(Happy New Year?!
I'm late on that aren't I.
Happy Martin Luther King Day!)
***
This last year, I've lost sight of the things I used to be passionate about. Music: writing, playing, and listening to. Writing. Being active about making new friends and maintaining old friendships (You probably know who you are. If you are one of these people, then I'm sorry...I'm trying my best, or at least I will be from here on out.) Exploring where I live. Photography. Drawing fanciful diagrams of things that will never be (but are awesome nonetheless). And even the things that I have become interested in, things in electrical engineering, I can't pursue easily on my own.
That's not to say that I haven't been happy...I have been. These past few years have been the happiest of an already very fulfilling life. I've accomplished a fair deal since I've come to college, from feeling like I've learned so much and yet feel so ignorant, and not the least of which is finding someone that I love very much. For that I am thankful: to everyone I know--both friends and otherwise...you've all helped me figure out who I am and what matters--and to the things I have yet to figure out. But I still feel like I'm missing something. I think it's half uncertainty that the future will remain the same (with regards to happiness), and half the uncertainty that I won't accomplish enough to leave an impression on the Earth, no matter how small.
I probably made the excuse that I'm too busy between class, work, and relationships. Yeah, that's probably true. But I think some of it has also been simple loss of passion. And lack of passion, I believe, is roughly synonymous with lack of action and desire to accomplish truly difficult things.
***
Lest you be in the dark about the details of my life, I'm an Electrical Engineering major and minor in Philosophy. My last year in Philosophy has been Metaphysics (USC Phil 360) and Theories of Knowledge (USC Phil 470). Metaphysics argues the important things like: is time linear or an (inexplicable) extension of space?; what is color?; are there natural laws or just constant conjunctions? etc etc. Not important.
Then this past semester I took Theories of Knowledge i.e. epistemology. Here, we tried to answer the question, "What is it to know?" We ran in circles, skirting the essence of knowledge, and at once losing sight of it. However, there was some promise in this class in the writings of Bertrand Russell and Hans Reichenbach (both engineers/mathematicians turned philosophers), who both viewed knowledge as not some lofty subject that philosophizing was supposed to quantify into rules (e.g. to have Justified True Belief is to have Knowledge), but rather as something that is and will always be elusive and indefinite...what we "know" could just be what is most likely, and based on that high probability, it calls us to act. That makes knowledge, and ultimately what we think about, meaningful.
Hey! I've actually found something (conditionally) useful about philosophy.
(At this point, you're probably asking why I even bothered to minor in it...but I'll have to save that conversation for another day.)
***
I'm late on that aren't I.
Happy Martin Luther King Day!)
Let this be part self-analysis, and part philosophy developed from it. If anything at all seems obvious to you, well...it wasn't for me, and it took me at least this past year to figure out what it was I needed to do.
Call it a resolution.
Call it a resolution.
Right now I'm in Oxnard, CA. And while being in Oxnard for more than 24 hours at a time has innumerable issues of its own that I'll address at another time, it also means I have lots to think about and lots of little to do. Oh the things to think about.
***
This last year, I've lost sight of the things I used to be passionate about. Music: writing, playing, and listening to. Writing. Being active about making new friends and maintaining old friendships (You probably know who you are. If you are one of these people, then I'm sorry...I'm trying my best, or at least I will be from here on out.) Exploring where I live. Photography. Drawing fanciful diagrams of things that will never be (but are awesome nonetheless). And even the things that I have become interested in, things in electrical engineering, I can't pursue easily on my own.
That's not to say that I haven't been happy...I have been. These past few years have been the happiest of an already very fulfilling life. I've accomplished a fair deal since I've come to college, from feeling like I've learned so much and yet feel so ignorant, and not the least of which is finding someone that I love very much. For that I am thankful: to everyone I know--both friends and otherwise...you've all helped me figure out who I am and what matters--and to the things I have yet to figure out. But I still feel like I'm missing something. I think it's half uncertainty that the future will remain the same (with regards to happiness), and half the uncertainty that I won't accomplish enough to leave an impression on the Earth, no matter how small.
I probably made the excuse that I'm too busy between class, work, and relationships. Yeah, that's probably true. But I think some of it has also been simple loss of passion. And lack of passion, I believe, is roughly synonymous with lack of action and desire to accomplish truly difficult things.
***
You may ask, "Why's that? Those are good questions, right? I never really thought that much about those things till now, but now that you mention it..." Well, sure they're questions that we all can think about and with seemingly pertinent implications--the operative word: "seemingly". Time does affect us and we all perceive its passage (or if you've also played the metaphysics game before, maybe time is an infinite tapestry OR the "spotlight" has fallen on the tapestry OR reality is growing....). Unless you're color blind, we do see colors. Laws and rules seem to govern how our world works (e.g. Five Second Rule).
Say it were possible to answer any of the above questions (and let me tell you, it's not easy or even possible), then we'd ultimately have to ask: "What do I gain by answering that question?" Silence would overcome most philosophers. It could be argued that humans are inherently curious and answering these questions (which again, is impossible) might satiate the passing curiosities they generate--but even then, these intense endeavors of the mind only solve the issues purely of the mind. In this respect, our best efforts are circular. It's true that it is the intellectual pursuits of man that makes him superior to other animals, but it is not the pure intellectual pursuits so much as what he does about them: whether social, aesthetic, technological, or whatever that may be.
[[[If I used footnotes, I guess I that's where I would explain the difference between simple curiosity and aesthetic pleasure--both seemingly "pure intellectual pursuits"...but man, that'd be a dick move. Actually, you probably only needed to read the first sentence of this, but in case you ignore this warning....Curiosity insofar as Metaphysics is concerned is to inquire into the most basic notions we know of: existence, entities, etc. The responses to these curiosities are (1) highly subjective and similarly (2) only capable of being responded to with language, so we have no empirical way to test them--almost by definition, metaphysics asks about things highly nonphysical. Satisfying aesthetic desires is something different from this since aesthetics originates from things in the world. There's probably a much better way to differentiate these things and its a whole discussion by itself, but for now lets just say they're definitely different. ...you see where I'm going...right?
That said, maybe one could argue that metaphysics, and philosophy as a whole, is an "aesthetic pleasure" that satisfies the "art of thought." That would be fine, except that philosophy tacitly (but very surely) purports to be more than just art.]]]
I spent 1.5 hours 2 times a week for 15 weeks in Metaphysics. I spent precisely 90% of that time frustrated. As an engineer, I have a compulsion to not only theorize, but also to desire what that theory means in the real world. In fact, that's the best part of engineering. I'll admit though, that if you think of engineers that way, then I'm low on the totem pole; while some people are building robots or writing awesome programs, and I...well, don't. I digress.
Then this past semester I took Theories of Knowledge i.e. epistemology. Here, we tried to answer the question, "What is it to know?" We ran in circles, skirting the essence of knowledge, and at once losing sight of it. However, there was some promise in this class in the writings of Bertrand Russell and Hans Reichenbach (both engineers/mathematicians turned philosophers), who both viewed knowledge as not some lofty subject that philosophizing was supposed to quantify into rules (e.g. to have Justified True Belief is to have Knowledge), but rather as something that is and will always be elusive and indefinite...what we "know" could just be what is most likely, and based on that high probability, it calls us to act. That makes knowledge, and ultimately what we think about, meaningful.
Hey! I've actually found something (conditionally) useful about philosophy.
(At this point, you're probably asking why I even bothered to minor in it...but I'll have to save that conversation for another day.)
***
You may have noticed that at the beginning of this writing, I had set out to think--and you might want to say, "AHA! Hey asshole, you're blabbering on but here you are, thinking without any useful product!" I beg to differ. This writing, this thinking is en route to things I want to change about myself, and heck, things I wish would be different about the world. That those who speak would just as much do, and compel people to do worthy things-- those things that advance the Arts of Living. Those aesthetic pursuits like music and literature. The art of technology and advancing civilization. The art of persuasion to the ends of socially meaningful things: that is don't be a pundit for the sake of punditry, but for the sake of calling to arms.
Our best thoughts are nothing without manifest. Our thoughts are not in and of themselves products. They are mere means, albeit very, very powerful means.
So from here on out, I want to do as much as I think. I want to produce something meaningful. I want to Do.
Let's call it a resolution.
Aaaaand for my own sake, let me just make a quick list of pressing issues:
*make a band, or at least jam more
*do academic research in Electrical Engineering
*build an audio-modulating circuit
*listen to more jazz
*play jazz
*take more late night walks, and take more pictures on them
*bike more
*learn how to read
Some food for thought:
http://www.wikihow.com/Stop-
And a link to a time when I actually did something:
http://advancederror.dmusic.com
(My older recordings...some things about it are embarassing, including the URL I gave it, but come on, I was maybe 15 or 16 when I made it. I think it's easiest if you click the "Comments" links to listen because they have embedded players)
Our best thoughts are nothing without manifest. Our thoughts are not in and of themselves products. They are mere means, albeit very, very powerful means.
So from here on out, I want to do as much as I think. I want to produce something meaningful. I want to Do.
Let's call it a resolution.
Aaaaand for my own sake, let me just make a quick list of pressing issues:
*make a band, or at least jam more
*do academic research in Electrical Engineering
*build an audio-modulating circuit
*listen to more jazz
*play jazz
*take more late night walks, and take more pictures on them
*bike more
*learn how to read
Some food for thought:
http://www.wikihow.com/Stop-
And a link to a time when I actually did something:
http://advancederror.dmusic.com
(My older recordings...some things about it are embarassing, including the URL I gave it, but come on, I was maybe 15 or 16 when I made it. I think it's easiest if you click the "Comments" links to listen because they have embedded players)
1 comment:
Its good to see someone else also making use of the whole its-break-and-I'm sitting-on-my-ass period :) I actually re-started blogging in the wee hrs of the morning as well, GMTA!
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