Free Writing

Working on an ethics paper, trying a new idea-cultivating strategy.  Let's see what I can figure out about this.  Context: established.

Some vocabulary, to start with.  "Performance value" is the value a product retains as a direct result of the method of its creation.  "Product value" is a value based on what the product appreciably is, regardless of history.  "Living well" is living in production of a good life; a "good life" is one which we may find valuable on reflection, rather than just as it is lived.

To live well, then, is to generate performance value for your life.  It is difficult to imagine a life as a product, something to be jostled about and traded for goods and services.  But if we can manage this, think of a life as a concrete thing we can hold in our hands or even just heads, then one which was good would have high product value, because its future usefulness as a product would be greater.

I think the division between these ideas, performance and product value, is primarily a question of when you're evaluating from, as may be exemplified by getting away from the difficult concept of "a life."  So let us instead use for these purposes a tangible work of art, as Dworkin does.  I stand before a painting I've never seen and know nothing about, in the present moment, and I judge.  From where I am, all I can determine is product value; balance of light/shading, symmetry in any figures there may be, my own ability to read meaning into the work as a whole, etc.  But what do these qualities actually contribute to?  If they and others like them compose and justify product value, and product value is to be understood in any broader context, it must be found to relate to something other than its own correlating of performance value.

Of what consequence, then, is the beauty of a painting, fr'instance? Appreciating something beautiful now produces a mixture of aesthetic pleasure and satisfaction with my ability to feel as much; this second part because an intellectual effort is required to appreciate beauty. If I leave it like it is, the degree to which such beauty contributes to the painting's product value is unchanged.  If, alternatively, I alter the painting in some way to make it better(by restoring mild damage, say), I've increased both product and performance value: the product is improved in itself, made such that my feelings of pleasure in looking at is will be greater in the future than they were previously.  Further, by participating in this improvement, I've contributed intelligently to its production; though I cannot claim the lion's share of credit for its eventual performance value on this basis alone, it will always be true that I did what I did and that product value increased as a result.  However, what if I act to reduce its product value?  Damage or deface the work itself, or worse, criticize it to others.  I've still added to performance value, still inscribed the fact of my interaction with this object upon eternity with intention and intelligence.

How do these various influences I have on performance and product value play out in the future?  If I increase the painting's product value, then someone else approaches it as I did, they will be able to appreciate only that change; performance value is virtually impossible to quantify unless you've been present for the entire creation process, as the creator is. Likewise, if I mess up the painting, the next to view it won't be able to say anything about the performance value of the work because they won't know why the damage took place, whether by accident or design. The performance value of an object is then inherently attached to its past, while the product value is attached to the future; additions to performance value may either add to or reduce product value, but no change in product value can reduce performance value.  The past can only be added to, not altered or reduced, but the future is always shrinking and getting less shiny; on the long view, all product values approach zero, while performance value is always increasing.

Tool - Vicarious(video) Walkthrough

"Vicarious" video

Opens on tangled and complex nerve & muscle fibers & details of the first brain worm as its eyes come on. It swims out of the man's pupil.  One such bran worm projects from each pupil, shown in detail.

Open on human, shown mechanical detail.  Seen on horizon is approaching destruction, inevitable.  Human tries to fake a smile while trembling.

Opens on human seeing approaching glass pane, represent perspective.  See man run fingers along perspective, feeling it out; Feeling leaves mark on perspective.  See several other perspectives floating about, each showing world slightly different.  Two perspectives' corners collide and light rushes forth, represents flash of truth or insight.  Constricts human's pupils & engages attention of brain worms(represents opposite poles of human being, perhaps?).  Enters flying tick thing, represents trial or difficulty.  Tick lands on human's hand, crawls over to palm, then flies away when an eye opens in the palm.  Represents trial as inspiring ingenuity or tool use and technological advancement.

 Human looks up at flaming hole in the sky, then forward again to see two perspectives intersecting along a full edge this time.  The area of their overlap is initially just the one seen through through the other, the obvious part.  Then the flash of insight comes through full area, begins cracking it & knocking splinters off.  Represents cognitive dissonance, loss of sanity.  Tick flies down and feeds on fallen shards, difficulties growing stronger from this process.  Brain worms both watching tick.  Human's eyes roll back in head, losing consciousness, and brain worms detach from eyes to fly free.  Both fly up at first, then red one turns and flies down(to tick?  not sure), while blue one continues up.  Approaches hole in sky and looks closely, with eye hand raising and looking up; mind inquiring into the vast unknown with aid of technology.

Blue brain worm then flies back down(was up flight same as down flight?  could be either way), and looks closely at eye hand, mind examines technological abilities and concepts and impacts.  Worm swims into eye hand pupil, wriggling in like a sperm cell into an egg(last bit probably coincidental).  Swims through and finds itself looking out of a huge inner eye; human becoming aware of itself as god, using imagination.

Perspective floats in front of human, then cut to two brain worms approaching each other, blue from above & red from below.  Human looking into perspective sees a reflection of itself, perspective on self as human, self-awareness.  Human looks to left & sees another human doing the same; other human looks back.  Human then looks back to perspective in front of it, now seeing many of itself; realizing connection and similarity to other humans, realizes community.

Tick crawls up on perspective, then flies over to human's head and crawls up the face to the middle of the forehead.  Gives birth to eye with three tentacles, which flies out and away from the tick, itself flying away.  Tentacle eye flies up and away, human feels for it at forehead and then see's destruction, with same three tentacles as tentacle eye, coming up close.  Destruction looms over and knocks human down, presumably to death.  Represents trial producing in human an idea, which creates some small destruction, and is then destroyed itself in turn.

Human falls & dies, empty skull revealing a fetus in womb where the brain had been.  Represents human death as conception of something else.  Fetus grows to something like the human, but with no arms, a swimmer's tail in place of legs, and eyes bugging out permanently; what is born is our greater selves.

Newborn Other-Human flies forth from a universe surrounded by screens of individual spiral galaxies.  See forest of full heads containing the eye the brain worm looked out through.  Other-Human swims up to the eye of one head and wriggles into the pupil.  Passing its new, more experienced self through the head to convey its change; analogous to a neuron firing, action potential and reaction.  Other-Human now swims out of another(?) head's eye and down toward another(?) universe, after looking closely at a particular spiral galaxy.  Circles around looking in, aiming(?), then dives in.  This completes the human's creation story.

Return to the brain worm that looked into the eye palm's pupil.  Its tail, traced to the Other-Human's, lights afire and shoots backward into the forehead of the Human.  Realizing its origin and nature, perspectives shatter, trials(the tick) consume themselves and disappear (burn up), and destruction falls as a bogeyman in the sky.  Ground falls away and Human is floating in empty space, lights and geometric figures dancing over its form.  Zoom in to eye reveals...

...reveals a giant flaming hole on a world's surface, sitting in what appears to be a continent.  Shift back to see entirety of the eye in the planet.  Hurricanes swirl over its mostly blue surface.  Its perspective on its troubles and evolutions?

Philosophy of Sex(3)

#5(p. 139) Read or review the essays by Alan Soble (on masturbation) and Andrew Koppelman (on homosexuality and infertile heterosexual relations), both of which contain criticisms of Finnis's sexual ethics. Try to devise defenses of Finnis's position and arguments against these criticisms.

To address the criticisms of Finnis's position on homosexuality by both Soble and Koppelman, it is first necessary that position be clearly stated. In his essay The Wrong of Homosexuality, this is something which John Finnis simply fails to do. What follows is an attempt to salvage a coherent description of the metaphysical position which necessarily precludes his arguments against homosexual union.

Anyone with any experience of the variety and complexity of human will and desire is aware of the phenomenon of internal conflict. At times we feel a divided wanting, a contradiction in drives which manifests as psychic stress, guilt, depression, and any number of other emotional discomforts and disorders. To act on such varied drives across time, at once in accord with one set of values and later in line with a different such set, is what is meant when one is said to lack integrity; they are internally conflicted and, manifesting that conflict as inconsistent and unpredictable action, they live in a state most would consider directionless, disordered and, arguably, incomplete.

Completeness, then, the internal consistency of purpose and value we call integrity, may be considered on this basis to be a precondition of purposeful, constructive human action, since someone who is unsure or conflicted about what they want cannot possibly pursue such a divided course. To the end of achieving such integrity, it is necessary that all such potentially conflicting drives be brought into accord with one another; if not necessarily to a particular purpose, then at least with regard to the method or principle by which such purpose is to be determined.

Enter the conscious mind, prime candidate for the seat of the will and thus rightful master of all desires. Assuming a dualistic sectioning of the drives(1), the conscious mind contends only with those of the body for unity of purpose in action. If the body is given free reign to oppose the mind in its pursuit of physical pleasures, a disharmony of self results in which one feels guilty for indulgence, is plagued by the consequences of rash action, and generally degenerates most of the beneficial trappings of society by undermining the individual civilization necessary to their maintenance. In all fairness, this disharmony may be just as easily averted by appointing the passions and pleasures of the body as one's moral compass; indeed, animals enjoy such inner peace by marshaling their intelligence only in service to their physical pursuits of comfort and instinctual fulfillment. As humans, however, it is in our power to pursue aims of a different nature, employing intelligence as one's guiding light and body as one's agent of pursuit and experience; given this unique ability to transcend our animal natures, and the obvious benefits it has produced for our species, can anything justify doing otherwise as more than decadent?

Intelligence of choice, then, becomes requisite for personal integrity as a human acting in one's greatest capacity. It is in this sense that pleasure fails to qualify as an intrinsic or basic good, for it is a form of bodily experience and, pursued for its own sake, would mean the body acting as dictator over one's intelligence, prescribing the use to which such intelligence was to be put. Pleasure is still potentially a good, to be sure; indeed, it is necessarily so if one is to achieve integrity of action, for a goal which was intelligently chosen and pursued to the extent of one's ability could not but be enjoyed as an exercise of their physical, as well as intellectual, capacities. A chosen goal which did not produce this result, or which, additional and intrinsic to its achievement, did not involve any sort of pleasure, could not be said to be intelligently chosen; such would perhaps be a case of what is meant by a “mistake”.

At this point, it should be clear how a pleasure, in any condition but one resulting from an intelligently chosen and directed pursuit, functions as metaphysical self-harm, since it either disrupts a unity of self by countering the conscious will or merely employs that will toward the instinctive and hedonistic pursuits of beasts. Sexual pleasure is no exception to this, which means that the form of its achievement must be very particular to avoid such internal disruption. It must be experienced as part of an intelligent pursuit; not, again, as the aim of that pursuit, but as an intrinsic aspect of it, a pleasure taken in working toward and attaining one's chosen goal. Such a pursuit must, by its nature, be something both directly achievable through sexual activity and justifiable as the means of some other intelligent pursuit.

It is here that a question of values arises, one that may well be inherently subjective. In our varied experiences of the world, whether social or personal, we come to embrace a variety of value systems; some value life above all else, others wealth, health, social cohesion, legacy, or any number of other common priorities which may be arranged in quite as many hierarchies. Each person must necessarily determine for themselves what is most important to them, what goal or pursuit is most consistent with their personal sense of proper human conduct. For some, this may well be the pursuit of pleasure for its own sake; as stated above, such a choice, if taken seriously, must result in a decadence of willful ability, though no loss of integrity is necessarily involved. For others, the prime goal of human existence may be the enrichment of the species, contribution to society, the greater good for the greater number, etc. Should this latter be the case, the problem then becomes one of finding a way in which sexual union may be turned consciously toward a social purpose.

One option which has a long history of producing societal cohesion and stability of family structure is the two-person lifetime commitment known most commonly as marriage.(2) In this practice, the natural process of reproducing and protecting the young into maturity is formalized and intelligently governed through the application of human will and intellect; a ritual is carried out, public promises of fidelity and endurance are made, and thus society becomes an aid in maintaining the joined couple as such. This is not an improvement on the methods of beasts, which get along quite well in their mating practices with mere instincts to guide them, so much as an adaptation of the human mind to the possession of a physical form. Our conflicting natures, trials beyond the burdens of animals, are held in check by social pressures; our young are thus raised, unlike those of any other creature on Earth, through the direct or indirect involvement of communities which may span continents and number in the billions. It is in this way, by it's inclusion in parenting, that society is contributed to by way of marriage.

Such is the functional goal of marriage, and its pursuit is the healing balm which can mend a creature of both mind and sexual drive into one metaphysical whole. This personal unity, or integrity, to be clear, is the ultimate object of marriage, as it is that of any intelligent pursuit which channels a bodily impulse constructively. It is this point which Koppelman seems to miss in his criticism of Finnis's position, for he assumes the goal of marriage, participation in society through shared reproduction, to be the literal means by which internal conflict is avoided. That if this goal is intended but known to be unachievable, as in the case of a sterile heterosexual couple, its pursuit to the greatest degree possible is somehow inadequate. This seems to be a rather harsh stance on morality, as may be illustrated through example.

Imagine, to begin with, possessing a desire for money. While in this state, you find by accident a wallet brimming over with untraceable currency, ripe for the taking with no external consequences to be concerned over. You have, however, a morally rich mind, a sense that there are others in the world who may suffer by your actions; more, that this wallet very likely has a previous owner who contributed significantly to its current bounty. You think, in other words, that you might feel bad for simply keeping this money. So, you go to the police station, satisfy your intelligently chosen goal of peace of mind at the expense of your immediate desire for wealth, and turn in the wallet. This in itself gives you pleasure, if not of the same sort that the money would have, because you have overcome your base urges in the interest of a goal which you can rationally justify to yourself. But lo!, the wallet had no identification in it! The police could not possibly have found its owner, it is grossly unlikely that they would be able to locate it at the police station themselves, so how can you think to feel good about yourself for turning it in, just because you tried to be helpful without hope of success?

It is the intention of the acting individual which contributes to their metaphysical self, and so it is the intention of action, whether feasible or not, which informs their peace of mind. A married couple who found later that they had no hope of fulfilling the function of their marriage through reproduction could not be found at fault for it, and so neither member could expect to lose any sense of personal integrity as a result. A couple who knew beforehand that their marriage would not produce children, on the other hand, would still be participating in the social ritual with that aim, inviting their neighbors and all those who shared their form of ritual to participate in their union, and so could still be satisfied that the sexual pleasure of their marriage would be justifiable as constituent of a socially beneficial activity. The actual production of children is irrelevant to such a social contribution.

Soble places his critical crosshairs somewhat earlier in Finnis's presumed argument, contending that the pursuit of pleasure for its own sake was in fact no threat to personal integrity. “...the pleasure of tasting food is good in itself, regardless of whether eating is part of the goods of securing nutrition of sharing table.” Unlike Koppelman's response, Soble does not so much miss the point as he outright opposes it. This may be met, to use his example, by speculating on whether there are occasions, beyond of the pursuit of nutrition or community, in which pleasure taken in eating may be somehow bad. We (in the decadent West, at least) are all familiar with occasions in which we have eaten food which was either of lesser quality, or greater quantity (or very possibly both at once), than was quite good for us, however much we enjoyed doing so at the time. Some do so more than others, to be sure, but Finnis's apparent position contends that they would not if that pleasure were taken only incidentally, as a bonus or constituent to eating as part of bodily sustenance or family activity. Is there some external goal, after all, which may be pursued by the consumption of a whole bag of potato chips or greasy fast food delights, other than pleasure for its own sake? Would one engage in such personally destructive consumption if not for the priority of enjoying the act over accomplishing something by it?

Having now fleshed out Finnis's argument as well as seems possible, and addressed how, given that fleshing to be accurate, two criticisms of it are misguided, a final note should be devoted to providing better ones. Any philosophical proposition, after all, must be understood as completely as possible only so that its flaws are made apparent and intelligible. Finnis, as he laid out his argument in The Wrong of Homosexuality, failed to do this, whether intentionally or incidentally to his eminent qualifications in the legal profession.

For one(1), a mind-body dualism is assumed to be the case for all humans; the mind is one creature with its constituent drives, the body another with the same, and together they compose a person, complete or not depending on the relationship between the two. While this assumption enjoys a rich and longstanding philosophical tradition, it seems too simple, and too easily explained away as a bias of personal experience and tendency to dualistic interpretations, to be taken seriously. Life is taken one piece at a time, attended to in exclusion to everything else, and this creates a sense that there are only two things that exist: what we're seeing now, and what we're not. Dichotomous views of the world are formed in this fashion: good vs. evil (what I am, what they are), right vs. wrong (what I do, what I don't do), rich vs. poor (more/less than I have), etc. Likewise, an internal view of mind vs. body comes about by designating conscious perception as independent and opposed to all other personal influences. My mind is what I want to be, my body is what I don't. The line of reason is an important one, to be sure, one of which the mind falls decidedly fair, but modern neuroscience has divorced this observation of any sanctity for the consciousness. It is the mind that reasons, to be sure, but this reasoning is the justification of existing irrational drives, not the fight against them. It is what we want most that we work to rationalize, not the other way around. It is in this way that the drives classically ascribed to the body are actually the origin of the conscious mind; without a variety of influences to contend with, there should be no need for consciousness at all. Instinct would serve quite as well.

For another(2), Finnis concludes, arbitrarily it seems, that reproductive marriage is the only method by which the pleasures of sexual activity may be justified. Within the above delineation of his ideas, traditional marriage does indeed serve this function, but there is no reason in principle to suppose it to be the only option. Any union of two individuals which contributes to some purpose external to their pleasure in the act accomplishes this quite as well: mutual emotional support, most any social function, or indeed any other intelligently chosen and pursued goal. Marriage, in our society, has only been the most common method of rendering sexual pleasure useful; there is not reason to think that, as our society evolves, other goals may not be similarly contributed to.

Ethical Inquiry(2)

#3(P. 30) In your view, does evil exist? Is there a difference between being evil and doing evil? Explain.

We are, none of us, righteous in all that we do. We all make mistakes, all lose our temper from time to time, all lack the perfect self-control we'd like. We're human, creatures of great potential, but potential is value-neutral: it is for both benefit and harm, and favors neither. The rule of law, restrictive though it may be, exists precisely as a response to this fact of human nature; to curb our harmful potentials while allowing or encouraging our beneficent ones.

Evil, though, goes beyond the limits of what we acknowledge in our own potentials: one may admit themselves flawed, unsure, prone to error or unintended harm, but never Evil. Evil is a degree of wrongness beyond the pale of simple human moral frailty. It describes that unreachable, unsympathetic Other, the not-like-us outsider who warrants no excuse or redemption. This is a useful label, I admit, because it has facilitated the in- vs. out-grouping, us vs. them mentality which has promoted the growth of cohesive societies and subsequent civilization within the same. But being useful does not make it accurate as a description of the world; while those we deem evil may well be beyond our comprehension or sympathy in some cases, this does not make them simple in the way the word suggests. Creatures of the animal kingdom commit horrible offenses against one another all the time, motivated by instincts which we as humans are largely incapable of understanding, but we do not call these simple animals evil, just inhuman.

Perhaps that's why we judge other humans we can't understand so much more harshly: they invalidate our beliefs about our own potential. An animal that eats one of its children is just doing something animals do; it may be horrible, but not evil, because that's just something animals do sometimes, when food is scarce or winter runs long or some such. A human that does the same, however, scares and enrages us, whatever reasons they may profess to justify themselves, because they are plainly human and doing something we consider inhuman. It becomes important, then, to distance ourselves from them, to make them some other sort of human, imbued with qualities and abilities completely alien to our own. Something we can't ever understand or be. Not an animal, obviously, but not one of us either: in a word, Evil.

This, in my view, is the only sense in which evil exists. It is a social construct we use to protect ourselves from exploring our destructive potential. In action, it is simply something we would never do; as a label for a person, it is someone we could never be.   

Ethical Inquiry(1)

#2(P. 32) What does she [Nussbaum] mean by “no life is 'raw'”?

The point I believe the author was trying to make here is that life is a cumulative experience. It is lived through the lens of hard lessons and stubborn preconceptions, then reflected on in the context of an ever-changing personal narrative, as fluid and changing as the demands of the present moment.

For contrast, first let us consider just what “raw” life would be. For one, there could be no a priori assumptions about the moment lived, no existing definitions or beliefs or memories to flavor one's direct, unbiased experience. Further, one couldn't be restricted to a single perspective, either physically or, as stated above, philosophically; life, if it could be said to be experienced at all in this context, should have to provide a complete knowledge of everything at once, while refusing to acknowledge the subject as a subject, or else return to an interpretive bias. Finally, if this were not unlikely enough, one's acquired knowledge should have to be entirely True, free from any obligation to future revision or reflection which might color their memory with the light of later discoveries.

It is only a slight failure of intellectual rigor to take as given that the above-described state of being is absurdly unlikely; no life as we understand it could maintain a perfect knowledge of all things while remaining completely free of self-consciousness. And yet such an assumption, in daily life, is all that keeps us sane. We need to believe we know everything, or at least everything pertinent, to act; need to think we see the world before us just as it is to function in it. The irony here is that, as Nussbaum points out, the activities we carry out in the world are precisely why we miss so much of it; lost as subjects in our own dramas, we see only one tiny slice of reality, and that only as we wish to see it. The remedy she advocates is the inflated reality of fiction. A story, analogous in every way to our own, but seen as we like to imagine we see our own lives: with the full depth and breadth of a god-like outsider looking in, blessed with a boundless opportunity for unbiased reflection and free of any personal investment in the situations being described (though even this medium may begin to fail us when we sympathize with one character over another).

Philosophy of Sex(2)

 #4(p. 19) Does the marital status, age, sex or gender, species, or race or ethnicity of one's sexual partner make a difference to the morality of sexual acts carried out with that partner? Why or why not? What other features of potential partners might be added to this list? Their physical attractiveness? Income? Aspects of their biography?

In evaluating the morality of any act, a tempting starting point is that golden rule which is most simply stated as the premise of medical ethics: Do no harm. Indeed, if all one dealt with were objects, things and creatures without self-awareness and so what we consider volition, such a premise might suffice; damage is, after all, something universally recognized as at least unpleasant, if not outright reprehensible when imposed on a sensitive creature.

Humans, though, at least in dealings with our peers, take exception to this rule. We place the greatest emphasis, not on a choice of pain or comfort, but on the choice itself. We find it horrible to think that we should be subjected to anything, good or bad, without our consent. Consent, then, respect for the independent will and thus recognition as agent rather than object, is our highest priority in determining how we wish to be treated, and by extension how people should treat each other generally.

Consent is variably influenced by the characteristics listed: social phenomena like race/ethnicity, gender, and marital status will be treated as having no bearing on a person's will, and thus ability to consent. Being social characteristics, qualities which only exist relative to others, they don't exist as qualities in the paradigm case of a solitary person being acted on or affected by the faceless challenges of life; to say that their ability to be willing participants in such trials, to agree with justice or object to its absence, comes into being with the existence of other people does not follow. Physical attractiveness, then, must be similarly considered irrelevant to one's ability to consent.

There are two qualities which determine the degree to which one is able to agree, or not, to endure their particular circumstances: power(the availability of options) and knowledge(the awareness of one's options). Personal characteristics which are related to the possession of one or both of these will then be characteristics which influence one's ability to consent; someone lacking either the power to refuse or the knowledge that they may do so can be reasonably described as lacking some ability to consent. Age, under this definition, is very definitely a factor in the morality of sexual activity with one's partner, since both knowledge and power are relatively lacking for the young. Further, any aspect of one's biography which impaired them in either such respect would likewise complicate their ability to refuse a sexual advance, making such an act an acting-on rather than an acting-with; objectification, in other words.

Income is a tricky consideration. An abundance of personal possessions may well increase one's sense of power and thus resilience to the influence of others, but on the other hand it only proves to be a factor in consent when there is a significant disparity in the income of the participants. Considered this way, though, the concept of social power arises, and so admits the several qualities excluded above as independently non-existent to be in fact important; though being poor in itself has no bearing on a person's will, there are situations in which refusing a particular sexual advance while being poor may be more difficult. Does this difficulty influence one's ability to choose, or just the choice itself? Are the factors which would make a choice difficult the same as those which would take it away?

Philosophy of Sex(1)

#2(p. 19) How can one go about deciding whether sexual acts have been performed with consent or have been coerced? Does the presence of coercion always mean that the act was not performed with consent; does the absence of coercion always mean that the act was done consensually? Do we often legitimately coerce or put pressure on people to do things they prefer not to do?

To determine the role of coercion in human sexual relationships, as well as in any other sort of relationship, it will serve to first briefly delineate the terms involved. “Coercion” is held here to be any application of pressure or influence by one party on another toward some particular end. “Consent” is meant as the mutual willingness or agreement by agents to participate in some end; as no consent is necessary for independent acts, it is held to be a relational term, describing only interpersonal activities.

These terms, to be sure, require some explanation of their own; coercion is, after all, often meant to describe the overriding of another's unwillingness to engage in an act by force, whether physical, emotional, economic, etc. Such a definition is problematic, however, because it presupposes the existence of a static will on the part of its object; one must assume that there is a particular thing person A wants, that they cannot ever want anything contrary to this, and then characterize any activity by person B which results in person A not pursuing their one desire as coercive. It is by dismissing this idea of a static will, or unchanging mind, that one is left only with the application of influence by person B on A as an adequate example of a coercive act. Consent, similarly, may be uselessly complicated by the suggestion that a paradoxically free and unchanging will is present for all involved parties. There is a distinction, after all, between what one chooses and what one wants; while some debate is appropriate to determining which drive properly constitutes one's “will”, except in the case of children at least, one is unlikely to find in practice that the term applies to both.

In this context, coercion and consent lose any mutual exclusivity; unless one or more parties involved lack the status of being willful agents, in fact, coercion of some sort becomes necessary for there to be any relational act to be consented to. To explain this, let us trace the progression of such a scenario: two strangers of independent will and no previous experience with or influence on one another exist such that they may interact; neither is subject to any influence other than their own will and, potentially, that of the other. What happens?

If any interaction is to occur then, as the term is defined here, some coercion must take place: an influence of or by one party on the other must occur for interaction, by definition, to be the case; to interact, one must act upon another, and vice versa. This influence may be unintentional, to be sure, as in the case of person A being independently attracted to some external quality of person B; such would be a case of the influence of B on A, as opposed to an influence by B on A such as active manipulation or seduction. In either event, however, an overriding of A's existing will by B can be said to occur, since that will is changed from its original state as a consequence of B. To speak to the legitimacy of this changing seems fruitless, since A might just as easily respond to unintentional qualities in B which he or she did not wish to respond to as to intentional ones which he or she did; whether it was a desire or a decision which prompted A to interact with B, it is conceivable that it would not be both at once. To say that the intention of B in this instance determines the legitimacy of their coercion seems speculative, since intention cannot be externally determined by A.

Menorah

I used to think there were no simple truths because, to be honest, I couldn't think of any; any idea taken in isolation grows in complexity as it interacts with other ideas and attempts to find common ground with them.  Compulsively seeking new ideas, or new perspectives on old ones, as I do, my experience of truth has always been one of boundless wonder(i.e, constant speculation), leaving me open to harder truths but prohibiting easier ones.

In recent months, however, I've come around more and more to a perspective on rational beings as active participants in their realities, not just passive experiensors. Because if our dealings with the world do have any sort of affect on it, and those dealings are in any way influenced by our interpretation of the same, then by association how we see the world has at least some bearing on just what that world turns out to be.

What is it, then, that makes my interpretation of the world as indefinitely complex more valid or consistent with the rest of my life's experience than relatively simplistic perspectives on the same: ideas of universal justice or logic, for example?  If believing that everything makes sense can make it true, does disbelieving it  actually render the world chaotic by mere appreciation?

Stacked

Problems are systematic, yes, but also hierarchical.  Imagine monora stacked upon menorah stacked upon menorah, infinte regress downward, the stems of each feeding the bases of those above, each stem part of a group with a common base, etc.  There is no hope if you attempt a truly systematic approach to extinguishing  a particular flame, because it's being as a result is the consequence of not just its own base, but all those feeding it, on back to a mythical God Base that feeds them all and is not fed by anything in its turn.  This is impractical for beings of finite discrete memory such as we.  A systematic approach to problem solving is more efficient, yes, but only if you know when to stop tackling problems by looking for underlying causes and just put a plug on the problem itself.  This is, however, a rather difficult thing to know.

Bridge

"Real," in my experience, is supposed to describe that which is totally independent, or at least may be interpreted as existing independently.  It's that idea of atomics, of base units or smallest, indivisible parts, that gives rise to this definition of reality; we look for the lines around things so that we can understand them, but to do this we must first believe in separateness.  Our ideas must be made bite-sized for us to digest them.

This line of reasoning, I think, is what ever inspired someone to imagine themselves the only person who "really" existed, all else being but synapse or dream.  Pretentious as I've found this idea since my third second considering it, I must say I agree with the argument; it is terminology that fails us.  "Real" is only useful as a concept, like any other, if it identifies a contrast; if everything were "real," or just as much if nothing were, the idea couldn't exist just because it could never come up in conversation.  So the question becomes: is anything totally independent?

Back to that staple of existentialism, "I am the only person who really exists, everyone else is just in my head."  Where does this notion come from?  If I experience another person and am in any way surprised by anything they ever do, isn't the debate settled?  How could I surprise myself, after all, or learn anything new if everything is already in my mind?  Much in the same way I might learn new words while knowing the English alphabet by heart, or new ideas while being fluent in the English language: I apply an existing method for interpreting my experiences to the new and varied events that come to me.

Come, but from where?  This is where my faith in a world outside my mind comes from: the novelty of life experience.  This can only ever be faith, however, because that world, whatever it's like, is so abstract and removed from myself that it may as well not exist.  My experiences, after all, aren't of these "real" things, but my interpretations of them.  Interpretations, loaded with my preferences and preconceptions, dependent on my patience and curiosity, in any practical sense are just in my head.  I don't see you; I look at you, but see only the bit of which I am capable, and even then only admit to seeing the tiny sliver I wish to see; much as if I interpreted a brown crayon as the letter 'b' because, well, there is a 'b' there.

In this way, being that I must actively participate in anything I experience of the outside world, none of it would qualify as "real" in the sense of being independent.  Am I all that's left, then?  The only truly independent mind in existence, woe is me...

No, I am as much a conversation between these elusive "real" things as anyone else: Earth and Sun converse in the language of life, body and mind in that of biology, and each is itself the meeting point of various other physical and psychological factors.  I am here, completely and totally, because other things were here before me which could and did bring about my existence.  My day-to-day life is as it is because of a conversation between myself and the world around me: I say what I want, you do the same, and if we're lucky we find some common ground before we kill each other with miscommunication.

Endings

I am a philosopher.  It is my habit, I might even say my compulsion, to turn Big Questions over and over in my head until I think I've got them figured out, then take my shiny new perspective and apply it to every other Big Question I can think of until it falls apart.  Sometimes this takes a while, and often I am frustrated to find that a years-long train of thought, an idea I've nurtured and raised and been comforted by in my darker moments, evaporates in a moment of novel experience which contradicts it.

Death, I think, qualifies as a Big Question, one I've done little more than skirt around in my time here thus far; I'm young yet, and I believe such a topic, like legacy or declining vitality, to be the province of the old.  Mortality, however, has recently been thrust unceremoniously into the forefront of my speculations.  As such, I feel it may be of use to review my few thoughts to date on the subject, and see if there is any foundation between them for supporting a coherent theory.

I was raised Episcopalian, which I remember fondly as a sort of survey course in religion: the fundamentals were laid out, but no particular emphasis was placed on taking them seriously.  And, while I nevertheless Did take them seriously at first (God, Heaven, etc., were Real things, everyone said so), the existence of other religions, and the simple geographical coincidence that I possessed the one I did(because I happened to be born here, rather than India, Africa, China,...), quickly disabused me of my convictions.

What remained were naive metaphysical speculations, what one might call a return to basics.  Aside from all the trappings and elaborate back-stories of popular spiritual thinking, I wondered, from my own experience, just what I could say about my own existence.  This gave rise to my conception of the life-pool, an idea whose development I've outlined elsewhere, but will sketch briefly: I am a community of microorganisms working toward our continued individual existences as far as possible, but chiefly toward the continuation of the whole.  The particular organization of this community (i.e, my body) I called a life-structure; death its collapse.  On dying, these constituent body cells and bacteria would return to the life-pool, or nature, to merge into other life-structures and continue the processes they carried out in my body, mostly without interruption.

I found, and continue to find, this perspective on life and death fascinating and wonderful, if perhaps simplistic; to be fair, I was a child when I designed it.  Where it fails, however, is in accounting for individual identity, the actual subject of a collapse.  While I need entertain no concern for the fate of my body, or its role in the grand scheme of things, I lack any idea of what I, as something more than the sum of my parts, am to experience or undergo when I die.  And for good reason: I'm not quite sure just what an "I" is; identity is another Big Question, but one inexorably tied up with any ideas I hope to create about death.  So, that first.

Is there something continuous about me, something permanent?  What relationship do I have to my previous incarnations, those children, adolescents, and young adults I vaguely remember being?  What is it we have in common?  In the above-linked post I developed somewhat the idea of a soul, but that seems more like a description of our differences and Their process; while it's a metaphysical assumption I live by to this day, on its own this idea of a soul renders death irrelevant by making it a constant: if all we are changes moment-to-moment, how is that last moment different from any other?

I have strong intuitive objections to this, however, because that last moment is different.  It affects us differently.  One might feel some trepidation at the approach of a life-changing experience, but they still expect to emerge more or less intact on the other side of it, if perhaps a bit wiser or more scarred.  Death, though, is the big fear to end all fears, the great unknown men have built pyramids and bred like bunnies trying to come to terms with.  Is all this concern just so much irrational babbling, or does the change in that moment have some special significance for who I am?

Back to basics.  Why do I believe that there is something permanent about me, something unchanged in my 27.315-odd years of being me?  This is a bit of what they call question-begging: I say I began 27.315 years ago, then wonder what it is about me that began Just Then, and at no other time since or before.  If I chose to identify with my 27 year old self, I would have to wonder just what it is about me that hasn't changed since my last birthday; if I identify with the salts in my brain cells, I'd be wondering the same, but on geological time-scales.

But then that's the difference, isn't it?  What I choose to identify with, and how long that lasts.  If I think of myself as a particular organism, this human typing on a keyboard, then yes, when it collapses I will die.  If I think of myself as my lineage, however, my parents and children, ancestors and descendants, then it is my family whose rise and fall determines my own.  And of course this method may be extended smoothly as far as I care to take it: I am, not just the few generations surrounding my body's conception, but all the generations, the whole human race; I'm the numerous species that preceded humanity and may follow it; I'm the organic molecules born in the violence of proto-Earth, child of ultraviolet radiation and basic chemistry; I'm the light that first shone down on that same troubled ball of cooling fires and acid oceans.

It all contributed to these typed words, after all, and I can't honestly claim one particular event in history to have determined my present identity more than any other, except by getting arbitrarily closer to the present.  My bodily conception(or birth, depending on your politics) is as good a starting point as any; just no better.  More useful, perhaps, if I am to take my usual activities (eating, sleeping, fucking, working) seriously, but that's just pragmatism talking, not truth.

No, death is very definitely an ending, just not a particular one.  Everything ends; you die when the time comes for what you love most, what you've put the most of yourself into.

Mind

Where do my drives ultimately come from?  My unconscious, of course!  Surely I can't reasonably claim to have reasons for wanting things except as the means of reaching other things I want; at some point, I want what I want just because I do.

And the drive to probe my unconscious?  Why should a mind, a self-experience, be different than any other sort of experience?  They are input, processed, incorporated into existing models of the world or, occasionally and unpleasantly, shatter familiar explanations and force me to regroup and rethink things.

I cannot pretend my mind is not myself, however, as I casually do with everything else.  The thing I experience in this case is myself having the experience.  And, if what I learn about myself changes me, it changes what I'm learning about at the same time.  This is how personal growth happens, lifting myself higher and higher by my own bootstraps.

So where does the rest of the world fit into this?  Do I stand alone and untouched in mental masturbation while it swirls and dances around me?  Certainly not!  I am touched by the sentimental, angered by the inconvenient, ironically surprised by a consistently ironic world time and again, and these experiences affect me as surely as do those of introspection; indeed, these effects are often so powerful that I find I must respond to the world in some way, feed the starving puppy or insult the imposing stranger, so that I may...well, because I just want to, really.

I experience myself, and am occasionally changed by my experience.  I experience the world, and sometimes find cause to change it for the better, what you might call the world experiencing me.  But if I am not independent and cut off from all around me, then I am a part of it, and what I do to it is what it does to itself, just as much as is what it does to me.  We are one, I and the world around me, and the process of living in the world parallels the process of thinking about myself.  There's no objective distinction, except that I can admit to being god of my own head.  But, as I've noted elsewhere, a god could never be all-powerful while truly believing that it was a god.  In life, I deal with this by imbuing God with characteristics both infinite and mysterious, granting Him all the power and knowledge I don't have; in my head, this role is filled by the aforementioned "unconscious mind."

Derivative

Everything I am, I get from others.  My body is millions, billions of lives great and small lending me their energy, life making my own.  My mind is hundreds of ideas I've made out of thousands I didn't.  Even my soul, the path I walk, my inherent direction, is something that existed before the person following it.  Losing your ego doesn't make you nothing, it makes you everything.

It shouldn't surprise me, then, to realize that my personality is a synthesis of people I've met; that it is only by knowing strong, wise, good people, and mimicking them, that I've actually become at all strong, wise, or good.  These are things learned.  It can nevertheless be galling, socialized as we are to feel individualistic and independent of others.  "Be yourself," "Think for yourself," etc., admirable though they may be in their intent, presuppose an extant and fully developed self to be; hearing such tripe as children, it's no wonder we become so confused.  If one were to truly disregard all outside influence from birth, parents included, there would be nothing of humanity about them; a baby left to its own devices will grow into nothing more than an unusually intelligent and adaptable animal.  The human spirit as we've developed it throughout our cultural development would disappear in a generation if no one were there to pass it on.


Where, then, does this value for independence come from?

Know

The world is a mess; formless, shifting, flowing in and through our own attempts to understand it.  To adapt to this, to move through the world and exist in it, we develop perspectives on the mess, much as art critics do on their favorite pastime; up versus down, near vs. far, dark vs. light, good vs. bad, me vs. not me.  Later, as our appreciation of the world becomes more complex, such dualisms incorporate more elaborate systems to satisfy our increased ability to speculate on them; up vs. down expands and deepens into a complicated relationship with gravity; near vs. far into systems of measurement, first linear and later confusing; me vs. not me into constantly evolving social and societal models of interpersonal relationships, from family and neighbors to governments and nations.  As evolution continues, and with the empowerment of our holy imagination, fantasies are needed to bring order to these otherwise randomly scattered qualities of the world.  We believe, then, that the whole was assembled of parts, that gravity has some relationship to distance, distance something to do with family.  We seek out patterns, any patterns at all, and declare them significant.

But lo!, our observations are not all in accord with one another.  These patterns we've derived from the world, and so the perspectives we've used them to justify, often contradict one another.  The mountain smokes and the ground rumbles, releasing fifty different prophets with fifty different gods to give the credit, Hades to Tectonic Shift to Crab People.

And so a new perspective is needed, one to account for all these disparate perspectives! The spiritual perspective will survey among one's options for the most obviously true explanation; the scientific will do the same, but place its premium on simplicity.  These are only two examples of a class of perspectives which I imagine may potentially include others, giving priority to perspectives which are most interesting or some such, but my interest here will be limited to a consequence of the first two, scientific and spiritual, arising from the rather complicated relationship between what is obvious and what is simple. For, as stated above, as our ability to form complex perspectives grows stronger, our desire to do so grows in tandem; as we concoct systems to account for observations which are no longer obvious, like the workings of the cosmic, microscopic, mental, etc., the simplest such perspective is no longer even potentially an obvious one.

Thus do the spiritual and scientific represent conflicting drives of our evolution; the former toward forming knowledge, or stable explanations for the world, for use in it; the latter toward flexing our growing imaginative muscles, to finding new patterns among new relationships, thus overthrowing old perspectives by necessarily forming new ones to account for the previously unknown and unknowable.

A certain cynicism is necessarily born of this conflict for, as belief system after belief system is eaten away at by our mindless impulse to learn without any object but more learning, trust in our beliefs, the very perspectives that let us navigate the world at all, is weakened.  Without this trust in our judgement, perspectives become academic, purely speculative; useless.  That's where we entered this conversation, remember: the use of perspectives.  These are tools, more or less effective at producing a meaningful experience of the world as the case may be, but necessary for doing so at all.

The presumed refusal to make use of such tools, to form and believe in ideas about how things are, is commonly known as skepticism, less commonly as indeterminacy.  It is, in a woefully inadequate nutshell, a perspective on perspectives which suggests that they don't account for their own mutability; that the untrustworthy nature of perspectives is in fact a new relationship in the world which any trustworthy perspective must account for, and that this contradiction precludes the reliability, and thus utility, of any perspective whatsoever.  You can never really know anything, you know.

But wait, we know things all the time, great glorious things!  Huge and beautiful and wonderful things pass through our imaginations into the known and are accepted as truth, however time may crumble them down the line.  Even if we can't really know, we still do, because the usage of the verb "to know" is very deceptive: it suggests, not just conviction, but that such conviction is justified.  That perspectives should be stable and that, if they aren't, they can be of no use in determining Truth, since Truth, whatever it is, is plainly set and immutable.  Right?

It is my belief, my perspective on this relationship between science, skepticism, and spirituality, that the question of which best pursues Truth is the wrong one to ask, since they bring the nature of Truth itself into question by their mutual existence; Truth itself is academic at this point, since contemplating it as an object in which it might presumably be included, or which may just as well include itself, precludes any hope of reaching a stable definition of what is True; without such a definition, pursuing Truth ceases to be about any such goal and constitutes nothing more than the pursuit itself.  One doesn't run in circles to get somewhere, or at least not anywhere the circle goes.

The nature of this pursuit, this journey or process, is the consequence of our choice of perspective; what we do with our time is ultimately the only choice we have, and the only reason we bother forming conclusions about the world at all. We may seek out patterns to account for what is painful or what is beautiful, what is new or what is old, or a hundred other long-since accepted "realities" of life I could list for the desire to do so.  This choice isn't necessarily one we make ourselves (enough digressions for one post!), but I think it must be one very fundamental to who we are as people.  After all, those parts of the world we choose to focus on must inevitably be the basis for our evaluation of it, and thus all subsequent choices we make for how to live in it.  And what else can we hope to call ourselves, if not the way we live our lives?

Misc(4)

I've been giving much thought to the concept of empathy, trying to develop it as a skill rather than a proclivity.  I have determined, through trial and error, that it is the ability to accept another human being (or fish, if you will) as a determining factor in self judgement.  This involves the investment of the self in an uncontrollable other, a supreme letting go; this, indeed, would be rather detrimental as a compulsion.
You are (if only in my head) an invaluable Devil's Advocate.
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It recently occurred to me (credit to HBO, of all things) just what a complex and interesting character Saddam Hussein was, both in life and politics.  When I first remarked on this, my mother felt compelled to remind me that, when captured, he was hiding in a hole like a coward, the implication being that he had his bad side too.
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First off, as to religion.  Or God, if you will.  If you assume the realm of spirituality to be that of intangibles only, then all things basically spiritual become dependent on Man for any kind of existence, just as anything hypothetical is limited to the scope of an intelligence capable of theoretical speculation.  God and all His angels, unknowable and undefinable, should cease to exist entirely were Man to do the same.  Indeed, before Man's coming, they could no more have existed than the theory of relativity, evolution, or any other structuring we use to explain the world around us.
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On reflection, I think probability must be considered an area of philosophy, assuming that a mathematical foundation does not necessarily include a subject in the sciences.
To explain.  Science is the formal representation of the existing natural world.  Mathematics could be said to be a science of intangibles, but only insofar as letters are intangible representations of sound.  Mathematical formulae at least correspond to the concrete relationships of physical bodies to one another.
Philosophy, on the other hand, is speculation of an intangible world.  Morality, ethics, utility, (the question of) existence: all abstractions dependent on the creative mind.  And, while some employ scientific methods in their reasoning, none ever follows these methods all the way to a measurable quality of something in the physical world; while the weight of a notebook might  be employed in determining its utility, the notebook's utility could never reasonably be the basis for determining its weight.
Such is the case with probability, a field wherein a remarkably complex arrangement of equations may be used to conclude the value of an abstract concept: the future.  Baring practical assumptions to the contrary, no single event ever exists with a probability of 1 until it has actually occurred.  And once it does occur, it is better suited to the realm of statistics, what I would consider the scientific counterpart to probability.
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Truly, it's not surprising that a belief in the afterlife should inspire one to dread the end of their current one.

To begin with, one assumes the possibility that their death will mark the beginning of an eternity of pain and suffering.  Further, that there are standards one must live up to in this life to avoid the pain/suffering option; what these standards precisely are has been a subject of debate for millennia, so one cannot be sure of which to follow.  Only that your final exam consists of a single question with 74 possible answers, each one true in its own textbooks, 73 of which blow the test.

Is it any wonder that planning to skip the final is such a consolation?
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I sat before a mirror.
     A simple thing, that.  Though it was something of an occasion for me, mirrors being a rarity in my childhood home, I am never the less certain that such is a common enough event for the average person, perhaps even as a part of a daily ritual.  To arrange their hair just so, or to apply makeup; in short, to see what they are, so that they may change what they see.
     I know little enough about that.  I could see what I was and, for my innocence, I could perhaps do so better than others, but I held no aspirations toward changing the figure who stared back at me.  He was an absolute, as permanent as the mirror between us, and he defined me.  I could no more lie to myself about what he was than he could look on as I rose and walked away; such was our bond.
     I stared.  What was it in me that could give rise to such a creature as this?  What was I, that such a face looked back at me?  Eyes which pierced and, amusingly, seemed to see more than I did.  A frown, reflecting my own contempt, but showing also a trace of disgust I did not feel.  I read pride in that face, but not pride in what it saw.
     Such was my use for mirrors.  Others might use them to see and, seeing, change what they saw, but I could use them only to know.  And what I knew then, in that face, was dissatisfaction.  It did not matter how my appearance might change, for it was not my appearance which gave rise to the dissatisfaction I saw.
     Slowly, my hand rose to the face in the mirror; gently, I pushed.
I never felt the cracks.
-----
I often find myself suspecting that all this drama which occupies my mind, that which could be argued either as a backdrop for my real life or as the reality for which my external life is mere scenery, is nothing more than the elaboration of chemical interaction.  This theory is not entirely without justification, particularly with regard to depression.  I often find myself, having settled a troubling issue, remaining in the black mood it supposedly inspired, as though out of habit.  Conversely, it is often the case that an hours-long depressive state is relieved, not through any mental resolution, but by the introduction of caffeine or adrenaline into my bloodstream.
Does this make all my internal monologue pointless?  Am I so powerless before my own body chemistry that I must lay hands on it before I can hope to achieve anything?  I think not.  One thing I've learned here is how to handle depression.  Not so much how to be rid of it, mind, as how to cope with it.  How to be depressed without letting it cripple me.  This is, admittedly, a useful skill; indeed, if I aspired to being nothing more than functional, my task would be complete.  If, that is, I do not count abstract or creative capabilities as necessary to function.
I found a new cure for depression today, something as effective as caffeine or adrenaline, if not more so, but much more subtle: personal interaction.  No matter how bleak my mood, a few words exchanged with another person, even just casual pleasantries, diverts my attention from my own problems and, so, makes them disappear.
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     Your first thought was wonder, that you could notice the sticky feeling between your face and the ground through the throbbing in your head.
     Your second thought was suspicion, that both of these feelings had to come from somewhere.
     You opened your eyes then, and thought fled for a time, replaced by the simple absorption of your surroundings: darkness, irregular brick walls, trash cans (yours?), a cat licking something from the ground.  It came to your then, slower than it should have, that this was an alley.  Then you noticed, with the same frustrating slowness, something else, near the cat.  An ambiguous blob, at first, a form without significance, though you easily recognized that it had blonde hair with red streaks.  From this, the absurdity of finding hair by itself in an alley, you grew to recognize that the thing attached to the hair was a body.  "A young girl," you thought aloud, though the cat seemed not to care one way or the other.
     Your next thought was relief, for the presence of the girl explained what hair was doing in an alley; this, up to the moment, was the most distressing consideration you'd had.
Sitting up, thoughts started coming faster, and with them, questions.  Why was there a girl lying in an alley?  Why wasn't the cat scared of the girl?  Was it her cat?  Then, realizing that you existed, you began to wonder why you were there to see all these things.
     Your last thought was deja-vu, thsi feeling that you had seen this girl, this alley, even this cat once before.  This thought was cut off, however, by a voice from behind you.  You never thought about where the voice came from, or who it belonged to, or even what it said.  You certainly never wondered why you were so quick to climb over the girl, or what might be waiting at the end of this alley; less than anything else did you wonder where you were going.  You were no longer composed of thoughts, but rather of the overwhelming drive to run away.
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This stuff feels vaguely Baton Rouge Ish, like stuff I wrote between bouts of paid insomnia and occasional naps.

Misc(3)

Power vs. Freedom.  Mutually inclusive or mutually exclusive?  A tentative definition for power could be, simply, control; likewise, freedom could tentatively be defined as the state of being uncontrolled.

And yet, on closer inspection of the relationships inherent to these concepts, one realizes their contradictory natures.

Power: control.  Power over something is equivalent to controlling it.  However, power cannot exist without something to be controlled.  An old proverb asserts that knowledge is power.  this is true, and is in fact a good way to characterize power in practical terms (if skill is included in the realm of knowledge).  However, knowledge, like money and a gun, fail to confer power without some external element to be3 effective on; without something to be bought, or shot.

The stated definition for power could, however, still be valid, so long as certain assumptions are made: namely, that only external elements can possibly affect the self.  In this case, one need only refine the definition of power to be control over that which may affect the self; this way, in the hypothetical world with no external influences, one is just as powerful in practice as in a world with external elements, to the extent that one is never affectable beyond one's own will.

So, in the world of perfect self-control, the issue of power is settled...but just for speculation's sake, let's consider the nature of power in terms of self-control.

The relationship between one's will and actions is a tricky one, which I have previously uncovered in greater detail.  Here, it will simply be assumed as true that one's actions are, to one degree or another, controlled by both their conscious-will and their unconscious-will, and that the unconscious-will is also one of the influencing factors of the conscious-will's decision making process.

In this context, self-control could simply be stated as the dominance of the conscious-will in all actions, either by the majority of its influence over that of the unconscious-will, or by the complete removal of the unconscious will as an influencing factor from all decisions.  Here, the role of freedom comes into play: by granting control entirely to the conscious-will (which is, for all intents and purposes, the self), one is free of the power of any other influencing factors, internal or external, including the unconscious-will.

Before making too much use of the concept of freedom, one should first elaborate on its nature.  Defined as the state of being uncontrolled, it, like power, hold up until the element of self-control is considered.  Logically, if the self does not control one's actions, any number of external influences would.  Lacking any such external influences, however, one could scarcely be said to exist.  Even one of extremely weak will could still assume control of their body if all external competition were removed.  But, if any possibility of control, in any form, were removed, one should most likely exist in a state of either brain death or decomposition.  So, parallel to the nature of imagination, complete freedom renders one inert.

Here's the theory: as a requisite condition of existence, one must have a controlling will over one's physical manifestation.  And, while the self, or conscious-will, has a natural inclination toward this role, it may be overruled by other influences, both internal and external.  Buy these terms, total freedom is impossible while in a state of existence as a physical manifestation.  The nearest thing possible is complete self-control of the body, which at least grants one freedom from any will that is not their own.  Complete self-control also grants one the ultimate power possible, as one is completely unaffectable by outside elements beyond one's will to be so affected.

A thought: could one have both complete control of their own actions and some degree of control over the actions of others?  If one's own will took the role of an influencing factor to the will of another, and one's own will was of greater influence than another's will, as well as any other competing influences, one could essentially expand their will to direct the actions of others.  And, though the decision making processes would still be centered in one's original physical manifestation, the will as it exists at the time of interaction could be conferred into the bodies of others, ruling out their own wills and directing action.  This must be the appeal of power, that it grants such longevity to the will beyond its body.  However, for power over others to be anything more than the vicarious will of whatever will happens to control one's own body, one must first achieve complete self-control.
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I actually remember writing this, sitting in front of the guard shack in a FEMA trailer park waiting for the sun to rise.

Fables

The more obvious something is, the harder it is to explain or describe. That's what it means to be obvious: to be taken as true without reasons. So when attempting to explore such subjects as I enjoy, topics I invent at least as much as I discover, I find myself trying to describe ideas completely unrelated to those I'm thinking about, using a complaint about my boss(or wrinkled clothes) to explore what it means to be part of a whole, because I use the same sort of thinking to understand the concrete situation as I do to understand the abstract one.

I've found myself playing this game for some months now, toying with nonsense to help me understand the ephemeral and transcendent, with the interesting and perhaps unfortunate result that I've developed truths I can only share by throwing out more nonsense.  So when I say reality is a dream we're all having together, or when I interpret the god concept as analogous to the dreamer, it isn't that I think either of these things is true.  But the way I Do think things are, the connections and patterns I see but can't yet explain, are the way things Would be if we were all the same person experiencing ourself from different angles, the way everyone you meet and everything you do in a dream is really another part of yourself.

So this dream(er) myth has value as metaphor, the way God works as a thought experiment for reflecting on existence and the human condition, or general relativity works as a tool for reflecting on the relationship of motion to space and time.  These are not Truths, but tools with which one practices thinking truly, so that, once we discover the next thing we don't know, we have methods ready to approach it with.

Empty Spaces

It occured to me today that a god (of the prime-mover type, not merely the Superman type) could never conceive of a creator god because It could never have had the experience of up-looking that we the created (or creatures, if you will) have in considering our parents and dieties.

This reminded me of a blurb I read on some atheist message board years ago, one of many such paradoxes meant to distress the faithful: "Could God ever create a stone so heavy that He could not lift it?" This neatly expresses the contradiction of an entity having absolute power over everything that existed while existing itself.  More than once, I admit, I've delighted in using this to upset people who believed in God but not contradictions.

But then both of these remind me of an example Wittgenstein gave of the deceptiveness of language (in paraphrase): Scientists tell us that the ground is not as solid as it seems, that it is practically nothing but empty space between the microscopic nuclei of atoms held apart by repellent magnetic fields.  This is of course rubbish, for if these nuclei were each the size of a grain of sand, and as close together as such grains would be if they made up the floor, this floor would not be the more solid for being more completely filled.  The confusion here comes from a misinterpretation of the idea of empty space between nuclei: it is not meant to disprove the fact of solidity, but to describe it, to explain how it works.

In applying this analogy to my original thought, that someone with no awareness of their creator could not invent the idea of a creator because they had no model for such a thing, I come up with the rough conclusion that to be a creator Is Exactly That, to be one who believes that everything comes from something else.  It follows, then, that for God to exist as a creator, He would necessarily have to believe that He came from something else, in other words that He was not all-powerful, regardless of whatever the reality of the situation might be.  To make a stone too heavy for you to lift is, in part, to manufacture false limitations on yourself for the sake of the final product.

To be omnipotent, then, is to immediately to place the burden of omnipotence onto something else.  Feeding this idea into my own existential beliefs, I realize that our maintaining the concept of a creator god is both necessary and inevitable, regardless of whatever the reality of the situation might be.  "In the beginning there was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God" is an oversimplification (the fatal flaw in most religious ideas I've encountered), but true insofar as the idea of its own God would necessarily be the first thing a god would create.

Misc(2)

Imagine...

The world has a uniform climate, one which supports all the nutritional requirements of the human body.  The people have only one faith; this cannot be challenged, has no variations, is universally believed, and so exists as reality.  All humans are of one race.  But, in one part of this world, there is an abundance of a mineral necessary to the production of Jell-o.  This is the only source.

In this world, wars are fought and blood is spilled...for Jell-o.  When the vital mineral is exhausted, the wars continue over the grudge of past wars.

In this world, men walk gladly to their deaths...for Jello.
---
Behold!  For his is golden sin.
You'll beg him to trespass again.
Just keep in mind the golden rule:
The Devil's lover is his fool.*

*Not sure this is mine.  Seems a bit too...good.
---
There is evidence of all viewpoints in the world; indeed, viewpoints are born of this evidence.  Resolution involves only acknowledging evidence supportive of one's viewpoint.  Objectivity involves acknowledging all evidence.  If one is resolved to the reality of their own objectivity, however, they assume the role of the dillusional, seeing all evidence within their field of perception but having that scope narrowed from reality.  The Resolute, bu their nature, believe themselves Objective.  The key, then, is to never acknowledge any boundaries to "reality."
---
A sense of purpose is necessary for the development of any and all skills or abilities one may ask for.  The direct pursuit of skill itself is a doomed endeavor, lacking that vital benchmark of accomplishment furnished by an un/completed task.  For one who persists in desiring ability for ability's sake, the one best course of action is to choose for one's goal that which will be most demanding, most difficult, and above all most distant; the highest mountain makes the greatest achievement, but the longest mountain range makes the best climber.
---
There are two primary influences on Will: compulsion, and choice.  Though apparently distinct, these who factors lack anything so convenient as a clear line of seperation between them.  Both, after all, are products of experience; both are dictated by some logical process; both are goal oriented.  Given the cloudy nature of Will at present, it remains unsurprising that the hypothesized distinction above may easily go unobserved.

There are things which may be both wanted and unwanted.  Or, perhaps it is the want itself which is unwanted in this case, the case being compulsion.  Since coincidences of compulsion and choice are indistinguishable from choice alone, compulsion must be defined as a contradictory want.  Further, a compulsion might be defined as a primary want, one to which choice later comes into being in opposition.  Compulsion is the first want.

Is there anything in the nature of the want itself which distinguishes it as either choice or compulsion?
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Talisman - physical object which is invested with authority over the self.  Relative permenance is relied upon in place of fickle mental or spiritual inclination.  Examples include dated check lists and justified talismans.

Character - personal role definition for which natural inclinations are conciously chosen.  Application ranges from individual, periodic actions for constant state adjustment.  Whatever the application, character goals mush mesh with the whole character.  Contradictory character goals discourage faith in, and thus weaken, characters.
     Ticks - constant, periodic, or situationally specific actions or inclinations which reafirm and increase faith in characters.  Examples include biting finger nails, posture or stride, or musical preference.

Principle - long-term definition of personal action.  Distinct from character for being 1) necessarily long-term, and 2) goal specific: behavior governed by principle may comfortably contradict other personal behaviors, but it must be adhered to indefinitely.  Examples include following one's given word, honesty, and repaying debts.

Higher Power - loosely defined figure of authority upon whom the burden of judgement against a particular moral or ethical code is placed.  Examples include God and deceased relatives.
---

First two are from my second year of college, the rest from right after I moved to Red Wing.

Us

Identity is a fun thing to play with.  If you can think of a soul, a brain, a human body, and even a child born of that body as parts of yourself, it isn't an impossible mental leap to think of something like a dog or a rock as parts of yourself as well.  It's the same way you try to understand what it's like to be another person, how they feel and think and see the world, just directed at things you wouldn't normally try to relate to (like a city or a tree or something).

What if empathy weren't just something you either had or didn't, but something you cultivated?  It may start with seeing yourself in others, seeing all the ways they're people like yourself instead of focusing on the few qualities that make them strangers, but if you keep running with this habit of looking for common ground you eventually lose respect for the permanence, the "reality" of the distinctions between us.

If you don't know where to stop, where to draw the line you won't cross, empathy becomes kind of an existential mindfuck.

Misc

If you never left a building, would it matter what floor you lived on?
---
A man bound strictly to his duty is most valuable to the one he serves; a man willing to follow his heart over his duty, however, is most valuable to the one he loves.
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There are 3 things: The past, The future, and The moment.  This moment includes all that is.  The last moment includes all that ever was.  The next moment includes nothing; the next moment does not exist.
---
I am a thing without location, existing only as a concept.  What is limited to a single space is my physical perspective.  Mentally, however, and in reality, as I am no more or less than my mind, I am everywhere.  Omnipresent.
---
Boredom long since dead
I wait for my pulse to stop
I'm not really real
---
Morning comes too late
The sun shines down on corpses
Look at what I've done
---
Silence now your breath
I don't want to kill again
Please don't make a sound
---
Knife against my throat
I can't supress my laughter
I died long ago
---
Blow out the candles
The world is consumed in flames
I smile as I burn
---
Trees become lumber
Kittens grow into killers
A mountain just is
---
Condemned to comfort
Raised to never feel the world
Pain is my freedom
---
Last night I had a dream about Waffle House.  Nothing really unusual, except that I got an eight dollar tip.  I need my day off...to remember who I am without this job.
---
Empty.  Not in a painful way, like what love songs and broken hearts cause, but just a simple lacking.  I remember being more than this.  This is why I write, because I'm scared of disappearing.
---
If theres nothing I want, does that mean I'm satisfied with what I've got, or just so fully resolved to my lacking that I can't tell the difference anymore?  It doesn't matter.  All that matters is that you are without a goal.  Respond to that fact without regard to its cause, however you will.
---
At first, I didn't see what love had to do with faith or hope.  Then I got the joke.  If I have no faith, and I don't waste time on hope, am I then incapable of love?  I can still trust.  So maybe thats just how I feel love: action against my instincts out of a lack of supporting evidence.  Romantic, no?
---
This is my soul*.  Is this my soul?  This is my soul.  Is this my soul?  Your soul is in your smile.  I have no soul.  I am my soul.  It doesn't matter, I have money to make.

* What I called the notebooks I used to carry around during this period of my life.
---
Anger.
---
On reexamining this soul I have built working here, one will find only anger and boredom.

There is satisfaction in my life, something bordering even on happiness, found when I count the money I make.  If this is the joy of millionares, I pray for poverty.

Adderall is the only way I've found to tolerate my rage when I find stress in my job.  Not because it gives me energy, but because it elevates my mood.

My own private bubble in the universe.  For so long I've dreamt of curling up in the darkness, I think I've finally found it.  And with only 15mg/day.
---
I think my emotional disturbances must be small time, as I've never seriously considered killing myself.  Only once did I ever find the idea really appealing.  I went outside and punched a tree instead.  Death seems like losing whatever battle drives most to it.
---
I don't want to need drugs to get through life.  Its okay for the summer, though, because its for a specific purpose.  Just so I can survive without it.
---
I've learned to tell when I've given up: when I'm surprized to be getting off of work.  Like I had already accepted my damnation.

At this particular moment, I feel fine.  The above is just a thought I remember from this morning at shift change.
---
The deeper you dig into yourself,
The closer you get to your goal,
The less you can see of all that you started with, or all that got you there.
---
5 hours of sleep...13 hour shift...no adderall...God, watch me
---
The sky becomes a speck
As I dig deeper inside
Where did I come from?
---
Maybe I've never found myself to be suicidal because I understand death as merely the transition from one form of self to another.  "Born Again" is just a sunny term for my perpetual suicide.
---
We live for relief
Relief from what, if not pain?
Peaceful is boring
---
Murder/Suicide
A minute begins
Thousands die in each second
The minute dies last
---
What are angels, but the slaves of God?  Who would choose such a fate?  No, if I must choose between angel and demon, I'll savor my suffering and remain more than the hand of another.
-----------
I can't stop myself from being afraid...but I have other things, stronger feelings with which to oppose my fear.
I have pride.
I have willpower.
Greatest of all, I have a dominating fear of fear itself.
---
Being a person that lives only for experience is easy enough until one finds that they have done everything they particularly want to do.  It is at this point that one sees the potential limitation placed on their future...by their past.  It is here that one must overcome the limitations inherent in the self they have become in order to continue their growth.

If I do this, but am too weak to maintain control, it is possible that I will become something I don't like.  If I am strong enough, however, to take in this experience without being consumed by it, the gateway to all that has long been beyond me may finally be thrown open.  So many impossible experiences to find at my fingertips.

What do I have to lose but the respect and love of an outside world that can never really know me at all, so judging me with fleeting, biased, and so Weak perceptions.
---
Pain breeds greatness.  Any intelligent person, fully utilizing their gift, finds it a burden.  Poe and Lovecraft were tortured men, after all.
The fact is, happiness is a dead end road.  Those perpetually seeking it are those perpetually lacking.  Joy accomplishes nothing more than relief from the stress of life and growth, and so is only useful in small quantities.  "Happy" is easy enough.  My challenge is "strong".
---
Every time I fall, it gets easier to rise.  Every time I rise, it is to new heights.  And with every new height, I leave a little more behind.
---
My head hurts.
My stomach threatens to eat me alive.
This is what it is to have strength.
---
This job can consume you.  This makes it ideal if I wanted to go into long hibernation and wake up tens of thousands of dollars richer, but only painfully useful for these several weeks I've had, since the maintenance of my humanity was a daily necessity; one I just-too-late mastered.  A mask to hide who and what I really am.  Because no one can live as they truly are for very long.
Because like that, even the slightest illusion of connection with any other creature is lost.

I'm tired of being the unconscious engine of a mask.
---
Oh, what a height to fall from.
I can't wait...
---
There's  no expression
Not since I was a child
Have I felt so free
---
The best things in life are the most fleeting
---
The minutes tick by
Depleting the future when
I will want more time
---
I wish there were an off button for humanity.  Nothing permanent; I'd just like a break every once in a while...
---
An event is meaningless compared with the circumstances that surround it.
                                               -or-
What you do is pallid in significance compared with who you are.
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Nietzsche must have worked at a Waffle House XD

Found a bunch of old note(book)s while cleaning out a file folder.  Fascinating to read through my old thoughts...I would have been around 19 for these writings.