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THREE_DEGREES_WEST_OF_NORMAL
Draconic and Destitute
I felt my shoe stick to the ground a little bit today and I thought for a moment that maybe the ground loved me or my shoe loved the ground or my foot loved the earth and there was love in the moment but then in my doubt I checked and to my dismay I found that my suspicion was confirmed and there was just gum on my shoe and I realized that somebody who was chewing gum and was done with the gum that they were chewing did not love the earth and did not love the ground and did not love me or my feet or my shoes and there was no love in the moment or the moment before it so if people do not want to love anything perhaps it is up to me to create some because angry people with red firerods with string and clocks that count backwards to an explosion on a bus and the angry people who who abandon their teachers and sign papers for a gun and a uniform and a ticket to a sad place where angry people do angry and sad things and all of the angry people who put gum on the ground where shoes and feet are supposed to instead of a trashcan where gum is supposed to go -- none of them seem to be doing much. Which suppose is okay, as long as I make up for the deficit.
Charmander for President!
A mystery has been solved.
My grandfather recently lost his wallet. It was a really big deal, not only because of the obvious cash issues, but because of the credit cards (identity theft), drivers license (he lives alone, so it's his only form of transportation), and worst of all, his preferred member cards for Vons and the like (I don't believe I even need to explain how horrific that one is). Well, the entire house had been torn up, the cards canceled, and the appointments canceled in order to make time for more searching, and after three days they found it.
In his back pocket.
Apparently, he had put it in a different pocket than usual. He thought that he felt a lump there, but he didn't bother to reach back and check what it was. From all of this, I think I've learned something about my grandfather.
He doesn't change his pants.
Crash and Burn
I have only been home to sleep, recently (hardly an exaggeration). I have Academic Team, GSA, debate, tech, college prep labor, and parents who have a hard time figuring out why homework is easier to do at home where, you know, there are materials (like home, perhaps?). But I'm alright. Sometimes I'm even able to fit in a shower or a meal. I ended up getting almost all A's... but Richardson gave me a B in math. It's not a horrible report card, but that one bump on the line is driving me up the wall. I got a B?! In Algebra II?! I should be in Pre-Calc at least. All of my peers are. I have been experiencing a daydream with progressing frequency of late about a group of five pretentious scholars in the admissions office of a prestigious private college laughing heartily (but nonetheless pretentiously, of course... they stay in character) over my the transcript attached to my application. "Fwahahahaha! He expects to be accepted while taking Algebra II as a junior?! The audacity!" chortles one. "And he didn't even excel in it!" the biology professor notes in an exasperated but amused tone, "He received a B! Why did he even bother to show up?" The final blow comes from the history dean, who was forced into a place on the admissions board not without some struggle, but finds the hilarity of this obviously jovial transcript to be worth the trouble: "He wants to get into college? I do say, the only place that this lad is going to be accepted to is The Jerry Springer Show!" Cue: lights at fifteen. Curtain. Enter Xander, stage left, in a Jack-in-the-Box uniform, taking orders in between sobs and heroin injections.
... at least I get to shower sometimes
It's a Copernican Revolution in Epistemology, Watson!
When I feel upset, I think about philosophy. Recently, I've been trying to construct an epistemological theory that is compatible with an absolutist deontiological framework in ethics. Here are some of my conclusions:
With my epistemological theory, my basic approach is to find an alternative to nihilism. The study of ethics tends to be defined as taking the morally preferable of two actions. Because it is impossible to be obligated to do something that is impossible, it is necessary to establish a paradigm where the moral agent has complete autonomy over the dominion of action. However, not everyone has infinite ability, obviously. And at that, sometimes the results of an action don't necessarily reflect the values that are inspire them (i.e. a doctor performing an operation, but transferring a deadly infection into the patient because of a failure of a nurse to clean the instruments). This, you'll notice, creates a relativist view of morality, with the obligations of some intrinsically different from the obligations of those with different abilities. It even draws us close to a somewhat Nietzschean way of thinking, where humans are not equal. An absolutist dealing with deontology, then, must find an alternative model of the agent's effect on the world. Here's mine:
Humor me for a second, and put your hand on your head. Done? Good. The physical movement that brought your hand to your head, in the way I would define it, is not actually action: it is behavior. This behavior was not arbitrary, though: although it was not your action, it was inspired by your action: the action entailed it. You see, every agent has a set of values in a hierarchal format, and a list of doctrines that the moral agent 'believes in.' Action, then, does not lie in the actions of the body (I'm not just speaking of involuntary functions such as heartbeat, but any involvement in the 'exterior world'), but rather in the agent's ability to change its identity. This explains why things such as mistakes are made: because human action is not the only factor in their creation. Additionally, I look to a somewhat neo-Kantian view of our perception of the world, in terms of sensory value. You see, the chemicals in our brain have a huge effect in human behavior because it not only regulates certain unconscious biological processes, but also serves as a kind of 'hue' knob on the television set that is the human nervous system. Not only do they designate, say, the vision that we experience, but also provides certain values for those images. For example, the hormone adrenaline may add the(temporary) normative dimension of a threat to an image of a bear. Our value structure/identity, however, helps to determine how the body reacts to these stimuli. This theory also, you will notice, explains involuntary reflexes that don't necessarily reflect our values, such as me punching my brother when he sneaks up behind me before I realize what I just did or what is going on, because the biological functions overrode the influence of the agent's identity.
We do, of course, seem to have certain 'practical cognition', such as 'which brand of soda is better?' or 'do I turn the screwdriver right, or left?'. But not only does our identity determine a great deal of these things (I value financial stability over product quality in my soda purchases, for example, although those are not good examples of the refined values that I refer to), but I think that a great deal of this thought is actually no more than an experience, much like pain or pleasure. The experience of practical thought is created by the body (it all happens in the brain, of course) sorting out difficult questions as to how to implement the values of the agent through behavior. These instances, it must be noted, mark the peak of the agent's influence over the body and exterior reality, as opposed to chemical influence, et cetera.
What is the point of the body, then? I'm just taking a stab at it, but my guess is that it is to provide the human agent with knowledge that can be used in proper adjustments in identity. Again, look to the Kantian view of human categories of understanding: though he believes in a central system of human consciousness, he also contends that we need data from the exterior world to attain knowledge, in the same that the skeleton of a computer hardware still needs software to provide it with knowledge.
Anarch
HA! You like Kurt Vonnegut!
posted Jun 29
PintheTailOnThed0nkey
i like the blog about where you said the one thing you
learned about your grandpa is he doesnt change his
pants hahahah the whole losing the wallet and finding
it in his pocket reminds me of my dad..except it takes
him a couple of hours
posted May 31
M E M 3590
wow, your blogs are great haha
posted May 22