over it. I see people using words, and their ideas are spilling out of the words as they are thrown around in every direction. The words contain too much. They become impossible to articulate, to understand, to clarify. Or worse, they become too easy to understand. Like a...

Sex is terribly overrated. I remember the first time I had sex at age 16, being told for years how amazing it is and how it should really be the focal point of my existence. Granted, at the time I had it I really did think it was that awesome, but times have since changed. I find interesting the notion that pleasure is a zero-sum game; as in, there is no way to really get ahead. Desire, as the idea goes, is a kind of deficiency, or suffering. Satisfaction of that desire will only ever bring you to a 'neutral' state in which the desire no longer exists, but you will have gained nothing, only brought yourself back to the same state you were in prior to the desire arising. This explains why we're never really satisfied no matter what desires we have satisfied. The rich and/or famous are just as miserable as the rest of us (probably more so), despite having what so many of us wish for. I think the Buddhists are on to something like this. Oh a totally different topic, I'd li...

A question raised in a class last week was" can a person be virtuous while alone on a deserted island? I believe a person can. Not all virtues, however, can be applied to such a situation with no social contact of any sort (generosity for example), but some still can. Take honesty. It would take honesty to be able to accept ones predicament. As in, there are times a person would have to be honest with himself about the reality of given situations. And courage. It may take courage to risk a life alone on this island (or a slow death) in order to will oneself to stay alive (ie. not committ suicide. See the movie Castaway for an example of this virtue playing out.) Perhaps peace as well. Does our lonely inhabitant lash out at the environment around him, or does he treat it with a kind nature? Now, maybe we can apply this all to real life. I believe that often the best way to learn about a person's true character is not to watch their deliberative actions, but ...