Reminding Myself How I Haven't Changed

I wrote this entry a month ago or so in my former blog. As I was reading through some of my old entries, this one I think is worthy of being republished here because the issues I am dealing with in it are still pertinent to my life now:

Do you ever wonder what it would be like to give up? Wake up one morning and decide that nothing was worth your time anymore. I sometimes get a taste of what that would feel like: while stressing over a paper due the next morning, I wonder why a something so phenomenologically insignificant can get me so upset, and then I wonder what would happen if I just didn't do my paper and gave up on going to class. Life is full of invisible leashes that we strap on ourselves. The fact that I am a student, a son, a boyfriend, a secret-keeper, a law abiding citizen, or a social being at all results from my belief that by chaining myself to society and being as dependent on others as possible, I am realizing some sort of Hegelian freedom where my rationality wins out over my irrational instincts. But being part of this world spirit continually coming into being is exhausting for one's sense of freedom. Rationality means determinism no matter what any philosopher says about the arbitrariness of the will. And living a fatalistic life based on mindless logical computation certainly disenchants life (as Weber described the modern world), but it also disenfranchises the will the live. But living whimsically, a slave to the uncontional as Kierkegaard puts it, is only an antithetical trap posing as an individualistic solution to the problem of finding one's purpose in life. Kierkegaardian freedom means giving up the bonds of rationality and living in constant fear and trembling. But this denial of something so seemingly concrete as sagacity reminds me too much of retreatism. Giving up may feel like a solution to my problem of emptiness, but it is nearsighted. It lives for the moment but forgets that moments are successive and denies that they are connected. Man has no nature in existentialism, but this seems like an inadequate explanation of man's activities in light of modern psychology, genetics, and the historical method proposed by Troeltsch but hinted at with Hegel. And so here I am, stuck between a philosophy with a long term goal of utopian, collective living infinitely far into the future, and whimsical, individualistic living blind to logic and science. Tyler Durden said "We are all composed of the same decaying organic matter," and that's what's real to me right now. Live's only meaning is found in the end of this decaying process for the individual, but this denies the ever changing existence that is necessary for Hegel's utopia. And the denial of one's existence for the betterment of the state opposes the existentialist (at least the atheist existentialist) conception of the need to focus on the existent rather than the speculative, i.e. a future collective utopia.

I realize that some of the ways I describe Hegel's and Kierkegaard's philosophies may be a little inaccurate. As time has passed I have learned more about Hegel's 'State' and Kierkegaard's reaction to Hegel, but I still feel wedged between a philosophy that rationalizes the good life and one that believes this sort of rationalization is foolish when it comes to how to live.

"An' if it harm none, do what ye will"

I think the vision of myself that makes me the happiest is that of me becoming the world's library. Knowledge, un-used, unapplicable, perfectly ordered and sorted. I believe that the more knowledge one has the more apt they are to discover patterns in the data, recurrences, cycles. They pursuit is not what matters to me. I do not enjoy reading, I enjoy understanding. I do not enjoy the pursuit of knowledge, I enjoy the possesion of it. this may not be philosophy, as Socrates by way of Dr. Goold's blog has enlightened me. But nonetheless, it is possesion that adds substance to my existence. Buddhists claim that the connection one ought to make with the universe is ontological: Everything is composed of the same stuff, and therefore one ought to be able to identify completely with everything else. That is how one connects to nature for them. But I see things differently. The connection that gives me the most substance and meaning is epistemological. You see, if I understand everything as merely a different part of the same existence, then my position in the universe has no significance. The idea of Buddhist sunyata, or emptiness, the idea that nothing has an identity apart from everything else, may be true, but to me this is not fulfilling in any way.Its understanding the data, and subsequently the systmes, that comprise existence that puts me in a better place emotionally and spiritually. I'd rather have knowledge than be knowledgable, i.e. I'd rather have already accomplished great things than be able to accomplish them without taking into account whether I have or not. This is simply how I feel, with a little bit about how I think. When I try to live in an existential manner, making the journey more important than the goal, I feel lost and as Sartre puts it "condemned to be free." If I am free then I have the freedom to relinquish it, even if this move is only temporary. I give up freedom in order to be a slave to my passion, and that passion is the need to have knowledge and understanding. Thats what I really want. Understanding.

Drifting Through

This is the first blog entry I have made here. I don't have much to write about at this moment; I basically just wanted to test if it works and looks good. But I am listening to a very interesting song called "Frame by Frame" by The Honorary Title. The lyrics hit home for me.

Days bunch up in weeks, collaborate in months against me. The sheets are stained with evidence that our remains are now drifting away.
I share with complete strangers my most personal of pleasures. I spend hours at my leisure, like sharpened precise tweezers.
Drifting through in the frame by frame.
I'll walk the same path.
I'll say the same lines.
I'll do this everytime.

That gives you a sense of how my life feels right now. I go to class, hang out with friends, make empty plans, and through it all it feels as though there is no guiding principle for my actions besides the desire to make it through the day and start the next one. I really do feel like I drift through the events of my life.
Mitch Hedberg died recently. So did Terri Schiavo (Thank God!) and the Pope is on life support or something to that degree. So much death has happened in my life all at once this past winter that it doesn't faze me when famous people die anymore.
On the upside, I'm not sad about any of this. I've become content with things that in the past would have destroyed me internally. When I really think about it, I am disgusted at that fact. I really do wish I could feel convicted to organize my life in a certain fashion. Right now I'm content with simply drifting through until summertime, but the more I talk with friends back home, the more I realize that I would rather come home a hero than have to use this summer as time to resurrect the former, passionate me.

I don't like this entry now that I look it over, but I want to post something and I don't have the inspiration to write something better, so it stays. Hopefully in the future I will be able to do more than complain about insignificant, vague problems of mine.