love

we are significantly well-disposed to love...in the common sense usage of the word

A Circle of Tortoises

nuff said...

Tiger Woods y'all

Golf is a game of polo shirts tucked into khakis not t-shirts and jeans, of top-shelf gin not forties, of cuban cigars not schwisher sweets...it is a game of proper, in the pejorative sense...

Tiger Woods, in turns out, isn't superhuman...

The man seemed to be so proper and so "perfect" and seemed to show the pinnacle of human ability being able to overcome, extirpate, sublimate passions...lead a clean, successful life. It seemed he didn't have any stereotypical human weakness. He took responsiblity for controlling his life, his success was his.

Turns out you can't though. Nature, your passions, are too strong.

What evidence do I have? How can I make such claims?

I can't prove it. But the best truths can't be proven.

Prove that.

You can't.

Exactly.

Was the last line ambigous?

Yes, as are all things.

The Other Path

who am I? how am I different? I am the one in 1,000 who when faced with "the questions" refuses to trick myself with half-answers or various other ways of "ignoring the issue"...the question now is can I be the one in 10,000 who can go down this (these?) other path(s) without losing my sanity, or be the one in 100,000 who actually live a "better" life as result...or perhaps I can be the one in 10,000,000 who are strong enough to endure and question to the point of truth? wait, truth??

Reading Nietzsche

When consumed in Nietzsche you are all at once below (underneath, deep, at the root of) humanity, the most human (from the human perspective), and above humanity (looking down, across cultures, across time, at the history of the world uncovered).

Proof?

You want proof? What a silly wish. The answers one really cares about are only proven internally, through one's experience of himself. Because the way one knows these truths, they cannot be given.

the harm and the benefit

when reading philosophy in graduate school, you come across exhilarating, inspiring paths of thoughts that demand to be explored...but you are told no, you must keep reading, there are a thousand more pages to read!

success...

you are not born with any guarantee of a successful life, in fact some are born with so much natural disadvantage as to be almost guaranteed no success at all. Even in the most well-constituted though, it is something that is earned, but only through figuring out what direction to start building a path and then fighting for every step down the path...

Self Progress

The ability to forget your stupid remarks and to keep making them is necessary if you want to rise...

Free Will

Surely, if there is free-will at all it comes in degrees. Determining to what degree we act free is necessary to determine how we act towards each other. What we can hold them responsible for and expect from them.

Worthy Adversaries

Essential to a prosperous, "happy," and satisfying life are the presence of worthy adversaries.

Pride

...is bad because or when it distracts and to the extent that it is based on something with no truth value (other people's opinions)

(how many times have I been stopped because of a weird fear/jubilation combination felt because of the possibility of succeeding in the complete satisfaction of my pride. Also related is the way dissatisfaction propels you to work harder where feeling completed you are not pushed to climb higher.)

Teacher and Sexual Being

How is one supposed to get an objective (or close to) lecture if it comes from another sexual being who you have some sort of subjective reaction to. Besides the distractions, you must try to counter or acknowledge the prejiduce towards anything they say. Solution - teacher's must wear black ski masks and hijaab's.

more more MORE!!!

Part of the argument against consumerism and continually wanting more "toys" is that you will never be satisfied, you will always want more, more, more. This seems to translate to other areas of life (all?). I have a great relationship going, but then I want MORE. I want to get an even better relationship. Where would this end? Could it end? Is it better at all to keep wanting more and getting to "higher" stages? How can this be related to Nietzsche's Will to Power?

Philosophy = Love of Wisdom

Not love of Truth

Possible Unforeseen Outcomes of Outsourcing

I work at a place called "Blind Willie's" which is a blues bar with live music every night. Last night was pretty slow and I was reading my Marx-Engels Reader for my "Marx, Nietzsche, Freud" class. After having left it for a moment I came back to notice that one of the band members (guitarist I believe) was reading the first few pages since they had taken a break from playing. He was a husky guy that looked like Jesse Ventura. After some small talk, he said he had a degree in Mechanical Engineering "a long ways from philosophy," after making the obligatory concession that his degree was more practical and asking him if he was doing anything with the degree he told me he was but not any more because there are no more jobs. Then he said:

"What people don't realize, is that it is the guys on the assembly lines, the one's actually making the goods that do 90 percent of the R&D. Now that the U.S. has cut them out we've of course lost our technical advantage."

An illuminating perspective even if the numbers may not be right.