Medieval thinkers partitioned the soul into memory, understanding, and the will. I propose, instead, water, tea, and expresso. Under this classification, life is essentially easy. Drink enough water, make some tea, and be careful with expresso—it’ll fuck with your sleep. (Note also that there’s the wild card, vodka, but it’s quite inexplicable, like the medieval … Continue reading Water, Tea, Expresso
Category: General Reflections
Learn some Math. Seriously. Try it.
For 1095 days, I left math for philosophy. I’ve decided to give math another chance, and it has been exciting and depressing—exciting because math is so wonderfully fun, depressing because I began to see how I’ve been cheated in the past 18 annums, cheated out of the joy of mathematics. Here’s for all us humanities … Continue reading Learn some Math. Seriously. Try it.
Truth, Goodness, Beauty
(Some thoughts on how one can define the good life) An interpretation of the Trinity: there is no supreme value that we have to pursuit at all cost. But rather, the proper path emerges out of the interactions between several values we hold in high esteem. Translating back to theology, there is no unitary God, … Continue reading Truth, Goodness, Beauty
The Human Condition and Consciousness
Attached above is a map I used to conceptualize the problem. This post talks about the left third of the map. To answer the question, What Is Consciousness? It will be well to probe into two questions: What problem(s) is consciousness the solution to? (Which can be rephrased, more dramatically, as, What is the Human … Continue reading The Human Condition and Consciousness
What is Hell?
—This was written before sleep in that weird state where nothing is inhibited and word just flows out of one's fingers without regard for its content. Hence the melodrama, and the sense of (false?) pathos in the words. Originally advice to my good friend Josh who has, recently, fallen prey to Football Manager 2021. Extended … Continue reading What is Hell?
Tedium & David Foster Wallace
David Foster Wallace is the writer of tedium. And this is why, perhaps, he has struck a chord in the modern imagination, gathering such a large cult following (one of whom is yours truly). He sees people engaging in diversions—through drugs, TV, unlimited consumption—and sees again the same people taking an ironic stance towards everything, … Continue reading Tedium & David Foster Wallace
Ressentiment
Resentment (or, to be fancy, ressentiment—signifying the technical Nietzschean definition for the term), is a horribly special emotion. If, for Heidegger, authentic boredom and anxiety fundamentally attunes us to the world, then resentment leads us eternally astray. Resentment is anti-life. It denials rather than affirms appearance. It is not hatred, anger, or envy, and differs … Continue reading Ressentiment
Repetition
For Kierkegaard, repetition, in contrast to (the Platonic) remembrance, a forward drive. It awaits a certain fresh recurrence of the wondrous beginning. It is an anticipation of pure faith, incomprehensible but necessary. (Reminding one of K's more famous lines, "life can only be understood backwards but it must be lived forward.") Repetition is, in some … Continue reading Repetition
Thinking
Sometimes what sounds the easiest is often the hardest. As everyone who is trying to lose weight can attest, "eat less", "sleep better", "exercise more", are deceptively difficult. The same goes for thinking. In its most elementary, thinking is opening oneself to the other within oneself, to sit down and listen to that seed within … Continue reading Thinking
Productivity of Negativity
Frustration is very effective. In general, negative emotions should not be purged. Pain, Anger, Annoyance, are mechanisms for change. They prompt us into action. Pain, in fact, accompanies every single action we do. The sense of craving, the sense of striving, are all forms of pain. The stoics thought that all negative emotions should be … Continue reading Productivity of Negativity
Warren's Brain Dumps 