my standard for truth has gone awry
I feel like my version of truth is always bent in some way. You see, somehow I make things work (in my head) that just can’t be right in the real world. And then, there’s this part of me that thinks everybody else must have the same sort of bending (of truth) happening in their heads…Which then leads me to think that maybe they just aren’t being honest and admitting it…Which then makes me wonder if, maybe, I’m being more truthful, since I do admit it. So, because everyone else can’t admit their bent-ness, and I freely admit it, I must somehow be more…honest? And the absurdity of this circular logic shows how bent my truth must be, because I started out talking about how dishonest I must be, and have now decided that I might be the most honest person on the face of the earth. And the problem is – the logic kinda works. Which, of course, means that logic must be untrue…
”We can speak of pollution in terms of the historical pollution of fascism, the historical pollution of war, the historical pollution of hunger in the world, the historical pollution of murder, the historical pollution that we people – poor, oppressed people – in this world all over have been subjected to for too many years. That pollution is the basis of the pollution of the nature, the world, the universe. The only solution to pollution is a people’s humane revolution.” –Bobby Seale
‘Cynic’ comes from the Greek ‘κυνικός’, meaning dog-like
Maybe I’m sort of jaded, but it seems that we shouldn’t worry so much about politicians breaking their word. They’re all going to break their word for money. I think that the politician you back isn’t so much about their honesty, but about whether or not you agree with the people who funding them. Because that’s their word. Their finances are their word. It doesn’t seem to matter what they say – it’s about who they’re receiving donations from. It’s about whether the people “campaigning” (i.e. the people who are sending them checks) for your candidate are individuals (or corporations) you trust to run our country well.
some updated posts
Recently, I was honored with a response from E. London Carlsson regarding the post, “A Presumptuous Proposition.” An excerpt:
“I must side with DaVinci when he stated that, ‘Art is the highest form of philosophy.’ So if art is where these ‘would be philosophers’ are hiding, then they have picked a good spot. That is not to completely disagree with you. It’s just that truth is often lost in sweeping generalizations.”
I also have just updated my “What I’m listening to” page and “What I’m reading.”
n+1 releases “Regrets Pamphlet No.2″
n+1 Research Branch Pamphlet No.2, What We Should Have Known: Two Discussions. The authors describe them: “The pamphlets are short books, carefully composed, but with content capturing the spirit of things still happening, in flux, under debate, made for argument.”
“The idea for the discussions was prompted by a desire to give…a directed guide, of some sort, to the world of literature, philosophy, and thought that they might not otherwise receive from the current highly specialized university environment. They were also an attempt to answer the “canon”-based approach to college study in two ways: by identifying canonical books produced by our contemporaries or near-contemporaries—something conservative writers have always refused to do—and, second, by articulating a better reason to read the best books ever written than that they authorize and underwrite a system of brutal economic competition and inequality.”
For those of you who have never heard of (or read about) n+1, it is a twice-yearly print journal of politics, literature, and culture. nplusonmag.com
“They intend nothing less in their periodical than to reimagine and reestablish the world.”—Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
its fun. & easy. & it makes you feel creative! (even if you aren’t).
“Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes.”
So, you can just paste in a bunch of text from…anywhere, really. You can also just type in a URL, RSS, or del.icio.us address.
Here’s some cheesy examples from my blog:
Updated 16 August.
I’ve added a page called “What I’m listening to…”. It has a list of what I’m listening to. Listen to the list. I don’t know how to play the music from the list. So listen to the list somewhere else, I guess. JUST MAKE SURE THAT YOU LISTEN TO THE MUSIC AT SOME POINT, SOMEWHERE, SOMEHOW! okay?
My Neo-Nihilistic Tantrum*
What is the goal of all humanity? What are we working towards? What exactly do we think we’re doing? I’m not sure. We’re working towards peace, harmony? – what sorts of fancy things do we think we’re trying to do?
I mean, we’re (allegedly) going to wars so that we can establish more peaceful societies, so that people can learn. We want people to learned so that they can establish more knowledgeable societies, so that they can express themselves in the arts. And they want to do that…why? Arts and learning are what start all our wars. We have no purpose, no goal.
Everything – every answer we have just asks another question. And the second that we start to act upon one of those answers, we’re denying the possibility of asking more questions. Once we start to act on it, then we start formulating our own truth and getting ourselves, basically, stuck at a lesser answer than we could possibly reach. But what makes asking more questions better? Why continue doing that? What are expecting to attain? And where are we going with it?
It seems like greater knowledge just breeds more misery. Because the more knowledge you have, the more you realize how much you don’t know. So why are we doing it? What’s the point of it? We’re just working towards more war, more tension. The point of going to war is to make a peaceful society; a more peaceful society is made so we can think & be pensive & study the arts. And the arts just open you up to more questions. And all these unanswered questions – and all the answered ones, too – really just lead to more factions and more war. I say, let the world implode, let it fall apart. There’s no reason.
There can be no final Answer. Every answer brings another question. Everything can be deconstructed further and further. This is true of the physical world, the mental world, the spiritual, emotional – whatever we wanna call it – it’s true of the entire world. So when we decide to start acting upon one of those answers that we know is not the final answer (but by acting upon it we are choosing to accept it as the final answer), we’re not being honest with ourselves. We’re not being true to what we know is real.
*note: I dictated this diatribe to my phone during a nap. This is the complete transcription of my somewhat-muddled naptime musings.
Aleksandr Isayevitch Solzhenitsyn, dead at 89
Winner of Nobel Prize for Literature (in 1970) and author of The First Circle, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, and The Gulag Archipelago. He died of heart failure in Moscow. In regards to literature, Aleksandr was my first true love.
“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” –The Gulag Archipelago
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