Diary: Who Brung You

 

One of the issues that I think that we have come to internalize and allow to become pathological is the simplistic idea that anyone in the past that did anything that is now considered “evil” is totally bad and all of the positive accomplishments along with the bad shit is painted with the ugly brush.

I find it most entertaining and somewhat disheartening to watch this in action.  It is like being in the Catholic Church during the days of my youth.  You can go to school, get good grades, be on the football team, help out in the food pantry, visit your grandmother and generally be a model citizen.  But eat a snickers bar in the grocery store and “forget” to pay for it and you are certainly going to hell.

I am coming to the conclusion that the expectations of the past are out of line with the reality that the past had to come to grips with.  Choices are offered to different cohorts and the decisions made in the long ago that benefited the majority at that particular time have consequences that come to fruition in the present.

I think that we have gone far enough along the spectrum of blaming the past.  We have been sold the idea that people can be perfect and the world can hold hands into the bright shiny future.  I sense that the people doing the most complaining are the folks that were birthed by those who most benefited from the decisions of the past.

Essay: Long Form Struggles

 

The word essay derives from the French infinitive essayer, "to try" or "to attempt". In English essay first meant "a trial" or "an attempt", and this is still an alternative meaning. The Frenchman Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) was the first author to describe his work as essays; he used the term to characterize these as "attempts" to put his thoughts into writing.

From Wikipedia

One of my continuing struggles in life (one I will probably die struggling with) is the desire to structure everything in a rationalist and materialist manner.  I have a sneaking hunch that the world doesn’t work that way and I know definitely that people are for the most part not so much rational as self-absorbed (which, to be honest, is pretty rational).

So let’s begin with the simple fact that individuals of any type or flavor will attempt to impose their personal point of view/ideology on the world around them.  I tend to think that this is “human nature”.  Most folks just want to be seen as the “smartest guy in the room” and the only way to do that in a social setting is to brag to a socially acceptable degree. 

I suppose that my struggles with the long form is that in order to do so truthfully, I have to address the flaws in my thinking.  I tend to think that the process will be to write, then put it away for a while, then re-read and correct flaws, then repeat the process until I get sick of it and then publish.

The nature of my subject matter will change.  I suppose that I will need to change the structure of the blogs.  I am thinking that my writing needs to be in two different forms:  “Diary” entries will be marked as such in the title and be short, maybe a quick bitch about stupid shit or an anecdote relating to something that I find amusing.  The big pieces (the ones that are so difficult to regularly pen will be labelled “Essay”.

But these rubrics are fraught with the importance I put on them.  Diary entries are almost by definition a form of an essay.  There doesn’t seem to be a clear definition of essay, and I think that my proposed labelling will merely signal how much time I put into the piece.  I have a hunch that, taken as a whole, the quick diary pieces will be as revealing as the essays when judged by their content.

So today is a true essay, I am attempting to come up with an answer to a question that I have been skirting around for nearly two decades.  I seem to have an unreasonable need to write almost every day, and to place said writing out there in the hopes that others will occasionally read it.  I don’t really track the number of people who see it, as I am somewhat unwilling to go to the effort of modifying my site to maintain statistics.  Most of the time the simple act of posting scratches the weird writing itch.

I suppose that I don’t write to convince anyone but myself.  I was listening to a podcast the other day and the subject of “Quietism” came up and I was drawn to it.  

(https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/history-of-ideas/montaigne)

I think that I will do some more reading on the subject.  Today I hit up Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quietism_(philosophy)

And later today I will try and digest this piece:

https://petemandik.substack.com/p/the-qualia-quietism-manifesto

Mostly, I am coming to believe that this discussion is somewhat akin to angels dancing on the head of a pin.  I am beginning to wonder if the subject can be answered in a universal sense and I am more and more drawn to the protestant reformation as an example where both sides of the discussion are merely folks trying to make their description of a personal and internal phenomenon an across the board mandate for “how people perceive the world”.

I am attempting to figure out how my mind works, not to impose that particular straight jacket on a description of how all human’s minds work, but just as an understanding of how I get from the real world “experience” to the decisions that stem from those data points.  

What I find difficult to bear is the tendency of folks who look into this kind of thing to attempt to create “laws” for the multitudes when at best they can only attempt a documentation of a model that exists solely inside their bodies (I’ll discuss the effects of non-cranial inputs to “thought” in another essay).  

Philosophers argue all the time and during all ages.  It is kind of normal.  The key to it is to not take their points of view all that seriously and try to see what you can distill from their thoughts that allow you to structure your mental model (good artists borrow, great artists steal).  But as soon as you start pushing off your personal views as universal truth, you are becoming religious.  

Overall, philosophy and religion are two sides of the same coin.  What is happening with both is the universal need to think that you are “right”.   This is the path that I am trying hard to steer clear of (albeit unsuccessfully).  Always in the back of my thoughts is the annoyed, self-important, and unwelcome thought that people who don’t understand what I am trying to say are stupid.  I work hard at squelching this, but it is an ongoing battle.

So my essays will continue to be “attempts”.  I will continue to put in digressions not quite appropriate to the core thesis, but that is how my mind works.  I will continue to use crude language interspersed with technicalia because that is how my mind works as well.  

Please don’t expect epiphanies, because I sure don’t.  When I write something down here, it is because I know that I don’t really understand it and ossifying my thinking in words lets me return later to try and continue in the ongoing, and ultimately unsuccessful attempt for understanding.

(final weird digression:  Since I recently finished Harry Potter, I really wish that I could invent or buy a “pensieve”.  It would be great to accurately document your past thoughts without the years wearing down the edges to make you forget the places you were wrong.  I know that folk around here sneer at ‘Arry Potter, but it is at it’s core a well-written escapist fantasy and those are pretty thin on the ground.)

I'll do it Myself Dad

 

(Homemade naan, beer, and tzatziki, I did buy the cucumber and tomato)

This post is a riff on a question I asked during the Archdruid’s weekly Q&A 

I’ll do it myself dad.

I briefly enjoyed the time period when raising my sons when these words became commonplace.  

But I am thinking more and more that during this time in my last adolescence (retirement) that I am thinking the same thing.  So my question as follows is:

How do I keep any non-corporeal entity (beneficial, hostile, or neutral) out of my business?

I can’t say as I have ever had a significant experience of this type, and more and more, listening and reading about such experiences, I can’t think that it would be all that pleasant. Judging from the experiences described in this forum, I am pretty sure I can be quite happy continuing that lack.

So lately I have been practicing the “sphere of protection” with an addendum in my brain that adds “this means you”.  Is there anything else that you can recommend to let me continue keeping this kind of thing at arms length so that I can continue my dotage without?

(for other forum participants, please continue your path and report on results when it moves you, I find it fascinating and I do believe your narratives, but I am opting out)

I suppose that this is an odd thing to ask in such a forum, but I think that I am coming to the point in my life when I am skeptical just about everything and just want to be at peace with the grab-bag of good and bad that the world that I can sense offers me.  I suppose that the period that I am living in is truly my second adolescence, I don’t really have anywhere to go or anything to do and overall I am really beginning to appreciate this.  

I think a lot of the time, when people get all “spiritual”, they are doing it in an odd “mirror world” of the academic community, especially in my age cohort.  It seems to me that they are cramming for a test at the end of the quarter.

I suppose I do tend toward thinking that there is a soul that powers the individual.  I am ambivalent about whether it is immortal (obviously I am hoping that it lasts beyond this “mortal coil” but I also realize that there is no proof, either negative or positive for this supposition).  

Pascal’s Wager posits:

Pascal's Wager, in simple terms, is an argument suggesting that it's a better bet to believe in God than not to, even if you can't be certain God exists. The logic is that the potential reward of believing (eternal happiness) far outweighs the potential loss (a changed lifestyle) if God doesn't exist. Conversely, the potential loss of not believing (eternal damnation) is infinite, while the potential gain (if God doesn't exist) is finite

In decisions under risk, the agent assigns subjective probabilities to the various states of the world. Assume that the states of the world are independent of what the agent does. A figure of merit called the expected utility, or the expectation of a given action can be calculated by a simple formula: for each state, multiply the utility that the action produces in that state by the state’s probability; then, add these numbers. According to decision theory, rationality requires you to perform the action of maximum expected utility (if there is one).

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pascal-wager/#:~:text=In%20decisions%20under%20risk%2C%20the,(if%20there%20is%20one).

Pascal’s wager is kind of a red herring.  He conflates soul, heaven/hell, and the christian god and then slants the bet so that losing is infinite.  This is bullshit.  No one knows.  

But I am working on restating the “bet”.  It is harder than it seems at first blush.  I am trying to remove the ideas of “heaven and hell” and get over the idea that “good” and “evil” and “justice” have any real meaning outside of personal preference.  I am spending time working through Leibnitz’s “Best of all possible worlds” and I am thinking there is some merit there.   I am also giving Spinoza another go.  I didn’t really understand last time, maybe I can figure it out this time.

All of this rotates openly around me, being the imperfect and dwindling being of an uncertain mix of the corporeal and incorporeal is trying to isolate “me” and my place (if any) in the grand scheme.  

Damn hard thing to do and it gets people pissed off when you talk about it.

Trimming

 

Spent some time this morning trimming down the bookmarks for my daily “news”.  I must admit that I was getting a little out of control in my search for evidence of the decline of the west.  I really don’t need to do that.  

Look, like it or not, the condition set that allowed us to take more off the table than we put on the table is ending.  It was a great deal here in the land o’ the free while it lasted, but the world is making the adaptations needed to even things out.  

I spend a lot of time thinking about how I process the data coming in from the world around me.  But on days like today, I start wondering if that is just self-indulgence and a form of intellectual masturbation.  Oh, don’t get me wrong, I am going to continue pondering this in hopes that by doing so, it helps in making sense of the information coming in through my sensorium.  

All of this comes about because of the simple fact that I paid too much attention in my humanities courses back when such things were deemed to be necessary.  Then I forgot about those ideas when I had to go into society to make nickels to support my materialist side.  Now that I am retired, I have time to reconsider things that I never got to the bottom of back in the day.

I suppose that my problem is that I am neither fish, nor fowl, nor good red meat.  I am definitely neither a christian or an atheist.  I believe in things that have no proof, but the things that I believe have no disproofs either.  I have years as a scientist, but I also have years as an altar boy.  I am not at all certain how to deal with this kind of thing.  But it puts me smack in the middle of the nastiest, longest running, and violent argument of the past four millenia.  

So, I will post here on this out of the way cul de sac of the internet and try to work through what passes as a philosophy in my brain.  I am leaning strongly towards the idea that there is such a thing as a soul and that it does have an impact on my life.  I have no opinion as to whether it is immortal.  I think that there are things out there that we cannot perceive using the five senses but that still have an effect on my life, I have no idea of how they work. 

I just know that thinking I can get to the bottom of all this and “know” how the world works in toto is not possible and I will die wondering.

Today, this doesn’t bother me.  The sky is bright blue and the temperature is damn close to perfect.  I think that I will pay attention to that.