Should we aspire to a single totalizing system of knowledge (i.e., one that includes everything in it), or should/must we strive for multiple systems, irreducible to each other, with no transcendent perspective or unifying metanarrative? Discuss.

I've been kind of at a loss for what to do with my new manuscript (Code Name: Cassandra) as far as flushing it out, making the story consistent, filling in the gaps, etc. usually, the ungodly amount of structure I use is good for this (most of it is scaffolding and saw dust to be removed or swept away later). none of my structure has been working. so, I'm going to add another layer by pulling out something that's not as consistent in the manuscript and adding more of it.

WHAT I NEED FROM YOU FINE FOLKS:
I need rhymes that you'd most often hear on a playground. for example: "circle circle dot dot, now I have my cootie shot"; "missed me missed me, now you gotta kiss me"; etc. hand clap rhymes too would be fabulous. I'm not really interested in nursery rhymes... those have too much of a parental shadow cast over them. I really really really would love the ones that are slightly ugly to look back at, but didn't seem so at the time.


big thanks and hugs and kisses and stuff to everyone!

Oh ho! What a stir Mark Strand made last week. With a final total of 6 yays and 4 nays, Strand just barely merits entry into our elect little circle. Way to squeak past the masses!

For those not aware of this Strand fellow, he's actually Canadian-born, but spent most of his life in the US, where he got his BFA at Yale and his MA at Iowa. Still kicking, by the way! A Pulitzer-prize winning poet, he was also the Poet Laureate of the US from 1990 to 1991. Perhaps most famous for work like "Keeping Things Whole," Mark Strand is an immensely popular poet (with the sales to match) famous for an "evacuation of self" from his work, and later (with his popularity) a satirizing of self. I'll leave it to esteemed readers to provide criticism of his work; while I know it's out there, I'm having a devilishly hard time finding links to the best of it.

Now on to this week's published victim! Remember, we all love it when you share the reasoning behind your votes!

( Application )

Today's society would be one of the best and worst societies that have ever existed in history. It has demonstrated to be one of the best because of the growing number of people who are making advances with the many different technologies we have today. That same society have also demonstrated to be one of the worst as being the most ignorant and selfish group yet, wallowing in pointless materialistic luxuries, drowning in pointless, mindless information (reality shows where having people do stupid stuff is the main point), forgetting past cultures and traditions that had once made the human race so rich, and generally being unaware of the world, or even just their local surroundings.

All the flaws of this society have mounted up, and the perpetrators don't even notice it: the economic downtrun was partially because of senseless spending on things unaffordable; people not being politically ept had resulted into bad judgments of political acts and figures; and today's colloquialism and "acceptable" etiquette--with all the homophobic slurs, the use of offensive titles to label someone, and the whole "c u L8r" 's, just to name a few--has proven that this modern society is degenerate among past.

I may be harsh on this view, and am sure that there are a number of upsides, but this is the portrait of today's youth, and if no one is willing to change it, then the portrait of the future would look very bleak.

I finished rereading Vernor Vinge's "Zones of Thought" which is a short story, The Blabber (1988) and two big novels, A Fire Upon the Deep (1992) and A Deepness in the Sky (1999). The others are computer age space opera set 40,000 years ahead of our present era, but A Deepness in the Sky is something altogether other, even though it has deep parallels with A Fire upon the Deep and others of his novels.

I haven't posted pictures in ages. Fun.

Halloween afternoon, my wife and I went to Jinjiang Amusement Park. I like that even though I am in China, much of it has that retro feel that any good amusement park should have.

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v319/craniumsoftener/2009%20Oct%20Amusement%20Park/?action=view¤t=017c3d65.pbw

Also, we went to Shanghai's museum. Here is some stuff I liked.

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v319/craniumsoftener/2009%20Oct%20Museum%20trip/?action=view¤t=f8428f43.pbw

I don't know if this counts as a philosophical topic/question, but I believe my troubles lately have been stemming from my floundering attempts to determine how I view life, what I believe to be the meaning of life, and the inherent nature of the human species, and I could really use some feedback. If this post isn't appropriate for the group I apologize, and understand if it is removed.

I have been contemplating the questions I mentioned above for only the past year or so. I use to be a very (outwardly) superficial person, and concerned myself with mostly tangible, material things and shallow pleasures. It wasn't until a couple years ago that I gained a respect and awe for the phenomenon of life, and began to seek a more meaningful existence. I wanted (and still do want) to be a better person. I tapped into an intelligence for the sciences that I didn't know I possessed, went back to school, and am hopefully graduating next year. This fall, I took a course on environmental ethics. The readings for the course really inspired and intrigued me, and although I've never taken a class in philosophy, I began to research the topic a bit on my own. I was mostly interested in understanding how and why people think in the ways that they do. A very general and broad topic, I know. Also, a very individualistic topic- you will never see the world the exact same way I do, and I will never see it in the exact way that you do. Our realities are uniquely our own, something I find fascinating. Anyway, the more I read and learned, the more I wanted to know and the more I questioned the purpose and meaning of my own existence and life. I also am newly interested in astronomy, and find space and time very intimidating but very interesting subjects. I don't know if it was a sudden realization of how small I as an individual am in the grand scheme of things or maybe it was the foreboding feeling that no matter what I do in my life, it will ultimately be insignificant due to my minisculiality, or maybe the realization that the culture I was raised in (I'm from America) values things that are completely petty and meaningless and shies away from encouraging critical, logical thinking, and is raising generations of "sheeple" (sheep-like people, in case the spelling wasn't clear). I don't know what it was. But I have reached a point where I cannot make myself care about anything. I am overwhelmed by apathy. I am normally overly-sensitive and empathetic, if anything, and this switch has really thrown me off. I know I don't like the way I feel, but I cannot seem to change it. Those things that once brought me joy (reading, learning, hiking, playing world of warcraft, cooking) simply do nothing for me now. Nothing in life brings me joy. Now, I don't feel overly depressed or emotionally out of control- I'm certainly not suicidal or entertaining thoughts of hurting myself. It's more like a deep resolve has settled over me, and I truly belive that nothing in my life, nothing that I do or say or stand for really matters. I want to be motivated and inspired again, I want to feel the joy I once felt in just existing. So after this very long-winded post (I do apologize) I guess my question is this:  How does one overcome apathy? How do I make myself care again?

Thank you for any feedback, it's very much appreciated.

In following the historical approach espoused by the inner circle of this community, I find myself getting distracted by questions of method, especially outside of the context of a university. Should my studies emulate a college course, perhaps utilizing resources such as MIT's OpenCourseWare? Should I seek assigned readings and essay prompts offered by experts, do them, and find a critical audience?

This seems stale. Isn't the primary pleasure of self-education the avoidance of the insipid rigmarole of coursework designed for mass consumption? The ability to follow the trails of interest wherever they lead, efficiency be damned?

My ideal is a deadly-serious discussion group (something like seminars at St John's), but I have never made any headway in this. Most post-collegiates tend to hate serious study, and the works of long-dead metaphysicians seem to be of interest only to men, of which I know few. It's a problem.

So I default to reading, taking notes, and furrowing my brow. I have rarely in the past been moved to post here -- I feel silly doing so, as if there is more gravitas expected of posts than I can offer -- so I feel like I have no outlet. My notes stay in my notebook, and I am unsure how to proceed.

I'm enjoying this pursuit, otherwise I would not do it, but I get the sense that it could be far more fruitful.

So, what is your method of study? With what questions do you frame the study of texts? What is the product of your labors when none are required of you?

So it is written, so it shall be: Laura Riding Jackson, author of the three poems submitted for your approval last week, is OUT by a vote of 2:1, with one non-vote by andalus thrown in for good measure.

Laura Riding Jackson had an ambiguous association with Robert Graves after being invited to live with him and his wife in England. A tremendous literary scandal grew out of Graves' divorce, accompanied as it was by Riding's suicide attempt in 1929. Riding continued to travel with Graves, and both were very productive writers during their time together -- even collaborating on some volumes. They parted in 1939, and in 1941 she married Schuyler Jackson. That same year she renounced poetry.

Her work was noted for its distinctive voice at the time she was writing -- her command of free verse forms working in conjunction with her "high valuation of language" (which is most evident in the strength of her abstract nouns). Riding's "Progress of Stories," one of some twenty chap-books and anthologies published during her poetry career, was especially well regarded by John Ashbery, who counts Laura Riding Jackson as one of the "three writers who most formed [his] language as a poet" -- the other two being W.H. Auden and Wallace Stevens.

On to our next hapless victim, then!

( Application )

Hello,
I wanted some input on Bertrand Russell. His essay on the value of philosophy says that studying philosophy helps to broaden minds. To have beliefs challenged is to be a wiser person, but this requires looking at another viewpoint...

What does Russell mean here:

"The true philosophic contemplation, on the contrary, finds its satisfaction in every enlargement of the not-Self, in everything that magnifies the objects contemplated, and thereby the subject contemplating. Everything, in contemplation, that is personal or private, everything that depends upon habit, self-interest, or desire, distorts the object, and hence impairs the union which the intellect seeks."

What is the "enlargement of the Self"? What happens to the common man that does not seek to study philosophy?
Thanks.

Morrissey collapsed on stage recently. Actually, I'm not a huge fan (a small one perhaps), but it made me think of how I saw him at Vinyl Solution for his album release party when I was 17 years old. I remember that event actually made MTV News because it was like, "Hey, look what normally insignificant, backwards town Morrissey released his album." Well anyway, he is now 50 years old, so that means he was 33 then. THIRTY-THREE F'IN YEARS OLD! Back then he was younger than I am now, yet he is starting to get up there in age now. It really doesn't seem like that much time has passed. If time continues to move so quickly, tomorrow I will be dead is about the feeling. And as for his looks, it seems like he should still be handsome in a youthful way and not a 'distinguished' way. But look at him collapsing on stage with grey hair and loose skin... oh never mind.

Regardless, I wonder if the legendary fat Morrissey girls still exist in Grand Rapids. Any recent sightings?