Philosophy » Pragmatik

Introverts: some links.

Okay now. Despite my long-running blog, I am an introvert. There. I said it. You know what that entails, so I won’t repeat it. I have good friends and family members who are also introverts. So I know how annoying we can be. We aren’t verbal with our feelings. We don’t like to go out much. We hate meeting new people. You have to try and “read” us because we don’t wear our hearts on our sleeves. Etc.

“Do you know someone who needs hours alone every day? Who loves quiet conversations about feelings or ideas, and can give a dynamite presentation to a big audience, but seems awkward in groups and maladroit at small talk? Who has to be dragged to parties and then needs the rest of the day to recuperate? Who growls or scowls or grunts or winces when accosted with pleasantries by people who are just trying to be nice?

If so, do you tell this person he is ‘too serious,’ or ask if he is okay? Regard him as aloof, arrogant, rude? Redouble your efforts to draw him out?

If you answered yes to these questions, chances are that you have an introvert on your hands-and that you aren’t caring for him properly. Science has learned a good deal in recent years about the habits and requirements of introverts. It has even learned, by means of brain scans, that introverts process information differently from other people (I am not making this up). If you are behind the curve on this important matter, be reassured that you are not alone. Introverts may be common, but they are also among the most misunderstood and aggrieved groups in America, possibly the world.” (more….)

I wonder sometimes if extroverts know how amazingly insufferable they can be. I am talking about people who scarcely have a thought in their little heads that doesn’t manifest itself in words that whosoever is closest or the best listener has to sit through. Sure, we introverts can be hard to figure out. But we [generally] don’t dump all of our drama onto other people (save sometimes in blogs). Then again. I guess some extroverts would have to be told that they are annoying by another person because they’d never figure it out. (Whereas an introvert would never listen and would have to figure it out him- or herself. I know.)

I’ve gotten the impression that some extroverts I know actually look down on me because I’m not “forward” or “upfront,” because you can’t read my mind, because understanding an introvert requires one to actually listen, because I’m not very sociable or a good public speaker, etc. If you’re an introvert, you’ve probably heard the same things from people who can’t seem to keep their mouths shut.

“Loners often hear from well-meaning peers that they need to be more social, but the implication that they’re merely black-and-white opposites of their bubbly peers misses the point. Introverts aren’t just less sociable than extroverts; they also engage with the world in fundamentally different ways. While outgoing people savor the nuances of social interaction, loners tend to focus more on their own ideas—and on stimuli that don’t register in the minds of others. Social engagement drains them, while quiet time gives them an energy boost.” (more….)

I find myself looking down on extreme examples of extroverts, too. We look down on people who can’t read without doing it out loud. I can’t help (it seems) but to look down on people who can’t think without doing so out loud. I cannot understand why someone would need an external sounding board for every little ache and pain, every source of stress, every decision. I’m sure such a person would not be able to understand the need for privacy and alone time either and would probably think I’m creepy. Fair enough. But which takes more strength? Or, is that even the point?

I don’t remember my point. I just found articles while I was annoyed with extroverts. Maybe.

Oh, yeah. What’s more annoying than an extrovert? (I think I might have said this before.) An extrovert who thinks that she/he is an introvert! I know at least three people who think they’re introverts because they believe that alone time is cool, that introverts are deep, that caring people are all introverts, etc. But. Well. It ain’t true. Or, if it is, they’re not introverts when I ever see them. Whence the freaking mystique over being a person who likes alone time and who processes things internally?

I wish that I could snap out of it sometimes.

I can only imagine that being a father and an introvert are going to clash harshly.

Difference between, Re: Focus.

There is a difference between merely not having a focus and being unfocused. This goes for photography and for, you know, real life.

The fertile soil of relief.

Since starting this blog in early 2004 (I know; I’m an ancient blogger), I have always been enrolled in a PhD program in philosophy, specializing in “American” philosophy/Pragmatism/“something that, in a discipline that doesn’t matter, does matter”/etc. I spent three years on-campus, then one year in Baltimore researching and writing full-time.

Then, I was job-hunting, serving two years in AmeriCorps and suffering in that limbo known as being ABD (All But Dissertation), of being a “doctoral/PhD candidate” for a total of three years. This was unpleasant for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that a lifetime of Catholic education certainly seems to breed into you a certain “work guilt” (my uncreative term for it) wherein you feel this wet rug of shit you should be doing hanging over your head all of the time. For instance, if I remembered a pleasant weekend or our fun traveling from fall 2006, my work guilt kicked in, said, “But you’re not finished your dissertation,” and I had to occupy myself with something else to stay sane.

During my first year of AmeriCorps (my second non-working-on-school year), I proofread (not edited) my dissertation and sent it to my director. Not much happened until the fall of 2009, when we decided on some edits and when I set about making them. I don’t want to underplay the sleepless nights since September spent worrying about whether or not we’d be able to get to Carbondale before Charlotte was born to defend, but we got dates set in January. I was, as you might remember, ecstatic. I never realized that I was under so much pressure from this damned thing for three a years on a constant basis. I defended in March. Bingo. Made more changes, formatted it, submitted it, and all was finished. Even double-checked the paperwork with the grad school.

Folks were congratulating me after my defence, but I was obsessed with getting my revisions made (I did nothing but work at my job and on my dissertation for ten days to perfect everything my committee wanted), and for some reason, I couldn’t imagine life with my decade-long formal education being over and done with. Nothing would really be “official” until graduation day in May, anyway, right? Last Friday, that is.

So I should say that I USED to have to live under the shadow of that unfinished doctorate. I USED to sometimes wonder what the point was, since I was not pursuing employment in academic philosophy anyway. I USED to be a student.

Now, I’m finished, and I have those three little letters after my name.

It’s only been a few days, and pretty much the only thing in the world I care about these days is my family. So I haven’t picked up my journal, gone for any walks or really thought about what it means to me now. That is, not beyond serious relief.

If the most significant result of my finishing a PhD (aside from debt) is relief, that would almost seem like a let-down. But, for a largely guilt-driven person like me, relief is excellent. Like the Greek “pleasure” at the absence of pain, I am thrilled — so far — with the relief that the goal to which I’ve been working since I was 18 years old and hadn’t met my wife yet (though I would that month) has been attained. Maybe now I can use the energy I was wasting on feeling guilty and procrastinating into something positive, beneficial, useful or fun.

Of course, I feel weird now, having a doctorate that I pursued in order to do something which I have no intention of doing anymore. Nietzsche says we can do with any HOW if we have a WHY. I lost the WHY and kept going. I was already in debt and had already missed most of my 20s. Stopping didn’t seem like a good idea to me at the time, and I’m glad I finished now.

But, bejebus, think about your WHYs more, Johnny. Geez. Making a decision at 18 and sticking to it might not be the wisest thing to do, for a person who values good judgment, flexibility and genuineness.

Using your wisdom?

Okay. Now I know why my wife called me arrogant.

I think my father called me yesterday to ask about what to do about a situation. My mother (Hi, Mom!) complimented my people-reading skills last weekend. I am glad for all of this. I shudder to think how many times (even recently) I’ve bugged the shit out of my parents, asking for advice, a perspective, an opinion.

My wife and I were talking this morning, and I said, “If people seek you out for practical advice in dealing with people, power-structures, their emotions, etc., does that make you a philosopher? That is, if you seem to have wisdom that people want to use?”

I think I have excellent judgement. But I think that I also seldom use it. I don’t think that personal idiocy precludes being able to help other people.

Maybe I’m just, as I suspect, a good listener. I think I’m entirely too young and too dumb for people to be coming to me expecting sage advice. But listening is a good skill, especially with fatherhood on the very near horizon.

I forgot where I was going with this. It’s raining again, and I need to get to work.

I’m still alive.

Okay. Defended the dissertation two weeks ago. Long story. I got myself so completely high on caffeine that my heart was beating 92 times a minute, sitting still. Seriously; I checked twice. I don’t think I’ve ever been as nervous about anything in my entire life. At a hospital, car crash, bike crash, social event, you’re not sitting alone thinking all day before your 4:30 event. I probably should have been more social that day, but I had no patience for drama, which seems everywhere these days — even my own. Anyway, I had all day to think of all the ways I’d screw it up, since I’m not only a terrible public speaker but also intimidated by the idea of a room full of philosophers versus me and me alone.

Went through the defense. Committee suggested some clarifications, treatments, etc., including fixing my “tone,” which some considered “flippant.” Upon revising it, I realized they were actually right about that. Not a big deal. Everyone has to make some changes after a defense, I’m told. My director called me “Doctor.” Some of the changes took me a while because I wanted to make sure they were right on the first try, and some took less because I already had the research. No one asked any of the questions I thought they would, though.

Nonetheless, the most unpleasant thing about my entire PhD program was over. But, with Baby on the way and the official electronic submission deadline looming, this meant that I was MIA for a week and half. My life was:

Wake up.
Work at job.
Dissertation at lunch.
Work at job.
Go to market.
Make dinner.
Work on dissertation.
Bed.
Repeat, and, on weekend, replace job work with housework, laundry, a food drive, etc.
(Also insert people being so disrespectful as to demand my time, knowing full well what was going on. I’m very generous with my time, I think, but I needed it this week for myself and my family.)

None of this was good for my sanity, though it’s been incredibly beneficial for my work ethic. As in, I have one now. I finished revising the dissertation and making all of the changes Saturday. Since then, I’ve been painting, caulking, cooking, shopping, cleaning and organizing in preparation for Baby. It’s non-stop, and I haven’t been online much, save a little on Facebook.

Last night, I had to take apart my [cheap] caulking gun because I bent the innards. Damned spring shot me in the freakin eyeball which, as you can imagine, hurts like hell today. Doesn’t look as bad as it did yesterday, though. Still, it calls to mind certain episodes of “The Simpsons.”

Now I’m working with my director to get it all final and done and gone. It feels too good to be true, and it hope it works. Because once Baby is born (any day now, literally), I don’t want to have to work on this ever again.

Too much wisdom literature.

gracian1208
A few years ago, my friend sent me a copy of Baltasar GraciÃ¡n‘s The Art of Worldly Wisdom. It is, by the way, excellent reading. It calls to mind Marcus Aurelius and his Meditations, and I mean that in a very good way.Â I was reading it a bit last night, and of course, I was struck by just how damned smart and relevant the maxims still are today.

I was also struck by how I was reading them: as interesting bits of information.Â Not wisdom — interesting paragraphs.Â I thought that, perhaps, it was the text.Â Maybe it’s not as awesome as I thought.Â But I’ve noticed in recent months and years that I seem to gloss over even my favorites like Thoreau, the Buddha, Emerson, Nietzsche, et al. Am I getting dense?Â I don’t think so — though that is certainly a possibility, and there are certainly people who would say so.Â (Ahem.)Â I suspect that this is a result of studying philosophy for my entire adult life.

On the one hand, I think I might be somewhat numb to wisdom literature!Â I’ve read so many wise things that other people have written and acted on so little of it that it’s all just a bunch of clever words most of the time.Â When Aurelius reminds us that stupid people act stupidly and that we waste time and energy being upset about it, I still get upset when selfish people act that way.Â How else do selfish people act?Â Selfishly!

On the other hand, my philosophical undertakings have largely been academic ones.Â By that I mean that I also read and have read immense amounts of bullshit.Â We don’t act on philosophy; we write about it! And then we read about it and then write about that.Â And then read that and write about what’s been written about, etc.Â I think a part of me suspects that all wisdom and philosophy that we can read or learn from other people is just bullshit.

Am I claiming that a piece of philosophy that no one acts on is bullshit?Â Yes.Â Read some of my graduate papers that pissed off some of my professors (I was, after all, attacking their profession).Â I’ve felt that way for a long time, and that’s a large part of the reason I decided not to pursue a career in academic philosophy. Why, then, did I pursue a doctorate?Â I don’t know.Â You imagine that you might be a different case, that you can keep your integrity and still gitterdunn.Â Maybe I thought I would feel differently or that I might be wrong.Â Maybe I was just too stupid and stubborn to stop.Â That’s certainly the case now, where I’m finishing my PhD just to finish it and justify my time, energy and debt. (And, for the record, I got offered a spot teaching my own class at the exact school I always dreamed of teaching at just after my dissertation prospectus defense.Â So, ahem, for the record, I didn’t simply wimp out of the search for a job.Â I might have hurt the feelings of someone I care about who was looking out for me, too. I don’t know if I ever mentioned this.)

What’s my point?Â I don’t know.Â Maybe that the bullshit that gets forced on people in the academic discipline of philosophy poisons us against actually acting in a wiser fashion because the bullshit gets mixed in with the “real” wisdom (assuming that some of philosophy is actually wisdom literature, which I think is true).Â I have known tons and tons of philosophers, and only a scant few of them acted like wiser people for their study of philosophy.Â More likely, we just turn into snarky smartasses.Â I wish I could count myself among the people who have studied philosophy and thereby act wiser for it.Â Maybe it’s not philosophy.Â Maybe it’s me.Â Maybe it’s a flaw in the “type” of person who chooses to study philosophy for a living, since so few of us do anything about philosophy.Â But something’s amiss.

The last thing you heard.

ubrack1009
I’ve said it before:

Smart people believe what is true.Â I mean that in a Jamesian sense, as in, what works — what is true because it works and what works because it is true.

Most people believe what they want to believe — because living in the world is difficult and so we all need little lies to keep us sane.

Very stupid people believe the last thing they heard — because they don’t even think; they don’t even mimic other people’s thoughts; they just ape people’s words.Â And I caught myself doing this once tonight, waiting for the bus after I was at work for over nine hours.Â I forget what it was about.Â Still.Â Scary.

I don’t want to be on par with the ignorant, racist, rat bastards I sometimes come into contact with.Â No thank you.

On seeking advice.

advicetree1009
“…if you seek counsel from a priest, for example you have selected that priest; and at bottom you already knew, more or less, what he would advise. In other words, to choose an adviser is nevertheless to commit oneself by that choice. If you are a Christian, you will say, consult a priest; but there are collaborationists, priests who are resisters and priests who wait for the tide to turn: which will you choose? Had this young man chosen a priest of the resistance, or one of the collaboration, he would have decided beforehand the kind of advice he was to receive. Similarly, in coming to me, he knew what advice I should give him, and I had but one reply to make.”
– Jean-Paul Sartre in the essay “Existentialism is a Humanism”

In other words, if you ask someone for advice, don’t get pissy when you don’t like what you hear. You knew what you were going to hear anyway, and you know it. And if you ask someone for advice on a very regular basis, why would you relish the opportunity to tell your adviser that [s]he is wrong? If it’s funny that [s]he is wrong, why ask her to tell you what to do all the time?Â And why would you assume your adviser is wrong because some other person said something different? Maybe the second person is wrong. Maybe they’re both wrong.

I get asked for advice a lot and have since I was 18. I actually like it. I think I’m just a good listener, if I can toot my own horn. I don’t think I possess some superior wisdom, and my station in life proves it.

I think people don’t always believe what they want to. Some people just believe the last thing they heard. Then there’s the person who never ever asks for advice and who unknowingly does stupid things that talking to another person might have fixed or prevented. (I am guilty of this.)

Still, and this is important: there is a lot to be said for doing your own thinking. A lot.Â Who can claim to do that?

On delegating.

If you do, if you delegate, if you’re a good leader and you assign responsibility to other people, and if these people are actually especially willing to help you:

Do not send them dozens of emails.Â Do not ask questions over and over.Â Do not keep changing the details and plans without telling anybody.Â Do not, when asked a question about a huge favor someone is doing for you, begin a sentence with, “You need to….”Â Seriously.Â If you suck at details and know it and then get willing people to take care of it, let them do it.Â It’s actually pretty insulting to keep checking.

And it wastes everyone’s time and might even build ill-will. Think of all the time you waste bitching and moaning.Â I mean, did I miss something?Â Do bitching and moaning suddenly and magically get ‘er done?

And if you change things until the day before, we all might have saved some energy and sanity by waiting until that day to do anything, huh?

There you go.Â Management advice from a student of [academic] philosophy.

Also: Invest in coffee for your staff.Â Good coffee.Â If I ever worked for something who did that, I might still work there!

Dissertation stress makes work stress not so bad.

I haven’t been blogging much onÂ here lately because I haven’t had the energy and will.Â I hate when people say, “I didn’t X because I’m just soooooooo busy [with the inflection that no one, and they mean no one, is as busy as they are].”Â So I won’t give you that bullshit.

I’ve been busy with work and planning the memorial ride for the gentleman who was killed in August.Â That accounts for a lot of my time.

I’ve also been pulling my hair out about getting my dissertation director to schedule my defense before my wife’s too preggers to travel.Â On one hand, I really like the guy and probably have a close philosophical kin in him.Â On the other, it’s frustrating to be at the mercy of other people’s schedules and thereby tempted to push them — hard.Â I mean, I’m certainly willing to piss people off if I have to, but not until I have to.Â Especially not people that I like.Â That accounts for much of my sanity.

We’ve also learned that the pregnancy is not without events.Â On the ten week ultrasound, there was some bleeding under the placenta that only showed up on the U.S. but shouldn’t have been there.Â Our doctor scheduled another for early last week, and it is still there.Â The ultrasound technician said it’s something to monitor but not necessary worry about unless the bleeding gets larger.Â We haven’t spoken to our doctor since she got the report, however, and it’s worrisome.Â It’s also worrisome, to be blunt, when people who you’d think would be concerned are not, or, at least, don’t show it.Â Mrs. P. is also on some medication, and that’s never fun.Â That accounts for being emotionally dissinterested in blogging.

Excuses, excuses, I know.

Being good at school is not exclusive.

moles_1_1009
Not exclusive of being good at anything else.Â One grows tired of people treating you like you can’t do anything “practical” right because “of all that college.”Â In many instances (some lately), certain folks have actually gotten bossy with me in the context of us being peers because they assumed that I could not accomplish the task at hand because I spent my 20s studying philosophy.Â Hmm.Â Turned out that I knew how to do it better in several instances, and it was completely unrelated to school.

I want to smack everyone who throws around the term “Book Smart.”

Usually such folks are either not “book smart” and feel the need to justify their inability to understand books, or they are only “book smart” and feel the need to justify not being good at other things.

Guess what?Â If you can ONLY do one thing, you’re not SMART at all!Â Animals and machines can be good at one thing.

That said, I don’t actually know more than a handful of people who are only good at one thing.Â Folks just pigeon-hole themselves into not exploring other things they might be good at.Â A lot of the “book smart” people I know could probably master outdoor skills if they went camping and, well, had to.Â And a lot of the people I know who do not consider themselves “book smart” but can rebuild things and who understand how things work would probably understand Aristotle better than some of my less giften classmates over the years, if they tried to read it.

Maybe we need to redefine what we mean by SMART as a culture?

Fake what til you make what?

beachtable1009
I was at a talk once during my first year of college wherein Maryland Representative Elijah E. Cummings counseled young African Americans to “fake it til you make it!” (As an aside, I should mention that I have very positive feelings for Mr. Cummings, very positive.) I was confused and horrified. Despite my own faking and non-making, as an 18-year-old, the idea of faking was odious to me. I mean, I walked around with a ponytail, Docs and philosophy books in my own efforts at faking and making. But I was too stupid to realize it then. Faking it? On purpose? What? Where’s the necessary connection between acting one way and then becoming it?

Well, I’ve learned a lot since then. I’ve read Existentialism (Sartre, Nietzsche, et al) and Pragmatism and learned all about how our actions play on our conceptions, metal states, personalities, identities, etc. I also pulled my head out of my ass and realized that our personalities do not define our actions so much as the other way around. Even moods.Â If you walk around bitching all day, you turn into a bitch.

In case you somehow missed it, I’m a moody man. Pessimistic. Nit-picky.Â At times depressed.Â In my defense, there are genetics (I don’t wanna talk about it) involved in depression and general gloom and resentment to a world that continually fucks us all over (don’t kid yourself).

But it’s also part of what has become my “image.”Â I’m critical.Â I have an opinion on everything, usually negative.Â You know, people are more likely to think you’re smart if you act like that than if you think everything’s awesome.Â Anyone can do that, right?Â And if you’re insecure and arrogant (you can be both), you just about need everyone to think you’re smart and good and valuable and fun to be aroundÂ because the — at times — incredibly crushing things you say about people, products and situations tell people that you are witty and funny.

It also makes you a pain in the ass, as my wife reminds me.

With a little one on the way in six months, I think I’d like to learn to be more optimistic or, at least, less doomy and gloomy and hateful.Â I thought about it, and in some essentialist bullshit decided that it’s not in me.Â My blood comes from four grandparents.Â One was depressed and, well, lost it, but was otherwise by all counts a sweet person.Â (I don’t wanna talk about it.)Â One was a terrible father to my father and the biggest example of a P-word I’ve ever met.Â One turned out to be an evil bitch.Â One I never met but never heard anything bad about.Â My parents are very good people, but they each had one piece of shit to match their good parent, and my father’s mother died when he was nine.Â Any sunny outlook on their parts came from sheer will.Â So I should be able to do likewise, no?

How?Â Faking it?Â Maybe that’s bad terminology.Â Acting like the world doesn’t disgust me is probably more than faking.Â I mean, if we look hard enough, there are enough good things in the univserse that we don’t have to fake not wishing existence itself would cease, right?Â Whenever I see the ultrasound image of my child, I can’t be mad or upset about anything.Â I’m all smiles and giggles (yes, giggles, at work andÂ on the bus), and I want to buy everyone a coffee and give them free hugs.Â So maybe it’s not faking it.Â It’s in selecting what to judge the world by.

Working in tides.

tide1009
I am not a constant worker. That is, I cannot sit for 8 hours doing the same thing. I never have been able to. Instead, I can usually get done said amount of work in a fraction of the time, with plenty of time for playing/relaxing. (Admitting this just might be why I got accused of being arrogant.)Â I work in spurts. But I don’t understand why my admitting a weakness (i.e., combination of a short attention span and just plain laziness) leads to charges of arrogance (ahem).

Anyway. School work. It usually happens that I do all my reading. Research. Notes. Outline. Bam, I sit down and write a seminar-length paper in one sitting, that needs minimal editing. My secret is thinking about it for a long time first, so that I really am only going through the formality of typing and composing actual sentences around the cute aphorisms I’m storing in my brain.Â Really.Â I’m so lazy and have so much trouble paying attention to anything that I have trick myself into working.Â No shit.

I tricked myself into cranking out incredible amounts of work today leading to a robust introduction and first chapter of my dissertation.Â I found delicious kernels of Pragmatism not only in Emerson, but also in Thoreau.Â Textual references that are not bullshit and mis-quoted and taken out of context.Â So instead of beefing up the scholarship on my definition of Pragmatism by quoting James scholars, I found a dialogue between Peirce, James, Emerson and Thoreau on the relation of thought and action.Â Delicious.

I don’t know why I’m writing this.Â I’m exhausted and just enjoyed a nice beer and should be reading a trashy novel before hitting the sack.Â I suppose it’s largely because I spent the last few months of 2006 and the first half of 2007 researching and writing the damned thing without ever talking about it with anyone aside from my wife, who was also burdened with writing her own.

What is my dissertation about?

An exploration of the possible usefulness of hate.Â Via an exploration of how pervasive hate is and what Pragmatism means to me; a discussion of Nietzsche’s view of hate using all of his published philosophical writing; proposed solutions for how to make hate useful.Â Sounds sunny and easy, no?

I will admit for the first time to myself that I spent entirely too much time reading and reflecting on and writing about Nietzsche.Â But they want scholarship.Â Still, I spent over three months doing nothing but reading and taking notes on Nietzsche.Â Do I really get him?Â I’m sure some of my colleagues would say that I do not because I am not entirely familiar with the scholarship on him.Â Somewhat familiar with it and equally bored by it.Â I would, arrogantly, reply that I am familiar with Nietzsche‘s work, and I couldn’t give less of a shit what some deconstructionist in a cafe’ thinks about Freddy’s relationship with his mother or how this or that “scholar” had reduced all of the multifarious things Nietzsche said to one principle, phobia or sexual deviance.

That one might posit that another person might not “get” a philosopher because one spent more time reading the primary material than the secondary material is one of the reasons that I am leaving (and in most ways have already left) academic philosophy behind. Behind in an “I’m better than that” sense?Â No, don’t get your panties in a bunch.Â If reading philosophy journals and going to conferences is your thing, that’s cool.Â You do yours, and I’ll do mine.

I can’t help but think that there’s a point where we’re supposed to stop reading about philosophy and reading people who write about it and what other people have written about what these people have written and start, you know, doing it.Â Or is it really just an academic discipline and not a mode of living?

Don’t answer that.

Art School Conformos.

So I was at a, ahem, local art institute this morning, at one of their on-campus coffee shops.Â I was surrounded by about two dozen undergraduate art students.Â It was the one dressed entirely in Abercrombie and Fitch who didn’t look like everyone else.Â This is funny.Â At least my pal who is an alum of this school assures me that it goes away as the degree progresses.

I think it’s funny.Â And, yes.Â I came through a major with a “uniform,” too.Â Guess what the Philosophy Major Uniform was in 1997-2001!

Dissertation work, late in the game.

I like my director a lot, but he’s had my draft for months and only two weeks ago gave me feedback on what needs to be done.Â So we won’t get to defend this fall.Â But I do have a good direction to be looking, and his feedback was both right-on and well-delivered, i.e., helpful.Â We have to get our defenses in before Mrs. P gets too pregnant to take the train to Carbondale via Chicago, so I’m cranking out the work.

I’m using Emerson to tie William James’ Pragmatism and Nietzsche’s ideas about energy, drives and sublimation (and how it all relates to hate) toÂ beef up the scholarship.Â I had a TON of stuff about Nietzsche that I didn’t use because I think scholarship for scholarship’s sake is pointless.Â But then I remembered what I’m writing.Â It’s a hoop.Â The penultimate hoop before the oral/public defense.Â Still, I think it would be a more robust study with Emerson, so I’m not taking short-cuts and injecting all the scholarly research I have notes on regarding Nietzsche.

I was initially excited because I thought I’d get to spend my fall reading Emerson.Â But, you know, I have to read all the scholarly stuff and, ahem, do some more writing.Â So it’s not all fun and awesomeness.Â But having Baby on my mind, I’m getting more done in the time I have to work than I did when my dissertation was my full-time job three years ago and when there was no fire lit under my ass.

I don’t understand business law.

spcrt0909
Okay, I know we’re supposed to be the land of the free, home of the whatever. So we don’t like The Man in the form of The Government telling us what to do with our bodies (at least some of us don’t), our property, our money, our talents, etc. Yet some of us would invite regulation by The Man in the form of The Government to regulate business, health care, etc.

Some of these folks, myself included, might be chided for being hypocrites. After all, how can we call for The Man to stay out of our personal issues and bodies and then tell Big Business (perhaps another offshoot of The Man) what it can and cannot do?

Well, so far as I understand it, people are granted freedom in this country because of the notion that there is dignity in being a human, that humans are inherently free, the way that God/nature/chance made us. And, so far as I can tell, business, health care, etc. are human creations, not endowed with anything divine or any special dignity (which is not to say there is necessary indignity per se in business).

I think that being accused of hypocrisy when one votes for freedom for individuals and regulation for business (or The Man, by The Man) is hogwash, or rather, the hog’s dirty bath water.

I honestly don’t understand business and economic theory, but I assume there are other reasons for a lack of regulation on The Man that escape me. Some are probably even pretty good; I wouldn’t know. But to base the “free market” in any way on human freedom is ludicrous. You might as well give total freedom to any human-created entity. I could create a robot that got everyone hooked on coffee. We’d be fools to let it run wild (or would we, hee hee hee). Hell, maybe even the person who set my creation free is morally and legally responsible for everything it might do, no?

But, like I said, maybe folks have good reasons for believing in a free market? If you do, you’d do a service to your position by not being a jerk and getting your comment deleted. (And remember: Bloggers don’t have to share your beliefs. Nor do they have to publish them in comments, when you’re uncivil. If you’re that passionate about something, go start a blog about it.)

More dissertation work.

I finally heard back from my dissertation director.Â AsÂ you can imagine, impending parenthood has us wanting to defend and be finished!Â But I have more work to do.Â Among several options is to incorporate Emerson into the work.Â So now I have to read a lot of Emerson this fall.Â Damn.Â Emerson.

While that’s certainly pleasant reading, I hadn’t planned on needed to do so much.Â One option was to use the Nietzsche scholarship I worked on for a long time but didn’t because I felt like including research for its own sake was a waste of time.Â But, I forgot.Â A dissertation is a HOOP to jump through, like the other hoops from my MA and PhD programs.Â It’s relevance to knowledge and truth is slight and fleeting.Â At least, it can relate to them, but has to relate to other thinkers’ relations (and their relations to other thinkers’ relations!).

So while I enjoyed digging in, taking notes and brushing up on my Emerson today, I remembered why I decided that I did not want to be a “working philosopher.”Â There’s little philosophy in it.Â Thoreau wrote:

There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. Yet is admirable to to profess because it was once admirable to live. To be a philosopher is not to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live accordingly to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically but practically.

I don’t mean to single out every single academic philosopher.Â Certainly I had (and have) professors who genuinely inquire[d] even when it’s not for publication or a conference, and I knew (and know) some students of the same suit.Â But these good folks stand out.Â This is not encouraged or rewarded.Â This is something you do for yourself.Â And I had/have trouble spending my time reading something for a paper and then reading it again for my own investigations.Â While there are people (and I think I’d include my director) that can balance this in their heads/hearts, I have never been able to.Â Whether this is a weakness in my major or myself remains to be seen, but I suspect that philosophy majors who don’t want to hear about what hoops they’re going to be asked to jump through would say the latter.

Philosophy and leisure.

Aristotle claims that a certain amount of leisure is necessary for philosophical contemplation — key to the good life.Â Some amount of leisure is necessary for real human happiness.

In Walden, Thoreau says that a philosopher should be able to clothe and feed his-or herself better than ordinary people.Â And we know how big he was on leisure time for walking and writing, though perhaps he might not call it “leisure” like those “really” industious folks among us might.Â (What?)

I would contend that, if you are mentally…robust (and bored) enough for philosophizing, you are smart enough to do the things you have to do (like poop, eat, cook, travel, etc.) better than other people.Â Whether you do is another matter, and I never knew a whole lot of philosophers who were also very competent people. I pride myself on my own expediency in personal matters and efficiency in practical ones.Â This is, of course, because I am very lazy and value my leisure, no?

If you get good grades but can’t do anything practical better than anybody else, you might just be mis-using your own intelligence.Â Pretend that the laundry or cooking breakfast is school.Â You’ll learn to apply your brain to things that don’t get you grades but that get you something better, like a tasty egg sandwich and enough time to read spy novels to boot.

Or, you might just not be very smart at all.Â I resent people who claim, “I am booksmart,” when it turns out that they are fucking idiots and/or morons and/or dumbasses.Â If all you can do is school, despite really and actually and honestly trying to do other things well and intelligently, you are probably not as smart as you think you are.Â I have known a good number of scholarly folks of this kind who turned out not to be any kind of smart.Â They excelled academically only through excessive studying and concerted effort.

Not that I am down on academic excellence in itself and certainly not down on effort.Â Anyone who knows me knows how weak-willed I can be when it comes to work I don’t see a point in doing.Â But I want to start throwing bitches off of buildings when such over-glorified memorization and regurgitation masquerades itself as actual intelligence.Â I had a metaphysics professor at BC who I admired very much.Â And he contended in his book that intelligence begins with reflection.Â I joked with him that, under his definition, the whole fucking world is stupid.

He just laughed.

The basic truth about SHIT.

reddoortilt0109
The basic truth: that shit is shit and is prone to being imperfect to start with (my bike was scratched when it was new, and it bugged me for an hour because I am stupid and forget these things) and that it only gets worse. And when you view things/shit/stuff as ends in themselves, you drive yourself crazy because you forget this. I forget all the time. Or I don’t know it in the correct part of my brain.

Nietzsche notes.

Nietzsche was semi-quoted on “Law and Order: SVU” this year, and I was like, “Nietzsche? Oh, yeah, I remember him. Wrote a dissertation that was largely about him, or, at least, dealing with him.” I mean, Nietzsche is hugely quotable and all.Â And I did spend months doing nothing but studying him, hate, and power.

I keep forgetting that I have a dissertation to edit and send to my committee and have since the end of last summer. Honestly, I’ve been putting it off because, once I send it, I’m unemployed. Now, I tell myself, I am a student. Even though, of course, in practice and in my own mind, my student days are effectively over. Still, it will be nice to get this out of my life and over-with. And for everyone to have the “option” of calling me Doctor.Â It might have been nice if I had realized that I implied I was still a full-time student on every job application I have sent minus one.Â Damn it.

I have a stack of Moleskine Cahiers with Nietzsche notes in them from last year.Â Most of them have some of my favorite quotations on them, like these do.Â Those notebooks worked well, especially since I spent last fall in a semi-nomadic fashion, much like Herr Nietzsche himself.Â Not that I had any great thoughts long the way.

Please do keep any “Nietzsche hated women” and “Nietzsche was an anti-Semite” comments to yourself, lest you reveal that you do not, in fact, understand Nietzsche at all. Or, at least, have not bothered to read any of his books.Â And if you feel the need to do it, don’t troll.Â Come back and answer for yourself.Â Nietzsche would.