Disjointed Ramblings on Kant, Socrates, Puzzles, and the Government

There is a point in life where you look around and realize that the whole time you've been wasting your time focusing on the wrong thing. When you finally understand why it didn't work, because you had the missing piece and were looking for the puzzle instead of putting the puzzle together and hoping to find the missing piece later. When you realize that you really have no idea whats going on, and you flail around blindly until you find something which seems more solid. And then there is a point where that isn't good enough and something needs to be done. It's when you reach that point that you find that you've seen so much and missed so much more that it's too late to try to change, and you sit in the dark and cry. Most people don't bother noticing the difference and never change at all. For everyone else there's no going back, but how can you go forward either? When that happens it's hard to just take it in stride and keep going, it's hard to just assume that what you now see has any more substance than what you saw earlier, that it has any more validity compared to what you know you're still failing to see.

It is an unfortunate flaw of human nature that we tend to overlook the obvious and see entirely too much in the most insignificant of details. There is also the human propensity for blaming others for this flaw. The government, the schools, the Russian spies, your parents. How do we survive in a world where everyone sees only their tiny piece and no one wants to share that piece with anyone else? Will we ever be willing to share anything other than our negative opinions and even more unconstructive and unpleasant accusations pointed at someone other than ourselves? This is getting us nowhere, and we still have our entire lives to live with the mistakes we make now. The assumptions we base our opinions and thoughts and even our entire lives on are nothing more than the puzzle piece which may or may not be the one missing from the big puzzle. What is the purpose of living when we can't live our lives to the fullest for lack of information? How can a person just shrug and turn their back to learning and just assume that they know everything they will ever need to? What happened to Socrates and his brilliant notion that true wisdom lies not in knowing everything, but in realizing that in fact you don't and never will? As Kant asks, why is it admissible or even possible for a person to remain in his nonage and not actively seek to become more than he currently is? I ask these questions not to come to any particular conclusion, but to give myself something to question and hopefully a better view of the other puzzle pieces that I'm missing.

Maybe I should write a book detailing my ideas on enlightenment, Socrates, and the government. Maybe I should hide in a corner and whisper obscenities about the current state of the universe and wonder why no one likes me and my different ideas. Maybe I should curl up and die and give up on ever learning as much as I want to know. Maybe someday I'll finally find the other pieces and accept why others are the way they are and why I am the way I am. Maybe.

Painting

You know when you have a whole bunch of blobs of paint, but one blob is bigger and uglier than the other ones and if you drag something through them the big ugly one sort of takes over and you can't tell what else is mixed in? That's how I feel right now. I don't even know what I think because everything is covered up by the bigger uglier blob of paint.

Word of the Day:

Sexinatent

Um...

I used to know everything, and question nothing,
But now I know nothing, and question everything,
It comes from forgetting everything because I was questioning nothing,
And from questioning nothing I no longer know everything.

Hierarchy

Trees, Humans, and the Unimaginably Horrible "Higher Beings"

A word of advice:

Never forget your scissors when you need to get duct tape off your skin in a hurry.

Ladybug

Piao Chong ( 瓢蟲 )
Marienkaefer

Reflection

Something that occurred to me today. I'm reading a paper called An Essay in Aesthetics (by Roger Fry), and the author talks about how when you watch movies your reactions/emotions in reaction to an event are purer than in real life because you don't have a part in what happens; no instinct to get out of the way, no obligation to help, etc. Then he goes on to say that if one is to use a shop window (or something similar) as a mirror and watch what goes on behind them they will experience a similar detatched feeling, and will notice more because it isn't immediately affecting them (at least that's how their brain interprets it). Then I was thinking about how I'm not sure that I like the idea of people looking at me like a movie. That made me think of a movie I watched called What the Bleep do We Know? which talked about how we affect things with our minds; basically the whole "I think therefore I am" deal except a lot moreso. A lot of stuff about how nothing is absolute unless we can see it. I don't believe that; I spent several minutes at karate yesterday doing katas with my eyes closed and I was absolutely sure every step I took that I'd run into someone or something (in particular one of the punching bag things even though I was in the dead center of the mat nowhere near the bags). But anyway, it made me think what if it was real and I was an imaginary person in someone else's reality? What if I don't actually exist except when someone sees me, and everything I do is determined by what someone else may or may not be thinking and when they are or are not thinking it? Maybe I only exist because some random person on the street sees me twice in their life and I have to be there at those two points and so therefore I exist? More like "Someone else thinks, therefore I am" than the other one.

Robin Hood Opening

"How many months in a year my love?
There are thirteen, I would not lie--
But the sweetest month of all the year
Is the month one does not die."

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream -- and not make dreams your master;
If you can think -- and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings -- nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run --
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And -- which is more -- you'll be a Man, my son!

Kraehen im Schnee

Die schwarzen Kraehen auf dem weissen Feld.
Der Anblick macht mein Herz erregt,
Es staeubt die Schnee. In Wirbeln kreist die Welt,
Sie sitzen auf den Baeumen unbewegt.

Die Zaubertiere aus der alten Zeit,
Sie sind bei uns nur zu Besuch.
Sie tragen noch das Galgenvogelkleid,
Sie hoerten einst den rauhen Henkerfluch.

Was denken sie? Ach, du erraetst es nicht!
Sie starren einsam vor sich hin.
Der Himmel hat ein milchig truebes Licht,
So war die Welt im ersten Anbeginn.

Nun naht vom Wald her sich ein neuer Gast.
Die andern sehen ihm nicht zu.
Er laesst sich nieder auf dem weissen Ast,
Und dann ertoennt auch durch die Winterruh'.

So rauh wie hohl der alte Kraehenschrei,
In ihm ist Langweil und Verdruss.
So hocken sie, das schwarze Einerlei,
Und wirbelnd faellt der Schnee, wohin er muss.

Notebook

I was bored, so I was looking through a notebook that I write whatever I happen to be thinking in. There was some...interesting stuff to say the least. Mostly sort of dark stuff that when I looked at it I was like, "Whoa. Did I write this??"

Here are some. Now that I see them I remember this was just things I saw when I closed my eyes.

The sky is a wonderful deep blue.
A shield shaped mirror rests on the tips of the highest branches of a tree.
It reflects a lighter blue than the sky; it's almost greyish-silver.
And it blocks the sun.

I am in a Japanese garden.
The rocks are a lovely dark grey, and covered with pale lichens and red flowers.
I walk over a miniature bridge and see a man face down in the running stream.
His striped red tie hangs over one shoulder and flutters in the water.
His suit is wet and ruined.
I stare a moment and then walk away.

Those are the two I wrote in the notebook...there were more...but I couldn't write them down fast enough, and now I don't remember them.

Here's another thing I wrote...

The walls give sage advice but the quilt is a wiser green. And when it's dark they serve the same purpose.
Strange how oxymorons float into one's head...
I must always be a noun or a quote...no exceptions. Why does my brain work the way it does? I I think I must be mad...gone completely potty.
It looks like I'm writing with my left hand. How strange.
Sounds almost like a proverb...but it's not, it's just my room; or rather the southern corner of my room.
I'm sad for the souls in purgatory, but they are destined for heaven..more than that, I am sorry for the souls who choose Hell; they just don't understand...I wish I understood.

I also have a weird habit of writing quotes or short phrases or words at the top of every page that I write on (and some that I don't write on). Here are some of the things I've written.

All must pass.

"Behold when thy face is made bare, he that loved thee shall hate,
Thy face shall be no more fair at the fall of thy fate.
For thy life shall fall as a leaf and be shed as the rain;
And the veil of thine head shall be grief, and the crown shall be pain."
--from Tess of the D'Urbervilles

babcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzanniefreudenthal

...I'm tired of waiting...

Life is full of mysteries.

I'm with Stupid! I'm with Stupid! Done, done, done! I'm with Stupid! Dark!! Iambic Pentameter!!

In Nomini Patri, Filii, et Spiriti Sancti.

Where there is a Will, there is a Way.

"Yeah, the blues are multicolored all dependin' how ya dig 'em and dependin' on your outlook..."

I Wish...

"Der Fliegende Hollaender"

Skull and Bones and a Serpent's Head!

"Sun on daisies, darkness, eggs..."

A collection of poems from an unstable mind.

Reason is a slave to desire--it always has been; always will be.

"The Wizards' First Rule: People are stupid!"

A veil of hate dropped over the eyes of innocent men. A dark herald of night.

Number as inverted stars. [I suspect this was so I wouldn't forget that line for the poem Army of the Dead.]

Student Name, Music Theory, EPGY
c/o Florence Moore Housing Service Center
436 Mayfield Ave.
Stanford, CA 94305

BUXGHULBLIFBBWFLVQQNGWQJQEZZWAJLUDIAWIN

Does it work?!? Yes! Haha! [talking about a pen that I couldn't get to write]

So yeah. Haha, now that you've had a glimpse into my head....