I think this is funny, for several reasons:

1) I keep forgetting that I finished my PhD.
2) I keep forgetting that I wrote a book-length project since,
I’m sure, no actual publisher would want to touch it because:
It sucks; they made me take out the good stuff and tone down the language of the whole text to its anemic state.
It’s philosophy, let alone American philosophy.
It’s hateful.
3) It sounds like I know what I’m talking about, that it’s in print somewhere. But, I, er, don’t.
4) It’s just funny. I wrote a little book about hating, and now it’s embarrassing.

So, the ending.  I liked it immensely for two reasons, perhaps tainted heavily by my own background in philosophy and a short-lived (but serious) interest in, of all things, metaphysics.  First, if Max really knew, I don’t think a human brain could handle it anyway.  Hell, I might have lost it in a much more violent way than drilling out the offending part of my brain.  Secondly, the search was over.  If Max knew, there would be no more search.  If questions are important in philosophy and — in metaphysics,  how we ask the questions — results are less important, Max’s entire life would be empty from his discovery onward.

This, of course, begs the question of why one would search for something whose answer would either destroy you or take away your reason for living.  Or, even, why to search for an answer you can’t get.

Or, perhaps more interesting to a Pragmatist, why would a person search for, say, the essential structures of all Being, without thinking of what the hell this knowledge or understanding might actually be good for?  I probably mentioned getting my metaphysics professor in graduate school to admit, despite his conviction that I was “too much of a Pragmatist,” that his own version of metaphysics could only be beneficial if the answers were useful (which is not to say that the questions weren’t useful — this great thinker was interested in the results, to be sure).  What “good” the answers of metaphysics might be to human beings and the relative unlikelihood that we’ll ever find them prompted me to jump ship before I went into PhD study in metaphysics and spent the rest of my life quipping witty ways to look at Being and the being of Being and etc.

That’s called wasting your life, bub.  (I wasted my academic time studying Pragmatism instead — and then trying to learn how to do it.)

“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.

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.

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.

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.

I was also struck by how I was reading them: as interesting bits of information.  Not wisdom — interesting paragraphs.  I thought that, perhaps, it was the text.  Maybe it’s not as awesome as I thought.  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?  I don’t think so — though that is certainly a possibility, and there are certainly people who would say so.  (Ahem.)  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!  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.  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.  How else do selfish people act?  Selfishly!

On the other hand, my philosophical undertakings have largely been academic ones.  By that I mean that I also read and have read immense amounts of bullshit.  We don’t act on philosophy; we write about it! And then we read about it and then write about that.  And then read that and write about what’s been written about, etc.  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?  Yes.  Read some of my graduate papers that pissed off some of my professors (I was, after all, attacking their profession).  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?  I don’t know.  You imagine that you might be a different case, that you can keep your integrity and still gitterdunn.  Maybe I thought I would feel differently or that I might be wrong.  Maybe I was just too stupid and stubborn to stop.  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.  So, ahem, for the record, I didn’t simply wimp out of the search for a job.  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?  I don’t know.  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).  I have known tons and tons of philosophers, and only a scant few of them acted like wiser people for their study of philosophy.  More likely, we just turn into snarky smartasses.  I wish I could count myself among the people who have studied philosophy and thereby act wiser for it.  Maybe it’s not philosophy.  Maybe it’s me.  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.  But something’s amiss.

Smart people believe what is true.  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.  And I caught myself doing this once tonight, waiting for the bus after I was at work for over nine hours.  I forget what it was about.  Still.  Scary.

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

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?  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.  Who can claim to do that?

Do not send them dozens of emails.  Do not ask questions over and over.  Do not keep changing the details and plans without telling anybody.  Do not, when asked a question about a huge favor someone is doing for you, begin a sentence with, “You need to….”  Seriously.  If you suck at details and know it and then get willing people to take care of it, let them do it.  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.  I mean, did I miss something?  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.  Management advice from a student of [academic] philosophy.

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

I’ve been busy with work and planning the memorial ride for the gentleman who was killed in August.  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.  On one hand, I really like the guy and probably have a close philosophical kin in him.  On the other, it’s frustrating to be at the mercy of other people’s schedules and thereby tempted to push them — hard.  I mean, I’m certainly willing to piss people off if I have to, but not until I have to.  Especially not people that I like.  That accounts for much of my sanity.

We’ve also learned that the pregnancy is not without events.  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.  Our doctor scheduled another for early last week, and it is still there.  The ultrasound technician said it’s something to monitor but not necessary worry about unless the bleeding gets larger.  We haven’t spoken to our doctor since she got the report, however, and it’s worrisome.  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.  Mrs. P. is also on some medication, and that’s never fun.  That accounts for being emotionally dissinterested in blogging.

Excuses, excuses, I know.

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?  If you can ONLY do one thing, you’re not SMART at all!  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.  Folks just pigeon-hole themselves into not exploring other things they might be good at.  A lot of the “book smart” people I know could probably master outdoor skills if they went camping and, well, had to.  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?

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.  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.  At times depressed.  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.”  I’m critical.  I have an opinion on everything, usually negative.  You know, people are more likely to think you’re smart if you act like that than if you think everything’s awesome.  Anyone can do that, right?  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 around  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.  I thought about it, and in some essentialist bullshit decided that it’s not in me.  My blood comes from four grandparents.  One was depressed and, well, lost it, but was otherwise by all counts a sweet person.  (I don’t wanna talk about it.)  One was a terrible father to my father and the biggest example of a P-word I’ve ever met.  One turned out to be an evil bitch.  One I never met but never heard anything bad about.  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.  Any sunny outlook on their parts came from sheer will.  So I should be able to do likewise, no?

How?  Faking it?  Maybe that’s bad terminology.  Acting like the world doesn’t disgust me is probably more than faking.  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?  Whenever I see the ultrasound image of my child, I can’t be mad or upset about anything.  I’m all smiles and giggles (yes, giggles, at work and  on the bus), and I want to buy everyone a coffee and give them free hugs.  So maybe it’s not faking it.  It’s in selecting what to judge the world by.