- Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.
- Nothing you plan goes according to plan.
- Life gives you unexpected breaks.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
A Little Wisdom
Three Axioms:
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
It's 3:43 in the morning...
...and I haven't gotten anything done.
I have a paper due for my first-year seminar due on Thursday. Basically, I have to take the article my group was assigned to present and summarize it in narrative form. My first paper/presentation was a western conceptualization of a "land ethic." Then I had an article on the "color blind principle," and now it's the "Contestation and Consensus" of the morality of abortion in Japan.
To be quite honest, I could really care less about the Japanese struggle and succeeding consensus in Japan on abortion. I can, on occasion, get passionate about abortion, but the multiculturalism in this class is really starting to piss me off. To use his own jargon, I am a structuralist, and my professor is not. Another day I will explain what that means and why I think cultural plays a minimal role in shaping history.
Before I write these narratives, I usually take notes on the article with my computer. From these notes I write most of my paper, but this article is so boring and I am so lacking motivation at the end of this semester that I have done next to nothing tonight. I went to eat with some friends, came back, read the news, and texted a friend for a while. Then I read the High Point Regional Board of Education minutes. Yes, I was that desperate.
It's snowing outside, and it's coming down pretty heavy. They might cancel classes if this snow doesn't turn to rain, but Wednesday is my day off anyway. I may have to work on this paper tomorrow; I'm dozing off in the common room as we speak, so before my head smashes into the keyboard I'm going to go to bed. If this message is inconhorent, I will fix it in the morning.
I have a paper due for my first-year seminar due on Thursday. Basically, I have to take the article my group was assigned to present and summarize it in narrative form. My first paper/presentation was a western conceptualization of a "land ethic." Then I had an article on the "color blind principle," and now it's the "Contestation and Consensus" of the morality of abortion in Japan.
To be quite honest, I could really care less about the Japanese struggle and succeeding consensus in Japan on abortion. I can, on occasion, get passionate about abortion, but the multiculturalism in this class is really starting to piss me off. To use his own jargon, I am a structuralist, and my professor is not. Another day I will explain what that means and why I think cultural plays a minimal role in shaping history.
Before I write these narratives, I usually take notes on the article with my computer. From these notes I write most of my paper, but this article is so boring and I am so lacking motivation at the end of this semester that I have done next to nothing tonight. I went to eat with some friends, came back, read the news, and texted a friend for a while. Then I read the High Point Regional Board of Education minutes. Yes, I was that desperate.
It's snowing outside, and it's coming down pretty heavy. They might cancel classes if this snow doesn't turn to rain, but Wednesday is my day off anyway. I may have to work on this paper tomorrow; I'm dozing off in the common room as we speak, so before my head smashes into the keyboard I'm going to go to bed. If this message is inconhorent, I will fix it in the morning.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
What I'd give to be a poet right now...
Today, in my college world, the mandatory freshman activities are finished.
But really, I shouldn't be complaining. I'll brag instead. I've got it made. I got the ultimate meal plan (no limit on meals), the cool housing for the scholarship/honors kids, and a significant nerd/outcast population to mingle with when I so choose. So really, I'm doing pretty well after all.
Except for the fact that I have nothing to do for the next two days until I have my first class. So I'm in the library on the second floor, which, by the way, is straight out of the seventies (Orange carpeting?). Right now I think I'm the only person on the second floor. At 8:00 in the morning I think I was only the second person to have breakfast in the Pavilion (which serves two residence halls). Everyone else must be asleep.
I woke up a girl in the common room this morning. She was sleeping in chair with a blanket thrown over her because she has asthma and she's been having attacks and she doesn't want to wake her roommate up and have the roommate think she's dying. So the moral of the story is that things could always be worse (and some people have good reason to sleep in).
But still I'm sitting in the library with chairs and little tables around me that look like they got lifted from the children's section of the county library (Damn you, '70's designers, damn you!). What am I reading? The Great Financial Crisis, by John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff. It's one of the books I bought (but have not yet been assigned) for this gen ed class called "Social Issues." I read the preface, which mentioned that much of the material for the book comes from pieces in Monthly Review, which is not only the publisher of this book but also happens to be a magazine with "an independent socialist voice," in the words of the authors. Now that's cool, it's okay to be a socialist. I myself am a self-classified socialist-leaning cynical capitalist. But I'm still trying to be a step removed from unwavering belief in what this book speaks of, just in case it's a little too radical.
I'm just trying to finish the introduction. I'm on page 18 and it ends at page 23. At first I picked up the book and started reading and said to myself, "Hey, this is pretty accessible prose. Should be an easy read." Oh, but to be sorely mistaken!
Flowing in these pages is economic doomsday rhetoric of stagnation and financialization, brewing with funky terms like monopoly capital that leave me totally clueless. Many names float around. John Maynard Keynes is apparently in some ways like Isiah, father (well, not literally...) of a race of economists as numerous as the stars. Or at least enough to fill up a conference room. And it seems like everyone referenced here was deeply influenced not only by Keynes but by Marx and/or a bunch of other people I've never heard of. A little more background on the other people would be nice, especially for faux intellectuals like me.
I've probably been exaggerating. I don't know if a political manifesto masquerading as a book on economics--which would a biased and deceitful book, and that's what I'm really afraid of--would easily become college course material. I hope not. But in any case, it's pretty dark and pretty dense material. I'm looking out the wall-to ceiling windows across from me, and occurs to me, what I would give to be a poet right now.
I'd look out the window instead and write some idyllic sonnet about the trees or nature. Or an epic poem about Andrew, the man who's friends with everyone. Maybe some haiku about orange carpeting and stolen furniture from the children's section.
I can't rhyme, or write imaginatively, or with imagery, or even with much creativity. For God's sake, I can barely understand poetry when I read it. But maybe then, if I were a poet right now, I wouldn't have to be intellectually concerned and fully engaged with stagnating production and out-of-control financialization.
Because to me, a historian has to understand everything, because everything contributes to history. Especially those detached forces that have a decisive impact on the daily lives of people and a direct control over the welfare of the state--namely, those forces described by economics.
Of course, you might not be much of a great poet in these times if all you knew were leaves of grass and cherry blossoms. So then maybe it isn't so easy being a poet after all.
- No more icebreakers.
- No more ceremonies.
- No more workshops on rape, insanity, and the prolific substance abuse that will soon be commencing on campus.
But really, I shouldn't be complaining. I'll brag instead. I've got it made. I got the ultimate meal plan (no limit on meals), the cool housing for the scholarship/honors kids, and a significant nerd/outcast population to mingle with when I so choose. So really, I'm doing pretty well after all.
Except for the fact that I have nothing to do for the next two days until I have my first class. So I'm in the library on the second floor, which, by the way, is straight out of the seventies (Orange carpeting?). Right now I think I'm the only person on the second floor. At 8:00 in the morning I think I was only the second person to have breakfast in the Pavilion (which serves two residence halls). Everyone else must be asleep.
I woke up a girl in the common room this morning. She was sleeping in chair with a blanket thrown over her because she has asthma and she's been having attacks and she doesn't want to wake her roommate up and have the roommate think she's dying. So the moral of the story is that things could always be worse (and some people have good reason to sleep in).
But still I'm sitting in the library with chairs and little tables around me that look like they got lifted from the children's section of the county library (Damn you, '70's designers, damn you!). What am I reading? The Great Financial Crisis, by John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff. It's one of the books I bought (but have not yet been assigned) for this gen ed class called "Social Issues." I read the preface, which mentioned that much of the material for the book comes from pieces in Monthly Review, which is not only the publisher of this book but also happens to be a magazine with "an independent socialist voice," in the words of the authors. Now that's cool, it's okay to be a socialist. I myself am a self-classified socialist-leaning cynical capitalist. But I'm still trying to be a step removed from unwavering belief in what this book speaks of, just in case it's a little too radical.
I'm just trying to finish the introduction. I'm on page 18 and it ends at page 23. At first I picked up the book and started reading and said to myself, "Hey, this is pretty accessible prose. Should be an easy read." Oh, but to be sorely mistaken!
Flowing in these pages is economic doomsday rhetoric of stagnation and financialization, brewing with funky terms like monopoly capital that leave me totally clueless. Many names float around. John Maynard Keynes is apparently in some ways like Isiah, father (well, not literally...) of a race of economists as numerous as the stars. Or at least enough to fill up a conference room. And it seems like everyone referenced here was deeply influenced not only by Keynes but by Marx and/or a bunch of other people I've never heard of. A little more background on the other people would be nice, especially for faux intellectuals like me.
I've probably been exaggerating. I don't know if a political manifesto masquerading as a book on economics--which would a biased and deceitful book, and that's what I'm really afraid of--would easily become college course material. I hope not. But in any case, it's pretty dark and pretty dense material. I'm looking out the wall-to ceiling windows across from me, and occurs to me, what I would give to be a poet right now.
I'd look out the window instead and write some idyllic sonnet about the trees or nature. Or an epic poem about Andrew, the man who's friends with everyone. Maybe some haiku about orange carpeting and stolen furniture from the children's section.
I can't rhyme, or write imaginatively, or with imagery, or even with much creativity. For God's sake, I can barely understand poetry when I read it. But maybe then, if I were a poet right now, I wouldn't have to be intellectually concerned and fully engaged with stagnating production and out-of-control financialization.
Because to me, a historian has to understand everything, because everything contributes to history. Especially those detached forces that have a decisive impact on the daily lives of people and a direct control over the welfare of the state--namely, those forces described by economics.
Of course, you might not be much of a great poet in these times if all you knew were leaves of grass and cherry blossoms. So then maybe it isn't so easy being a poet after all.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
How to Write Stuff
- Sit through a catastrophic graduation rehearsal.
- Go home and eat hot dogs that don't taste very good.
- Watch brother and sister kill terrorists on Xbox.
- Watch SNL Digital Shorts that would make Ms. H.'s hair fall out.
- Blast some of that Ode to Joy stuff.
- Write stuff.
Friday, June 5, 2009
This I Believe
I have faced injustices directed against me; most people have, I’m sure. I might be able to tell you a few things about jerks, bullies, and generally irritating people, who usually find it amusing to make the socially awkward person angry. But to equivocate my mild feelings of irritation with most of the evils perpetrated in this world would be ludicrous. I have never seen the law leveraged against me, or stood the bigotry of my neighbors, or faced injury to life and property, or watched my people be systematically exterminated. No, what drove me to be so engrossed with justice and its subsidiary notions of morality, judgment, and punishment was not any failure of justice in my own experience, but rather a sense of societal duty that has grown upon me in recent years. This was not always the case. There was a time when good and evil were the rules of the grownups I abided for the sake of avoiding trouble.
I suppose that, even while I was young, I thought that justice was something that ought to be pursued as an end in itself. Yet what I took to be just were precepts taken from the people who made the rules—my parents and my teachers. It would not be until I approached adulthood that I asserted my moral independence. For if men and women recuse themselves from defining their own morals, they ought to recuse themselves from passing judgment as well, since they would apply a standard of morality that is not their own—a standard they cannot truly believe in if they have not made it their own—and render any judgment, by definition, ill-advised.
I have taken the task of making justice my own, and if we are to have fair and equal justice, then our framework must be universally applicable to all individuals under any circumstances. Reason and logic, detached from the differing biases and perspectives of conflicting entities, should be the building blocks of any universal framework of justice. To some extent, rational justice is possible, given a set of principles to build it off of. Yet it is these principles that undermine a truly universal justice, for any such principle proves itself to derive from sentiment, not reason. For these basic premises of justice—such as the rights to life, liberty, happiness, private property—man can still question and doubt—why should, for example, life or liberty be sacred, or why should anything be sacred at all? There is no self-evident truth in ethics, and thus, there can be no absolute morality. The notion of justice—at least fair justice—is absurd.
And yet, despite the inherent flaws in rational justice, I cannot help but to continue searching for moral answers. I hope a philosophical breakthrough might resolve justice’s fundamental flaws, but I confess I am driven, in the pursuit of moral definition and application, in the pursuit of justice, despite its absurdity, by nothing more than naive optimism—I am driven by the faith that there is a distinction between good and evil, and that we might judge here on Earth for the moral redemption of mankind.
I suppose that, even while I was young, I thought that justice was something that ought to be pursued as an end in itself. Yet what I took to be just were precepts taken from the people who made the rules—my parents and my teachers. It would not be until I approached adulthood that I asserted my moral independence. For if men and women recuse themselves from defining their own morals, they ought to recuse themselves from passing judgment as well, since they would apply a standard of morality that is not their own—a standard they cannot truly believe in if they have not made it their own—and render any judgment, by definition, ill-advised.
I have taken the task of making justice my own, and if we are to have fair and equal justice, then our framework must be universally applicable to all individuals under any circumstances. Reason and logic, detached from the differing biases and perspectives of conflicting entities, should be the building blocks of any universal framework of justice. To some extent, rational justice is possible, given a set of principles to build it off of. Yet it is these principles that undermine a truly universal justice, for any such principle proves itself to derive from sentiment, not reason. For these basic premises of justice—such as the rights to life, liberty, happiness, private property—man can still question and doubt—why should, for example, life or liberty be sacred, or why should anything be sacred at all? There is no self-evident truth in ethics, and thus, there can be no absolute morality. The notion of justice—at least fair justice—is absurd.
And yet, despite the inherent flaws in rational justice, I cannot help but to continue searching for moral answers. I hope a philosophical breakthrough might resolve justice’s fundamental flaws, but I confess I am driven, in the pursuit of moral definition and application, in the pursuit of justice, despite its absurdity, by nothing more than naive optimism—I am driven by the faith that there is a distinction between good and evil, and that we might judge here on Earth for the moral redemption of mankind.
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