"The great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities, and are often more influenced by the things that seem than by those that are." -Machiavelli

But you won't listen to reason.  It's like playing Chess with a pigeon; no matter how good I am at Chess, the pigeon is just going to knock over the pieces, crap on the board, and strut around like its victorious.

“I’ve learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow. I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights. I’ve learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you’ll miss them when they’re gone from your life. I’ve learned that making a “living” is not the same thing as making a “life.” I’ve learned that life sometimes gives you a second chance. I’ve learned that you shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back. I’ve learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision. I’ve learned that even when I have pains, I don’t have to be one. I’ve learned that every day you should reach out and touch someone. People love a warm hug, or just a friendly pat on the back. I’ve learned that I still have a lot to learn. I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

- Maya Angelou

For instance? Well, for instance, what it means to be a man. In a city. In a century. In transition. In a mass. Transformed by science. Under organized power. Subject to tremendous controls. In a condition caused by mechanization. After the late failure of radical hopes. In a society that was no community and devalued the person. Owing to the multiplied power of numbers which made the self negligible. Which spent military billions against foreign enemies but would not pay for order at home. Which permitted savagery and barbarism in its own great cities. At the same time, the pressure of human millions who have discovered what concerned efforts and thoughts can do. As megatons of water shape organisms on the ocean floor. As tides polish stones. As winds hollow cliffs. The beautiful supermachinery opening a new life for innumerable mankind. Would you deny them the right to exist? Would you ask them to labor and go hungry while you yourself enjoyed old-fashioned Values? You-you yourself are a child of this mass and a brother to all the rest. Or else an ingrate, dilettante, idiot. There, Herzog, thought Herzog, since you ask for the instance, is the way it runs.

Herzog, Saul Bellow 1964

Once upon a time
in the land of distant ponds and morning dew
Where fiberoptics
connected bonds and cherished thoughts of two
Memories
flooded mood and states of "high quality"
Before sunrise
the two created memories embodied eternal
A cerebral space
shared by two fused together
Time and space transcended
and always available when two desired one 
"Tell me a story" she echoes
Life was grand and happier next to none.
As the moon faded away
the fork came to come.
Bound and agreed to different suns
Separation
and entitlement could not be done
Still connected
along independent paths
No labels
the walls sway but strong they remain
Cybernetic fun -
swings, frogs, ducks, and pancakes
Nerd bombin true on red pillars and wheels spinning in mud
Who needs a lock when a marker and wall scream word
Dancing fans, bathing nymphs, she said it tastes like butter
Hell yea cupcakes and coffee
So what matter is matter
when the world is just one big neighbor
Memories continue
Hope calls for the ideal
Bend space and time, mutant abilities and superhero power,
but
History has taught us pragmatics,
Lovers tend to fade
and anything
outside of normative would ring unreasonable,
selfish,
and held together by halo effects
One step at a time
Spontaneous inspiration
motivates the sequence of experience
No need to rush,
Only time will tell
And two can become
Or one can remain one
and find eleven somewhere else

The Duchess

A repost: Just because I like what I wrote in the last paragraph (not the last sentence but the paragraph before it)

 

Monday, August 01, 2005

The Duchess

"Be what you would seem to be"-or if you'd like it put more simply-"Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise." -The Duchess from 'Alice in Wonderland' by Lewis Carol.

I wonder, is this truly how we should be in our social networks? To create one impression and continue to maintain that impression throughout our associations without changing, even if it might not be an entirely accurate portrait of our self? If we produced one impression and implanted unto others what we would "seem to be," then gave a different impression other than what we "seem to be," or acted contrary to what others thought how we would act in accordance with their impression of what we "seem to be," does that make the initial impression fake?

Is it an obligation, of each and every one of us, to maintain what we seem or appear to be so that we ourselves do not appear "to be otherwise" ??

Or is it merely a matter of interpretation or on how others formulate one's conception. For over a period of time, one acts inevitably according to how one would act and the impression that is portrayed during that time is naturally how one would "seem to be," and as time passes it would be impossible to act "otherwise." And yet, people in our social networks continue to make assumptions about us and at times we may act in a manner that is not necessarily in accordance with those assumptions. In this sense we appear to be otherwise than what we appear to be. Does this indicate that we are not being who we are and what we are? Even though we are being inevitably who we are by which we know no different. A chameleon by nature is a chameleon and is only claimed not to be a chameleon by those who only think they know but don't really know. So judgments that are passed without the basis of true understanding or open mindedness, are not accurate judgments at all but only biased ones based on one's own false conception. But the fact of the matter is, if one does have a basis of understanding and open mindedness there is actually no judgment at all but only mere acceptance.

one cannot recognize a wolf in sheep's clothing without understanding what a wolf is in the first place.

'Vanity' is the wrong term here. Vanity invokes a sense of "showing off" for the sake of others. A pride in one's appearance and action for the sake of social recognition. So I am going to renegue - although vanity may play a role for others in their pursuit of happiness, social praise, and aspiration, which may serve as a mode of meaning for them. However, as we are discussing the roles of meaning, validating existence in the face of death as the ultimate deadline, and happiness, 'vanity' is indeed a much hollower concept than what most do for the fulfillment of meaning. The pursuit of one’s aspirations, happiness, and meaning is not vain. Aspiration and the 'pursuit of happiness' inherently contains personal drive and motivation to achieve what one would like to achieve for personal gratification and one's own sense of well-being/happiness, rather than a pursuit for the sake of “impressing others,” which is vain (and like I said, some may have this as a goal in which they would like to achieve, the desire for immortality, in name at least, and living one’s life strictly for that purpose I would characterize as vain, as it is an aspiration not for the fulfillment of one’s personal inquiry and pursuits, but that they are constantly examining their work for the purpose of, or attempt at, becoming “famous.” All the great artists, musicians, philosophers, authors and scientists produced work for their own inquiry and in the name of the virtue/art/science they were pursuing, and as a consequence they received recognition. The actual audience is ultimately an irrelevant variable. The tangible capacity for an audience however, is not. In other words, a work must materialize). Nietzsche advocated the creation of new paths and new modes of health: “there are a thousand paths which have never been trodden, a thousand kinds of health and hidden islands of life.” If we combine this with Foucault’s sense of social identity in being perceived by others as social validation, we can ask what is personal validation within, and for, one’s existence? I think you are right to invoke Aristotle’s concept of eudaimonia, human flourishing, and whether there _should_ and _ought_ to be a sense of a universal _how_ or if the fulfillment of it hinges on the subjectivity in personal method in achieving one’s personal, and not social, validation. Aristotle noted that the highest form of eudaimonia was the educated, the thoughtful, philosophical man as the pinnacle. However, this cannot possibly be true. As we both know, there have been many intellectuals and philosophers, learned men, who have gone insane and have been troubled by much during the course of their lives because of the nature of their inquiry. I think the question of whether a drug/porn addict, with no further aspirations, has fulfilled the criteria for a meaningful life is an interesting one. Every life is individualized regardless of the tendency to categorize persons under lifestyle, nationality, or any category we may place upon persons. In this sense, there is much to be said about the subjectivity in the pursuit of aspiration, happiness, and the fulfillment of a meaningful life. If the drug/porn addict’s personal pursuits, happiness, and fulfillment of a meaningful life according to him/her is met by his/her own standards, then how can we say that he/she has not had a meaningful life? The subjective allows for one to ask one self: what are my aspirations, what is happiness to me, what is a meaningful life to/for me? I think these are the central questions one should ask rather than the cliche question of “how do you want to be remembered,” precisely because this question invokes the audience, the social, as a significant variable in shaping one’s life. The central questions that I would posit, at this time, are indeed self-centered for the individual with respect to how one should lead a meaningful life. Peter Singer suggested that a meaningful life is one that is attached to a cause. But a cause should not be one that is obligatory. Attaching to a cause for the sake of a cause or because of a social influence is fighting for something because it is audience motivated. The cause is ultimately one’s own life and one’s personal drive for life. And within one’s life, if one aspires for the virtue of a social cause than I think that is great. However, that should not be a definitive _ought_ or a prescribed criteria for a meaningful life.

This is a dangerous path I am going down, because it allows happiness, aspiration, and meaning to encompass all sorts of fanaticism - if it is what their personal drive, source of happiness, and fulfillment of meaning, is. Here I would have to throw in a radical condition, and that is the self-less aesthetic. It does seem paradoxical, allowing for the range of subjectivity and personal taste in what aspiration, happiness, and a meaningful life is and striving for those in a self-fulfilling sense, but at the same time, suggesting a condition of selfless-ness is suggesting their abandonment. However, I would argue it is not an abandonment but rather a conscious embodiment of one’s self-fulfilling habituation towards one’s aspiration, happiness, and what one considers a meaningful life and in that embodiment is the abandonment of the selfish but not the self-ful. In becoming one’s pursuit of aspiration, happiness, and meaning, a habituated self is fully realized in that pursuit. In a cliche sense, after one becomes “one” with their “path” the conscientious self of self-correcting for that path is unnecessary. The self-ish is unnecessary. The pursuit of obtaining things for their pursuit of aspiration, happiness, and meaning is no longer a required aspect of self. Abandoning the selfish while maintaining the self-ful. It is the embodiment of one’s integrity without the effort in trying to be genuine. One is one’s integrity without work. This allows integrity as well as social malleability and empathy without compromising a habituated self-ful pursuit. In this sense one is self-less and self-ful, and the aesthetic is found in the harmony of this dialectic that is, in a Hegelian sense, a synthetic. The aesthetic is not grounded in any superficial measure of beauty. But the aesthetic in habituating/embodying one’s pursuit of one’s aspirations, happiness, and meaning for the personal validation of one’s existence regardless of any audience, while giving room for such selfless-ness that one is able to have the empathic capacity. The aesthetic self-less life is therefore the product of personal validation and embodiment....now that I'm looking back on this, it's a pretty romantic response lol...and problematic in how to achieve it for sure...but I’m willing to take this as a starting point and let it evolve in our conversation. Only arrive to go further yea? Perhaps one of the beauties of philosophy...