There are times when my consciousness escapes me, for a fleeting moment; then, opening up my eyes, I remember that I am indeed in this body, my face looks a certain way and I have a specific name I go by. This slip from nothingness to being reminded of my identity is one of the few recurring moments in life where I could believe that this waking life really is nothing but a dream. Whether it is within another dream or not, I cannot know.
This is real.
Philosophy, you will always be my first great love. But I think it’s time that we…
Philosophy can kill a man if he’s not careful.
It’s not about philosophy or passion or reason. It’s abstraction.
Honestly, I don’t understand. Can you escape reason? I want to. I am tired of worrying about getting it right. I just want to live.
Edit: But at the same time I still understand the place of reason. Which is itself reason. Do you seek balance?
Edit2: Overall my message is to never give up. Life lived intensely is absolutely consuming. For me, it’s the beauty. That’s why I continue.
Edit3: This is the argument in my head right now. And I ask where is the foundation? The mind presumes a foundation. I bet if you surveyed the masses they would say there is a foundation. I don’t think over thinking is always bad. It’s only bad if it’s all you do. If it doesn’t lead to less thinking or more focused thinking.
I have to believe in freewill, regardless of argument. To believe otherwise feels like giving in before you even start. If I can’t control myself, if I can’t improve, then the point is entirely mute. In all my years studying for my degree in philosophy, I avoided the entire argument, because it seemed a waste of time. And so while the argument leads to nothing, the journey of the argument led me here. I took Persons and Causes and hated it. There are hundreds of people arguing for and against freedom. You either believe in freedom or you don’t. And if you don’t, the philosophical implications are not nearly as great as the psychological ones. And it occurs to me that I don’t know what illusions should be kept. I don’t think we can know if we are free or not. The masses can’t deal with not knowing, so they built religion. The illusion of religion will always be worse than any illusion of freedom.
I think my problem is I don’t write enough.
A sunset worth growing old for.
You’ll never be satisfied if you want forever.
value —————— facts
passion —————— reason
subjective —————— objective
art —————— science
a philosopher can be both
For longest time I have defined myself by two emotions: sadness and anger. But I realize now that behind them, lurking in the recesses of my mind, were doubt and shame. With the latter being the strongest and most debilitating.
Long, sorry.
This is my philosophy. This is how I see the world. This is my art. My hope is that some will feel a sense of understanding. There are people in pain, like you are. Or in happiness. And you can experience both in the same day. We are all philosophers in some way; we question. The difference between people is the action they take after asking.
We are human beings. There is singular experience, but within the confines of this system. What if it made sense? You can’t give up understanding. If it doesn’t make sense, then there are no rules. You can be whatever you want. Who do you want to be?
I got so hung up whether reality could be understood that I haven’t bothered too much with understanding it. Seeing the physics and the metaphysics. My levels of reality have too much space between them.
What do I want to be? I want to live in the country outside a big city, in an old farmhouse (or cabin). I want a garden and fruit trees. I want to grow marijuana and have a special bakery. I want to be a wife and have two kids. One must be a boy named Charlie. And he will have black hair and wear cardigans, converse, and capes. He will love life with every fiber of his being. I have to raise one human being who always felt loved.
That one could feel so happy; that’s why life is absurd. Existence is the most absurd thing. Not only that I exist and you exist, but that we exist at this location and within this system. That we experience all this for 80 some years and then die. And that in 4 billion years the sun will explode. That’s not even mentioning evolution or consciousness.
I am not a rationalist. If one can’t understand due to lack of data, then one needs to collect more data. Even Conor Oberst grew up. He lived. The Mystic Valley band happened when he was 26 years old. You don’t have to know to act.
You can’t change anything if you don’t try. Philosophy has progressed and changed society. Science was philosophy. How has science improved society? Less Slaves.
The world is so complex that it’s overwhelming. There are no objective values, but that doesn’t mean experience needs to be doubted so severely. We already established that if something is repeated numerous times and always repeats in the same way, that we can trust it to continue doing so. [Forget Hume.] You need to move beyond doubt. What is occuring? I am sitting on the sofa in my living room, writing down this strange philosophy. It is happening very quickly, lest the self intrude too much.
This is real.
And let our legs just run, no concept of distance.
And all these rules we’ve learned could make no difference.
There’s so much to do or say without repeating.
At some point a person needs to stop hating who they are. Today is that day for me.
Progression June 13th, 2013
1:38am
There is the world. And there is how you want to see life. Ethics is considering both. One must dream and one must die. One must be both reason and passion. This is what I believe. This is my ethics.
1:53am
It’s okay because we still exist. Death for the philosopher requires an argument. Is life worth living? And the crazy thing is that it is. No objective truth? You are free to be wrong. Who you are will correct your course. I am who I am. I got myself here. And here is lovely. You either believe in love or you don’t. Is love an illusion? Yes. But I want to experience that illusion. Otherwise why live if there is no beauty?
2:01am
My mother doesn’t love me. I was raised to believe that love was conditional. When your own mother won’t listen to you or ask you how you are, you stop caring. Or at least I did. And so I have trouble loving people. I can love existence and I always will. But living for the human life, that’s hard. It’s having your mother and father break your fucking heart.
2:34am
Thought is metaphysics. There is nothing beyond reality. Metaphysics doesn’t exist. Philosophy doesn’t exist. And yet it does within the human world/reality. But it isn’t Truth. It is only a truth. Perhaps reason is useless, but what would life be like without it. We are reason and passion. We are what we are. We are everything and nothing. We are one perspective and yet we cannot escape it. Is it useless to postulate possible worlds? I want to be an artist. A philosopher can be a scientist and an artist. Both master and slave.
