The Masked Philosopher

Err, um November 28, 2009

So I moved to WordPress to fiddle around with things a bit.  I’ve done some tweaking behind the scenes.  I like the customization of WordPress, but I like Blogger’s interface.

That said, though, I must admit that I am in a dry spell.  The semester is staggering to a close, most of my students will have (mentally) checked out over the Thanksgiving break and I’m not so sure I blame them.  My teaching has been off of late, thanks to the illness among other things.

I’m really sort of embarrassed to be sitting here and writing this–then I remember that this is for me more so than anyone else…and I am still embarrassed.  There is a lot I ought to do, yet very little that I care to do.  I’m not depressed.  Not like before, at least.  I’m not sure what I am.

Feh.

Moving from Blogger November 25, 2009

Just moving in from http://themaskedphilosopher.blogspot.com

More soon.  I like it better here already, I think.

One of these days November 23, 2009

I’m in a bit of a wistful mood today, gentle readers, as it is a cool, grey November day here wherever I am.  I’m not wistful about anything in particular, but that word seems to fit my mood better than any other.  I suppose in some ways a day like today reminds me of some childhood winter days, but I don’t have particularly fond memories of those times–I certainly don’t want to experience them again.

I like the period of time when autumn turns in to winter.  Many of the trees have fired off their final bursts of color and are now fading into different shades of brown.  I’m no fan of death, especially in light of some recent health issues, but there is something about the slow fade into finality that this time of year represents that I do find intriguing.  Is that contradictory?  I don’t know–I suppose what I am trying to say is that I take no joy in the death of others nor do I look forward to my own.  I suppose it is the process, the inevitability of it that grabs me.  Many people spend a good portion of their lives looking for certainty while at the same time trying to avoid thinking about the one thing that is certain–that their lives will end.  If I were on an exciting roller coaster and knew that at the end of the ride was death, could I still enjoy the ride?  Even if it lasted 60 or 70 years?  I don’t know.  Still, if the ride is all that I get–well….

A friend of mine asked me to write some comments on an essay that he had written about a poet who has some philosophical tones in his writing.  I did so, and haven’t heard from him in about a year.  He is a devout Christian and someone for whom I have a great deal of intellectual respect (and there aren’t too many members at the intersection of those two sets).  Yet at the same time, he responds very negatively towards criticism of his views, insofar as he takes criticism to be ridicule.  Maybe part of the problem is that I express myself with a certain lack of tact/artfulness.  But philosophy is supposed to be a frank (albeit polite) discussion of the weightiest matters we humans can contemplate.  Maybe I am too brusque.  Some philosophers are incredibly dismissive of points of view with which they do not agree.  I don’t see myself in that way, but it could be the case that it is true.  We don’t always see ourselves as we are, if we ‘are’ any way at all.  Perception is such a problem.  Things would be much easier if people would drop pretense and simply express themselves openly. Although that may not be as ‘simple’ as it seems, nor as desirable.

God is the logical conclusion of humanity’s self-aggrandizement.

I’ll leave you with that for the moment.

I like this song November 19, 2009

Expectations and Disappointments November 19, 2009

I’m not sure where this one is going, gentle readers, if anywhere at all.

I disappoint people all the time.  I don’t mean to do it, but I guess that since I am quiet by nature people think there is something good, or noble, or deep within me….and so they have expectations.  And I invariably let them down.  I don’t think I take any pleasure, perverse or otherwise, out of it.  Life is painful enough without my adding to the sum total of hurt in the world (though I suppose there is no real way to avoid that so long as one is alive).  I guess in some way I wish that I could go back to some of those those I hurt and apologize.  Then again, that might be more for my benefit than theirs, which would render it a self-servingly futile exercise. Probably many of them don’t remember me at all. And what good would an apology do anyway?

The holidays are coming up sooner than it seems they should–though that happens even more quickly as I begin to get older.  I’m already older than my birth father was when he died (murdered).  In a few years, I’ll be as old as my adopted father when he died (cancer).  My health hasn’t been that great lately.  I’ve had a case of bronchitis for about 2 months now–though I won’t belabor that point.  From a very early age, I have been conscious of my own mortality, not in the least because as a child I was sick unto death on a couple of occasions.  I suppose in some sense I’ve tried to lower my expectations for myself, for life, for others so as to avoid disappointment.  I suppose it has worked to some extent…though simply getting through the day often contains disappointment enough.  Maybe it is that I think that eventually everyone will leave me (thanks, adoption), disappoint me, let me down–so I try to live life and craft my interactions with others as a series of  preemptive strikes.  In other words, I fuck things up because I know they will eventually be fucked up anyway.  Or maybe that is just an excuse.

I hope this doesn’t come across as a wallow in self-pity, because I certainly don’t intend it as such.  I guess I just want to closely examine who I am, or at least who I appear to be.  I do regret the hurt I’ve caused, the disappointment I have brought about in others. And yet I’ll do it again, and again and again…..

The sad truth of the dirty (s)lowdown November 17, 2009

I cribbed a lyric from Boz Scaggs for the title.  I am aware that most of you who are younger than I am (which is most likely all of you) have no idea who that is.  More’s the pity.

So the truth?  I’ve been sick all semester and it’s not getting better.  I don’t think anything is seriously wrong, in a life-threatening sense, but it is frustrating to keep a case of bronchitis for a couple of months.  I’ve been tired, as well.  I have commented on a few posts from Dasein 36, but haven’t really felt like writing much on my own.  A good bit of what motivated me at the beginning of this blog was anger.  I don’t fell that much anger anymore.  perhaps the combination of therapy, chemicals and being sick has dulled my edge.  I was also motivated by anxiety over teaching, which I don’t feel any more (much–there is always an element of anxiety standing before 35 people [x 5 classes] and talking about whether God exists or not).  I was also motivated by despair–which I still feel.  It doesn’t rally motivate me anymore.  I realize that I don’t get out of this alive, and that is sad, I suppose, but what are you going to do?

Bashful Radical had an interesting comment on a previous post of mine about whether we can be happy (not to denigrate the other comments).  I’ve been thinking about what she had to say a bit…I don’t know if I can do justice to her erudition (of course I don’t do that with Dasein 36 either), but here goes:
my thoughts on the matter cannot be so much attributed to reason as to faith. 


Which is fine.  I don’t really have much faith in anything (except the worst always happening), but I respect at least some people who do have faith–faith that they have thought about and wrestled with–not so much the faith that is simply adopted because some parent or minister said so.  I wrestled with my faith and lost (or won, depending on how you look at it).  It’s not that I think reason is perfect or unassailable, but I just can’t let myself go into belief based on hope.  For me, hope=frustration.  But I could be wrong.


i believe that we can be profoundly happy. this doesn’t mean that i think this is easier than being unhappy, or that i equate ignorance or mere content with true happiness. my underlying assumption in life is that the purpose is some mix of goodness and happiness.


I agree with part of this–being happy isn’t a matter of ignorance or ease (well, I suppose it could be…but profound happiness, as BR seems to be using the term, strikes me as neither).  I don’t absolutely disagree with the latter part of the statement, though I do have some qualms about life having a purpose.  Things are so random in our lives, so tenuous, that I find it difficult to accept the notion that there is some larger purpose to it all (well, larger good purpose).  And if it is we ourselves who give our lives purpose be aiming towards some sort of goal (goodness and happiness), then once again it strikes me that such an endeavor will fail either because we never reach our goal or we find that, once reached, it is either unsatisfactory or, worse, dissatisfying.  At best we may attempt to give our lives purpose.  Maybe that is enough–the happiness is found in the journey rather than the destination.


And yet that seems trite.  So many people in the world have awful journeys (as BR has pointed out in her posts about her research on rape), journeys that are one indignity, one suffering after another–and to what end?  Heaven?  Abolition of the self?  Liberation from the cycle of birth and death?  All worthy ends, I suppose, yet I am always struck by Ivan’s comments in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov:
And if the sufferings of children go to swell the sum of sufferings which was necessary to pay for truth, then I protest that the truth is not worth such a price….


“Rebellion? I am sorry you call it that,” said Ivan earnestly. “One can hardly live in rebellion, and I want to live. Tell me yourself, I challenge your answer. Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature—that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance—and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell the truth.”


These excerpts hardly do justice to the power of the linked passage…the overall point (though I don’t think this is Dostoevsky’s ultimate position) is that no end, no matter how great, is worth the suffering of the sort seen in this world of ours.  The solution, I suppose, would be faith—and I just don’t have any of the sort needed to see anything of lasting good in this world.  Happiness and ephemerality don’t go well together, if they go at all.  And since all we get is ephemerality…..

Is it already the 7th? November 7, 2009

Time flies and not in a good way.  I think that is part of the reason that I haven’t been posting as much of late.  Several of the blogs I follow are pretty much dormant.  It could well be that Twitter/Facebook have replaced the blogs to some degree.  I myself have a facebook page (under my real name) so that I could keep in contact with a couple of student clubs that I advise.  Of course, some of my co-workers are on there, some folks I went to grad school with and so on–it’s become more than I intended it to be.

Another reason I haven’t been here much is that I used this blog as a vent just as much as a sounding board for my ideas.  I haven’t needed to vent lately, not in the way I’ve needed to over the last year and a half.  I’m in a pretty good place, mentally speaking, at the moment.  I’m still not a happy camper, of course.  I’m sad that 53% of the good people of Maine decided to sanction bigotry.  For the record, I think that (in terms of the state) marriage is a consensual contractual arrangement.  The state has no business telling two competent adults that they cannot enter into a consensual contractual arrangement.  If a church does not wish to sanction a same-sex union, then the state should not force them to do so.  I would disagree with that church’s decision, of course, but I am not a particularly religious person (in terms of belief…I am reasonably well informed on Protestant Christian theology and less reasonably informed about the various strands of Buddhism).

If two people love each other and want to be married, their sex should make no bigger difference in the eyes of the state than their race (which is to say, none at all).

There is more I want to say, especially in regard to a well-reasoned series of posts from Dasein 36, but I think I need to get the intellectual “throat-clearing” this posts represents out of the way first. So bear with me, gentle reader.

Happy Halloween October 31, 2009

Not ignoring, just thinking October 22, 2009

‘My suspicion is that there is no such nature, no ultimate reality or deeper meaning.’ 
my question is, where does this idea lead us? in my experience, the place it takes us is one of inaction (in its extreme, suicide). specifically, if there is no deeper meaning to human life, then what is the meaning of living at all? from a practical standpoint i suspect that this idea won’t help us lead happy lives..or lives at all. again, this has been my experience with that idea, as i have toyed with it before. your thoughts?


What I originally said is bold above, Bashful Radical’s comment is in italics.


This query really gets at the heart of my concerns for the last few years.  On the one hand, I see BR’s point.  On the other, I don’t think that what she describes is necessarily the case (not that she implied it was, of course).  I suppose if one has had it drilled into their head from an early age that the world is a magical place full of wonder and inherent meaning, the reaction to the sort of claim I made above could involve a certain degree of  lassitude.  Yet, it seems to me (today at least) that living with the knowledge that there is no deeper meaning to anything can be liberating.  


I don’t mean liberating in a “let’s go transgress every rule we can as quickly as we can” sense, but rather in a sense of appreciating the ephemerality of the present moment and consequently finding satisfaction in that moment.  Whether it is feeling the wind on one’s face, enjoying the taste or smell of one’s lover, or just sitting in front of a computer and typing…..In other words, the meaning of living is, well, living.  Experiencing (or not) all the sorts of bodies and pleasures and pains that life brings your way.  


Some people have unimaginably shitty lives.  One way of dealing with that is to suppose that the shit one goes through means something, else it wouldn’t be happening.  Again, the idea that it doesn’t mean anything need not lead to suicide (indeed, allowing someone to [metaphorically] shit on you day in and day out is a type of suicide).  Though, that said, if a situation is bad enough, suicide might be the only way out.  Life doesn’t provide the Hollywood Ending, where Bruce Willis comes in through the door at the last second, kills the bad guy and everything is made right.  Life is full of jagged edges, people torn out of our lives with no rhyme or reason, choices made that didn’t seem significant at the time but which are now swollen with import.  The idea that all of this means something more than what it is at any moment makes life seem all the more terrible to me.


I don’t know that we can lead a happy life (outside of willful ignorance or chemical oblivion).  We can, perhaps, strive to be ‘not as unhappy’ in life through appreciating the transitory nature of the present moment and, again perhaps, have a happy death.

I don’t know for sure October 13, 2009

Some days it is easier to come up with a title than with content.  As I sit here, it seems like this may be one of those days.  I suppose that I could talk about Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize, but Bashful Radical already did a great job with that–and it’s been picked over pretty cleanly by those less gifted than her.  Suffice it to say that I believe he got the prize more for who he isn’t more than for any other reason.  But whatever…it’s like all of society has become a high school popularity contest, albeit one with much higher stakes.

Class continues on and on and on….I have some good classes, but too many where folks are just filling a space.  Their disinterest is palpable.  I suppose if I were a better professor I would meet with them, discern what interests them and plan my lectures accordingly.  However, I am taking a slightly different approach.  Allow me to state it as clearly as I can:
Step 1: Fuck ‘em

That’s about as far as I’ve gotten.

I do have some good students scattered across my classes and I am really teaching to them and for them.  I suppose it is the libertarian in me, but I don’t feel compelled to motivate the unmotivated.  If talking about God and evil can’t motivate your interest, then I don’t know what will. I doubt it would be the Gettier problem or Foucault on governmentality.  I would like for everyone to get something out of my classes, but I know that won’t happen.  Given the sort of school I am at and the sorts of students we get, it is a sad truth….but at the same time, I think many of them will go on to lead reasonably happy lives without the least tincture of philosophy.  I don’t want to appear as though I consider myself significant in any way, because I am not.  And this is not me speaking from the deep, dark pit of depression (and I have been there and do not make light of it)–this is me just being honest about where I stand in the order of things.

I still want to move, still looking for something elsewhere.  There seems to be a bit more hiring this year than last, but I still feel sorry for those folks coming out onto the job market.  Things are tough everywhere and a lot of people have it incredibly badly, suffering in ways I cannot begin to comprehend.  It doesn’t make my suffering any less real, but it does allow for some perspective–something that I have sorely lacked over the last few whiles.

For me, the rational belief in the existence of a perfect God founders on the Problem of Evil.  Of course, maybe belief in God isn’t supposed to be rational…or maybe God isn’t perfect.  I am most comfortable with agnosticism–I don’t know what the ultimate nature of reality might or might not be.  My suspicion is that there is no such nature, no ultimate reality or deeper meaning.  There is just us, here and now, then one day there won’t even be that. Figuring out how to live in the here and now is task enough, though it does seem that at least part of that involves reflecting upon these seemingly insolvable questions.  I’m rambling–pardon the lack of cogency. I’ll give it another go later–for now, bed and indifference.