Playlist for tomorrow

So, I have a job interview tomorrow. But instead of preparing for that tonight, I spent the last hour making a mix CD for the 50+ minute drive:

Contigency plans

Plan A: Teach English at an urban middle school or high school in the Kansas City area.
Plan B: Teach English at a suburban middle school or high school in the Kansas City area.
Plan C: Teach English at an urban school in the northeast.
Plan D: Join the Peace Corps.
Plan E: Take an undesirable job with the naive view that it will fund my writing career.

Project updates

With the semester finished, here's an update on some things I'm working on--however slowly that progress may be.

My current big projects (aside from teaching!) in order of progress:

• "42 Reasons for Reading" (number is tentative) -- Still in the draft phase. Two drafts actually. And I'm going to throw them both out and hopefully fashion something together before the new year.
• "Redescribing Shelley's Defense of Poetry: Rorty, Rich, and the Making of a Pragmatist Poetics" (rewrite of my English undergrad thesis) -- Still rewriting. Hopefully some journal will accept it when it's done. *Fingers crossed*
• "An Informed Pedagogy: Connections Between Research and Practice" (tentative) -- My prospective Master's thesis, exploring the possibilities and limitations (but mostly limitations) of education research.
• Mysterious project -- This one needs some 'splaining. I had an interesting idea for a romance novel, a kind of genre study. I have the title, two paragraphs, an outline, and a pseudonym, but I won't incriminate myself further.
• a&b -- Poetry project that's a long ways off.
• "Works of Love" -- Essay on ethics and the concept of unconditional love, with some reference to Works of Love by Kierkegaard and possibly a hint of socialism. No hurry on this one either.

12/24 update:

Two more:

• "If Learning Mattered: A Vision for Higher Education" -- Critique of the bullshit that goes on in colleges and suggestions on how to fix them.
• Out of Darkness (Tentative title) -- An interactive fiction.

Koalas and the Depressed Idols

I've been thinking lately that I'm need of new idols. Well... maybe not idols exactly, more like people that I find intriguing, and, to some extent, find myself identifying with. At the moment those are Wittgenstein, Kierkegaard, and Walt Whitman—all white males who never married, who, with the exception of Whitman, were depressed throughout much of their lives.

At times when I find myself gravitating more towards pessimism than optimism, I think about that short list and wonder if it needs to change. Whitman, a more recent addition, would probably do me some good to stay. Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard, now that I'm growing more and more disinterested in academic philosophy, could be let go. But I'm not sure whom I should replace them with... Past teachers? Poets? Relative unknowns? Apparitions? Aspirations?

And koalas? Here's what that's about: They subsist on eucalyptus leaves--which are poor in nutrition and poisonous to most other animals. In a way, humans enjoy a similar relationship with modern industrial and post-industrial society. It's what sustains us, but also what drains us; hardly nutritive, hardly enlivening, but nonetheless the way we continue to subsist and live.

Plus, koalas are super cute.

Poem 34

I tried reading this at an open mic poetry shindig and ended up sucking like a reverse air tunnel. Still, here's an after-the-fact audio recording in hopes that I'll eventually get better at reading my own poems.

Morning and late evening
he's busied for hours,
straining, peeling, mincing, mixing,
and breading with flour.
His items are stale,
shelves stacked with old bread and brown kale,
prepared daily and put out for sale
for monied men to devour.

In the evenings he stands
stirring, sauteeing, garnishing,
and tossing food in pans.
His flavors are astonishing:
clever combinations of old ingredients,
always traditional and obedient,
flavorful and grandiloquent,
the work of skilled hands.

At night he reads Chaucer and Marcus Aurelius
and mixes them with bits of Plato
and sprigs of Leviticus.
His process is the same, but a bit slow,
as he rolls out his arguments
on the finest of parchment,
smelling faintly of fondant
and drinking wine as he goes.

His customers never complain
about the food they're eating,
even those who leave with stomach pains
and leftovers they save for reheating.
Then one day, at a quarter to seven,
Gordon Ramsay walks in,
brow furled and cursing to high heaven,
shouting, "Bland!" and screaming.

2/2/11 update:

That last stanza has to go. It doesn't fit. I'll revise soon.

New year's resolutions

In the past I haven't been keen on making resolutions for the new year. If some habit needs to be changed or some goal needs to be set, it doesn't make sense to delay it until the some arbitrary numerical change that is associated with the calendar system takes place. Nonetheless, that's exactly what I've done here.

So, here it goes:

1. Read one book, or 200 pages, each day. (Plays and poetry books count.)


2. Exercise at least 30 minutes each day, and go to the gym three times a week. (Translation: more biking, DDR, and weights.)


3. Devote five hours each week to learning Spanish.


4. Complete one painting each month (or 12 paintings by the end of the year).

I'll also be making blog posts for number 1 and 4 to help keep me accountable.

Cheers. (¡y felíz año nuevo!)

On a darkling plain

On a darkling plain,
among bruised metal and stanzas—
     sleepy interpretations awaken
     with disheveled hair
     and wave their flailing arms—crying:
            "Materialism!"
            "Tragic Hero!"
            "Pirates of the Caribbean!"
in an air-conditioned room
     bereft of beer bottle caps
     and the drone of televisions.

Kansas...

So there was a really strong storm here earlier, and after a bit I checked the weather. My weather widget said, oh you know, it's 62 degrees-- the moon is so-and-so and it's partly cloudy. I checked weather.com and it said something to the effect of "THERE HAS BEEN A TORNADO SIGHTED IN YOUR AREA, SEEK SHELTER IMMEDIATELY!" Right after that there was an announcement over the dorm speakers and everyone huddled downstairs (not that we'd be safe if a tornado actually hit us anyway), and we waited there for a while.

I just got back to my room. It's almost 2am. I guess we lost a few of the smaller trees. Kansas is awesome.

(Oh, and notice that the sirens never went off, just like they didn't go off when we had the microburst.)

1. More than 8,400 [and counting] without power as hail hits Lawrence


Update:

Westar Energy is reporting that more than 8,600 customers are without power in Douglas County around 2:20 a.m. today as a severe thunderstorm hit Lawrence.

The Journal-World has received several reports of storm-related damage, including downed trees and debris blocking the road in northern and western Lawrence.

6News Chief Meteorologist Jennifer Schack is reporting that the storm had winds in excess of 80 mph in Douglas County.

The severe thunderstorm warning issued for Douglas County expired at 1:45 a.m., and the tornado watch is no longer in effect.

A tree has fallen on a mobile home on Perry street. The family who lives there has been set up at the Holidome, according to Jane Blocher of the Red Cross.

Police and emergency crews are responding to large downed trees, including at Sixth Street at Iowa and Trail Road near Fireside Drive. Also, a roof has blown off a building on Sixth and is on the road on Florida Street.

This morning

I woke up this morning not wanting to get out of bed. I had planned to get up early and study for a geography test (which I could care less about), but apparently it didn't work out. When I finally did get up, I was still feeling groggy and tired. Then, after a quick breakfast, I went to my car to drive to the school at which I tutor. I hadn't driven for about a week, and when I got inside I noticed a few things were different. The seatbelt was braided through the steering wheel, my rear-view mirror was turned side-ways, and I think some of my CDs were rearranged in the overhead organizer. (Nothing was stolen, though.) All of Lawrence went nuts on Monday night because our basketball team won the NCAA tournament. There wasn't very much serious damage that I heard of from this, but I think what happened is that someone got into my car that night and had fun with it. It was definitely unexpected but it livened up my day.

Then tutoring.. and Captain Underpants...

And I just took my geography test. When I rode back on my bike I was going against the wind on third gear. A gust came and actually stopped me, pushed me back two feet or so, and nearly tore my glasses from my face. The wind here is just obnoxious right now. (Why doesn't Lawrence have wind turbines?) And yeah.. so now I'm eating a burrito. Awesome story, yes?

Thoughts, aphorisms, fragments. (twice updated)

I scoured through a fair amount of notes and journal entries for random thoughts that I found interesting:


The moment should be more than a means to an end— it should be an end in itself.


Religion is a means of explaining and providing a reason for occurrences that defy any observable explanation. But when sciences, history, etc. are so vast the only thing that remains is being—such a thing becomes difficult to place in a narrative, as it seems itself to be a sort of singularity.

Or: Mysticism is a means to make clear what is problematic or unknowable in one's world. When everything in one's world is accounted for, all that is left is the world itself. When, for instance, this world lacks a clear telos, a concrete religious story becomes difficult to maintain.


It takes just as much faith to be atheistic as it takes to be religious, only less imagination. To believe that this is all there is is every bit as presumptuous as believing that there is something more that remains unseen. Agnosticism requires neither faith nor imagination—only an impassive acknowledgment of subjectivity.


The reason I got into English was because I am fascinated with the idea of representing the universal through particulars. (Cultural/historical + notions of life, death, god, love, etc.... but all so inseparably stirred and interwoven into the objects of everyday experience.) Philosophy tries to go the other route, or at least a lot of the more prominent and pretentious schools do... trying to represent the particulars through the universals.

If I manage to carry my study of philosophy to its end, what poetry would there be left? (Plenty: fragmented feelings and circumstances of individuals.)


If I don't consider the past or future, the world is a very depressing place. If I consider past without future, the world is motionless. If I consider future without past, there's nowhere to go.


So... take philosophy (narrow epistemology) and a sort of clarification of language to dispose of false presuppositions and put everything out in open--that is what is in need of scrutiny-- and beyond that apply pragmatism as a secondary standard of scrutiny. Thereafter, conjectures of the unknowable can be expressed in a latitudinarian fashion provided that they function within natural theology. These different forms of worship are thereafter culturally/anthropologically different takes on the same subject.


One never reads in the news recent developments or discoveries in philosophy; it is regarded as a sort of recreational or entertainment-like field, like poetry-- subject to no verifiable certainty and no transcendental meaning.

"[T]wo warring camps [of philosophers]: the tender-minded ones who thought philosophy should aim at Significance, and the tough-minded philosophers who thought that it should aim at Truth" -Rorty

The meaning of life is living.


The experience of life is a longing, not a gratification.

One should be occupied with the process and not the destination, for life's destination is death. Life's unfolding tells a more glamorous tale. It's beauty is in becoming.

"Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death." -LW

"[I]f life is to be appreciated as a process rather than an outcome, it is completely silly to consider end results of no great matter..."



sun/moon as a deity : sun/moon as time : time as a deity



I'd prefer confusion to boredom any day.


Isn't it interesting how riveting a biography can become when you sympathize with its subject?


There's an excitement and acute awareness that arises from viewing one's current circumstances as the products of a story. With this context in mind, one feels as if on stage--as a newfound teller of the story, as a descendant of history, and as a sculptor of the future. How glorious is life under this lens?


Seduced by the brilliant colors.. or words. [painting.. or poetry.]

Dichotomy between beauty, not beauty is unacceptable; |- dichotomy between good and evil? "Beyond good and evil," just as in aesthetics?

"You get tragedy where the tree, instead of bending, breaks." -LW

Being able to draw does not for one second make me an artist.

It's interesting to view actions under the context of motivation. When I write poetry, or draw, what I am really doing a lot of the time is sulking or concentrating on me. What I do when I play videogames is waste time and expose myself to a flurry of sense-data.

What is one's motivation in doing philosophy? In writing poetry? I've eliminated the notion of beauty— it's an intangible oversimplification... What? A flustered attempt at self-expression? An assertion of the rightness of one's view of the world?


Anima mundi---every part useful to the whole, perhaps not "useful" to other parts.

"At best it [life] is but a froward child, that must be played with and humored, to keep it quiet till it falls asleep, and then the care is over." -Frederick Locker Lampson

"The human body is the best picture of the human soul." -LW

"The Tractatus is like a clock that doesn't tell the right time." -LW

Still, that every person is made in God's image is a very profound statement--albeit dependent on your understanding of what God is. The profundity, for me, comes in viewing the statement in light of a God cast as a representation of the totality of things. That is, man is made in the image of the totality of existence.


Then again, if language is a means for abstract thought, then it may be required for truly "human" thinking. But in this case, what is abstract thought? That which has no corresponding empirical situation or contextual relation? Abstract thought is what I am engaged in at this moment......

"A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes." -LW

[Life as integrity.]


The essence of critical thinking is an awareness that not every thought that runs through your mind is precious.

Don't always expect complex answers to complex questions. ...Although at my present outlook, those questions that I am referring to are not complex, as much as they are weighty.

Although I can't quite find the right words for it, logic and philosophy say very little... it is humanity and experience that are important. Philosophy, for the most part, is usually a secondhand or after-the-fact means of sorting through what happens in experience.

"Nevertheless, if we look on man's whole mental life as it exists, on the life of men that lies in them apart from their learning and science, and that they inwardly and privately follow, we have to confess that the part of it of which rationalism can give an account is relatively superficial. It is the part that has the prestige undoubtedly, for it has the loquacity, it can challenge you for proofs, and chop logic, and put you down with words. But it will fail to convince or convert you all the same, if your dumb intuitions are opposed to its conclusions. If you have intuitions at all, they come from a deeper level of your nature than the loquacious level which rationalism inhabits." -James

"The truth is that in the metaphysical and religious sphere, articulate reasons are cogent for us only when our inarticulate feelings of reality have already been impressed in favor of the same conclusion." -James

It makes little sense to view us as categorically independent individuals.

One thing that I think is terribly important, as did Dewey, was to encourage critical thinking--to plant that seed in your mind that tells you to always ask yourself if something is being done the way it needs to be done. And as this awareness flowers, so does self-efficiency. If everyone put forth the effort to always ask the world of the themselves, one couldn't help but be optimistic.


Many philosophers use the historical, cultural, or genealogical development of their subject as their basis for its construction... with regard to morals, this is a reflection of their fundamentally arbitrary nature. (Arbitrary = aesthetics are neither absolute nor innate.)


Indeed, that's often how we understand life, as a story. One event happens, then another. And after that, another, inspired by the last. And then another that was completely unexpected. We understand our lives, our cultures, our societies as ongoing stories. I was born in a small Midwestern town, I grew up, I got a degree in..... I married, had kids, worked for so-and-so many years.... retired... passed away. All stories; all understood under the guise of progress and temporality.


When all is said and done, one cannot be austere.

Another passing thought: that if the music was in some way augmenting my mood, I could someday go without it. At the moment the songs are like training wheels that can later be discarded, and my optimism can continue without the aid of a soundtrack.

Journal Entry: Baya-baya-ba

I was trying to finish a poem (#15) while listening to "Katamaritaino" from the Katamari Damacy soundtrack (which to my delight is now my wake-up ring on my phone--the music from Star Light zone in Sonic is my ringtone), and right now I'm thinking that this song is what "art" should be... this is poetry. No squabbling over trite discontentments or grandeur, just what is needed to evoke a feeling of humble, optimistic satisfaction.

Poetry can do much more than this, but this is what the world needs.

...

"Poetry" can elicit the whole spectrum of human emotions, but it need only elicit those that prevent one from growing sorrowful or complacent. It is a delicate act of balancing one's emotional composition in such a way that allows for one to move forward without forgetting what is ahead or growing fatigued.

...

Sorrowful beauty is profound but overused, yet the felicific need not reject sorrow--it need only recognize it as a malaise, like itself, that it marries in order to achieve a meaningful present and future.


**Katamaritaino, Hideki Tobeta/Yui Asaka**

Journal Entry: Art and Indecisiveness

Let me preface this by saying that I write even more eclectically in my journal than I do when I'm writing for an "audience". I just finished this entry and thought its content interesting enough to post. But since I have no desire to take the time to reorganize it in a more intuitive fashion, I've left it as it is. Further, because I generally find "personal" accounts more interesting than "objective" ones, I thought I'd try posting it in its entirety rather than in snippets. If it seems a tad melodramatic at parts I apologize... that's just how it ended up.

I've been thinking about this lately and I'm uncertain of my choices as they relate to what I am presently involved in. For too long, I have wasted my time in academia, learning things from others that I could have learned myself, or learning nothing at all. (Or more accurately, learning very little over a tremendous expanse of time.) I have little or no desire to remain in this state of affairs for much longer (and the small globule of remaining desire is that which resists change). Ever since I returned to college this semester, I have had the feeling of being an observer to the social and academic processes--as though I didn't belong here, and was introduced to an environment that I did not take refuge in--like an exotic fish introduced to a small foreign aquarium (though I am not so without humility to consider myself 'exotic'). In general conversations, and occassionally in classes, I feel as though I was that exotic fish among a native school or a visiting anthropologist... a tourist, really, that has grown tired of his vacation but finds himself both unable to leave and without a place to return to. I don't feel that I belong here. I'm making slow and introverted passes to incorporate myself into my general surroundings, but the passes too often don't accomplish enough. This may smack of a typical response to social exclusion or estrangement, but I really feel as though I should be somewhere else. Doing something else... rather than trying to find my niche within my existing surroundings. I feel the urge to go exploring and finding new social surroundings that I don't find superfluous or misled.

The experience of life is a longing, not a gratification.

Unfortunately, this "ideal" path is one that I am finding too distant to abandon my current one in pursuit of. I once felt that becoming an art teacher would be the "dream" career for me. I could teach art, life, and everything in between, and that would be my service to society. However, I've recently become weary of my previous fascination. The argument for my changing majors would go along two lines, the first practical (and ill-meditated), the second philosophical.

The first, as I have often mentioned informally (and perhaps once or twice within this journal), is that there is no merit in teaching the subject. The teaching of art would be the teaching of the uncertainties of what has come to be called art, of the inter-related ambiguities of life and psychological experience as they pertain to the activities of humankind. What could come of such instruction but the continued and perpetual teaching of ambiguity and uncertainty? That others may teach uncertainty and ambiguity and devote their lives to it? In what way does it benefit society to tease man's curiosity?

The second, I suppose, is on almost equivalent grounds with the first, which is to say it isn't completely distinct. I've lately come to agree with Plato in some respects about the function of poetry (i.e. art in a broad sense), although not in the respect that I feel that it should be formally restricted. Rather, I believe that the proper way to express the understanding of the world is through language... whereas art expresses the world through the unintelligible, the ambivalent--and when it is clear it says nothing more than trite trivialities. (In more recent times, existential or meta-conceptual trivialities.)

In my first Art Since 1945 lecture, there was a video shown in which Jeff Koons made an effort to formally describe the implications of one of his works. (Spalding basketballs suspended in a small aquarium tank, I believe.) If anything, hearing his statements solidified my preconceptions that artists do not know shit about shit. Hearing Koons attempt to introduce imperious conceptual statements to justify his mediocre industrially-assembled piece, only proved to me that art can only say very little. There are, with the proper direction, arts that have a greater significance than what many aim to introduce, but there is still so little that they can express. In fact, art is simply not the medium of choice to express civil or sociological concerns. Why express the ever-important through the ambivalent? It's an exercise in nonsense.

And while I heartily admit that I enjoy art, and often find it quite amusing, I refuse to recognize it as seated on the pedestal on which it is so often erected. Art is a byproduct of interaction, of social processes... it should never have taken it's present formal chair and declared itself mighty, auspicious and sacrosanct. Is art a product of high-culture? No. It is a product of culture, and while I concede that it can often be interesting, its worth is often over-estimated, as is its significance. The poet claims to know what he does not know--what he is unsure of himself. The gut expresses very little but preference. What does art express? It expresses a filtered view of the world (albeit somewhat out of focus), a reductive concept, or nothing at all. What does it achieve? It provides new (albeit fragmented) contexts, although these contexts are themselves not always produced through or by account of its content, but by the responses of others to it. Therefore, meticulous and intentional schemes for "high" expression through art is a flawed trade. It is possible to express minor things, but not major things... the major things are extrinsic of the artwork. The major things, can be expressed much more fully, unabridged and in focus (though still not fully) through language. Visual and auditory phenomena can only convey what is auditory or visual... the lingual can express a concern--at best the visual or auditory can only entice a response (which it then has no control of directing beyond small trifles). I decry the "insight" into the nature of things that artists seem to proclaim; many even seem more arrogant than philosophers.

If I choose to reject philosophy as a major, so too will I reject art.

In my drawing class today, the class had a pseudo-intellectual discussion (it's not my intention to sound terribly derisive) about what makes drawings "good" and what could make them "better". Normative criteria for art is ridiculous. This is good, this is bad. This is aesthetically pleasing, this is aesthetically displeasing. Put an 'X' on the life-line:

Fear |-----------------------------| Love

That which is beautiful |-----------------------------| That which is ugly

For that matter, "non-representational" visual art is blasphemy. It's incorrect to look at aesthetics as a branch of philosophy: it is, more accurately, a subject of psychology. The nature of the sensory visual experience is to make sense of the world around you and to use that information to govern the interaction of your other senses and, consequently, your behavior. Thus when you see an image of something that appears unclear to you, the natural response is to try to figure out what it is. In this sense, it is ridiculous to consider art as "non-representational". It may be abstract and conceptual, but it would still represent a concept. The relationship of lines and forms in space represents just that, which is to say nothing: a confused visual arrangement.

Of course, in this case, the comparison to musical theory is tempting, but the two things seem too different in my mind to be compared. I imagine the comparison is unavoidable, and perhaps even fairly persuasive... at the moment, I reluctantly disagree with it even though I don't see anything wrong with it. Music isn't representational (or at least the vast majority of it isn't), yet there is something interesting in it. Why not, then, with non-representational visual art? Maybe it's just a matter of preference... I feel that music can be emotionally and psychologically provocative without being representational and that the same doesn't hold true with the visual arts.

And that's my disoriented rant with respect to art.

**Mitchel Edwards Klik Enters a Dreamlike State and It's Fucking Scandalous, De Facto**

8/24 update:

I think the reason that I don't like equating "non-representational" art with music is due to the nature of the two senses that experience those things. For the sense of sight, we are constantly and continually bombarded with sensory information and this includes a very broad range of stimuli. In the case of music, however, there is a sense of novelty in that it appeals to a sense that usually isn't stimulated in a very diverse way. In some ways, I think of listening to "good" music as analogous to tasting really well-prepared food. In everyday experience, taste and hearing aren't stimulated nearly as much or as diversely as is the case with sight. In these cases, something crafted serves a more profound function, whereas in visual arts the exercise is in extracting things that you find interesting from your everyday visual experiences. I think that life in general provides a more sufficient "feast" than with the other two senses and so experiences for the visual "organ" don't need to be supplemented nearly as much. (Awkward grammar anyone?)

I was also assigned to write a brief summary of my views on art in my Design II journal. Below is what I have come up with so far (left-click to view a more full-size and legible version).

Journal Entry: The philosophical jigsaw puzzle

I think that the source of my fascination in philosophy is not because I seek "the truth" as it were, but because I enjoy developing, communicating, and understanding worldviews. [...] These seem to be intertwined in some form with virtually everything, but the medium of its deliberation is naturally philosophy.

A worldview typically is a context for action and experience. The subject tries to make sense of the "why" for surrounding undergoings and delve for a purpose for the subject's self, and that consequent self's actions. A worldview might be looked upon as an assessment of one's experience, an intellectual foray into ontology, teleology, ethics, and everything else.. but it cannot be regarded as something passive. One cannot distance their actions from their worldview, the two are a result and a cause. The interest, I think, that I find in the examination of worldviews is that it is extremely topical and meanwhile looming and ever-important. The fear that I have of my interest in them is that I will reach a conclusion: I will erect thick walls to constrict my epistemology and as I become more and more familiar of the space between those walls, I will at last reach a definitive conclusion and say, "that's all there is to that." At the point that I come to this conclusion, I feel as though my soul^* will be at an impasse as well, and life will lose its splendor. Once my process of becoming has been reconciled, I fear that I will succumb to boredom, monotony, and necessity.
[* Poetically considered; think "heart" with a intellectual connotation.]

The center of my fascination, again, is not the destination, but the seemingly infinite possibility of the process of coming to understand. Even if there is one truthful contextualization to be discovered (objectively considered.. which doesn't seem plausible to me), I don't think that I would care for it. I would either dismiss it as being too simple or unpleasing, and then seek to develop it further, much like a crazy person trying to finish a jigsaw puzzle that has already been solved--dismantling and reconfiguring it again and again to be certain that the picture depicted was correct, and then, dissatisfied, reconstructing that puzzle in ways that seem more interesting than what is produced from its intended configuration. [...]

6/22 update:

In retrospect this sounds almost comical. I've been reading Wittgenstein lately and I think that my interest in philosophy proper is nearly exhausted. I'm still deeply interested in ethics and aesthetics, but those are matters of judgment, not "truth".

I don't think I have any further interest in metaphysics or epistemology.. much less a drive to construct some bizarre "jigsaw puzzle" because I am unwilling to accept one worldview. At present I've come to conclude that, with maybe the exception of ethics, most philosophical inquiries are paltry and unfruitful in comparison to empirical studies (e.g. natural sciences, sociology, economics, psychology). Whether or not I will act upon this conclusion in the near future is something that I cannot say.



1/1/08 update:

Re-reading this, I've definitely come a long way. When I wrote this I was very much into Kierkegaard and learning toward an uncertain religious orientation. The issue for me now is not that becoming or destinations are irrelevant, it's simply that philosophy plays no part in this. Likewise, there's no harm in establishing a sound worldview, provided that it does not claim to know that which it does not or cannot know. I think I've come to reach something of this since I wrote this.