Archive for July, 2006

From the Vacation and Hookers Dept.

Thursday, July 6th, 2006

So don’t expect any updates until at least Monday, I’m going on vacation for a couple days to Montreal with some friends and someone I’ve never met before. It should be a very good time. One thing is interesting though: When I’ve said I’m going to Montreal several people have told me that the strippers are in fact hookers and that I should watch out. This strikes me as odd. I’ll let you (all of my imagined readers, and a couple of real people I’d guess read this) how the trip went when I get back on Sunday or Monday.

Music: Godspeed You Black Emperor – f#a#infinity

From the Compatibilism and Knowable-ness Dept.

Wednesday, July 5th, 2006

Compatibilism as a solution to a philosophical problem doesn’t really have much to do with this post. I’m using the word in such a way as to describe the condition of things (in this case, two people for the most part) being compatible. (I’ll have to read that article, it seems a very concise but informative discussion of that philosophical concept.)

In this writing, this thought collection, I want to talk about the importance of the overlapping of experience, of habits, or mannerisms, of likes, of dislikes, by people and that as a basis for relationships. It seems in my observation of friendship and by extension love. Parenthetically, love seems a very focused friendship, one in which compatibilsm is taken to it’s highest degree and in the friendship the individual is at it’s most minimized and the collective one-ness of two people becomes more important and greater than the sum of the parts.

Perhaps I am overly concentrated on the idea that overlapping of selves is the basis for friendship, but as of now I have not been able to posit another equally applicable paradigm for the exploration of friendship. (This also reminds me to reread the sections of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics that deal with Friendship, I believe an entire section is devoted to it, I’ll have to dust off my copy.)

I’m not sure the usual length of these posts will allow me to even get to the meat of what I’d like to discuss. It seems as is a friendship is built largely out of that which intersects in the two individuals and the more these intersections occur then the greater the compatabilism. This can also be applied to the falling out of people with old friends. This shows a sort of lag in the updating of these intersections, showing a slowness to see otherness in one we have seen ourselves, also explaining why some are slow to see behavior they judge distasteful in close friends. This is growing to be more and more disjointed, I’ll have to come back to this in the morning when I’m more coherent, perhaps getting into some solid conclusion and out of the realms of theory and definition.

Music: Sneaker Pimps
[yeah, still. (I have to be awake in less than 2.5 hours to go to the doctor and have some tests done). ]

From the Money and Effort Dept.

Wednesday, July 5th, 2006

so i just got my Financial Aid Information for the next academic year for my very expensive college. It looks like the Grant based on need is larger than the initial merit award that was a large part of my motivation to attend this school. This teaches a very important life lesson:
Put in effort, see that effort come of short, fail.
give up and then you’ll be handed something superior once you accept defeat.
that is profound.
wait a second…that’s not how this shit should work. Whatever. I won’t complain, really. It means less debt for myself and my family in the long run . I wish though that as far as school was concerned that effort and reward seems to coincide more often, but that sort of thing simply shows how inadequate education and tests are in gaugeing accomplishment or intelligence. If we as a culture could stop measurement and accomplishment on some sort of objective scale we might be better off. Giving up on being wholly objective could help a number of things, I’m not saying that attempts at objectivity are not important but I think we should really give up the ghost of being wholly objective. Are there really any Universals? Nothing applies to everything all the time. Even things like gravity and ‘laws’ of physics become inadequate at certain times or scales. Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity are incompatible. Religions rarelyagree. Politicians, philosophers, thinkers, writers, poets, singers, and interior decorators have as many views are there are individuals. We need to realize that each of us is a wholly separate individual; formed by our experiences, our genes, our parents, our thoughts, our ethics. We should accept the ultimate un-knowable nature of the Other.

Well that went off on a tangent rather quickly, it’s not a subject I haven’t considered before and one i think deserves more thought, hopefully I’ll come back to it.

Music: Sneaker Pimps
[Trip Hop to the Max]