mahiwaga

I'm not really all that mysterious

tags: philosophy

2006

March

Now I’m not an MMORPGer (for the non-nerds out there, MMORPG is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game. Dungeons and Dragons ported to the Internet with pretty graphics.) This is not because of some inherent virtue. I might be very well have become one if I had a little more free time in my life or if I had started taking amphetamines, since God only knows I can’t really sacrifice anymore sleep than I already do. But that is another rant.

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what’s the use of knowing the future

I seem to be experiencing blogorrhea right now. Ah, nothing like insomnia.

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Gödel’s incompleteness revisited

2006 Mar 17

maternalistic society

I was just thinking, with regards to my post about paternalistic societies and how some people keep using word that word, and I do not think it means what they think it means. What is probably even better for Empire building is a maternalistic society.

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2006 Mar 20

selling out to da man

Now, granted, a good number of my friends are artists, so that is what my ideas are informed by.

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2006 Mar 26

the sin of pride

I was walking through the Science Fiction and Fantasy section of the Borders in Glendale when a totally random thought occurred to me. I think what brought it to my mind is the question: what is the cause of evil? I was flipping through random fantasy novels where characters are neatly pigeon-holed into Good or Evil, and clearly in the real world nothing is that obvious.

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April

Days like this I feel like I am trapped in some kind of existential loop, a la “Groundhog Day,” forced to live and relive excruciatingly painful parts of my life. I suppose it is simply the fact that I really haven’t learned any of the lessons I was supposed to have learned, so I haven’t really learned to avoid these situations that make me want to weep, and maybe even sometimes writhe in agony.

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Here I am pondering the chances of actually breaking out of the Black Iron Prison when I am reminded of a quote by Douglas Adams, author of the cult classic The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (who by the way was an atheist and is a big influence on my philosophies regarding the universe):

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dark elves and sithi

Just pondering Memory, Thorn, and Sorrow still. I think I thought this the first time I read it, and I’m not usually the gushy, romantic type, but I think the thing that sticks the most with me is the relationship between Simon and Miriamele and how painstaking Tad Williams actually fleshed out its nuances. I think my most favorite scenes are when Simon and Miriamele head out on there own to return to the Hayholt in their bid to try to stop the Storm King and to prevent the End of the World, and they have to seek shelter in people’s abandoned houses, and I was struck especially by the scene where she is doing common, domestic things that you wouldn’t expect a princess to know how to do (not that I’m suggesting that that’s women ought to do)—there is a sort-of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves quality to it. I guess the mundanity of it all really struck me, and how what moved that section of the plot along was the developing romance between the two characters. For some reason, these scenes actually seem to capture the sense of Home for me (which also happens to be a major theme in this book.) Whereas Tolkien touches upon the fact that “you can never really go home again,” particularly when he turns the Shire into a totalitarian state, Williams reiterates the (admittedly disgustingly trite) idea that “home is where the heart is,” which may or may not actually represent an physical place. In retrospect, I suppose maybe Tad Williams had the same idea that I did when I read Book IV and VI of LotR: how different the scenes would’ve been if Frodo and Sam weren’t both male (or, I suppose, alternately, how different it would’ve been if J.R.R. Tolkien wasn’t an old school Catholic and had tried to tap the homoerotic side of it all) and indeed I do find it very touching.

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2006 Apr 27

I am randomly scouring the net. You’d think that using del.icio.us would satisfy my need to bookmark random sites that I will likely never visit again (a technology that I wish had been available when Netscape had first come out—you should’ve seen the madness of my humongous bookmark file.) Alas, that is not to be. Of course, a sideblog would probably work better, but, I’m too lazy to write code right now.

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May

2006 May 15

marxian crisis energy against orwellian global capitalism

Before I completely lose sight of this thought, I wanted to talk about this post on crisis theory and this post on the world of 1984. I think crisis theory does make useful analogic predictions about the future. (OK, I don’t for a moment purport to truly understand crisis theory, but I think I have some gist of it.)

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2006 May 21

what if the savior were a woman?

I just watched “The Da Vinci Code” and while the idea that Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene were married or at least were lovers is a popular one that has made it to the big screen on more than one occasion, it made me think of another unorthodox (and actually quite heretical) idea that I remember hearing sometime ago (although for the life of me I can’t find it on Google.)

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2006 May 24

there is no suffering without desire

I ran across this phrase on a random blog, and this phrase happens to be a major tenet of Buddhism. I have waxed philosophically much about the Art of Not Wanting and it is such a tricky thing. As I’ve noted, this particular state of bliss has nothing to do with the avolitional state which undergirds atypical depression and schizophrenia. Instead of a lack, an emptiness, the Art of Not Wanting is a sense of completion.

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2006 May 28

apologia for the art of not wanting

I understand I’s point about the Art of Not Wanting smacking of rationalization and sophistry, but I think there is some profound truthfullness to the Art. One, there is the fact that it is one of the central tenets of Buddhism—without desire, there is no suffering. Two, it also ungirds much of the philosophy of Taoism—desire can only lead to imbalance, but desire is unnecessary because all that you need has already been provided for. The Way is all you need. (I find it interesting that Jesus Christ sometimes refers to himself as the Way.)

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2006 May 30

power that is not force

I am rereading Ursula K Le Guin’s rendition of the Tao Te Ching and come across a wonderful phrase: power that is not force.

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June

2006 Jun 12

I always forget whether it’s na or ng. I have this propensity for tacking on unnecessary -ng enclitics and eliding necessary ones. My cousins in the Philippines always find my mangled Tagalog highly entertaining.

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2006 Jun 23

purpose (portentiousness on a friday night)

Now my philosophical and spiritual beliefs have been very murky these past years, ever since I found myself entangled within a crisis of faith. On one extreme, I do often feel that we live in an uncaring universe, on an ill-regarded planet, orbiting an unremarkable sun. We are victims of chance, the end results of a trillion, trillion, trillion dice rolls, random points along the lines that form the trajectory of the quadrillion, quadrillion particles spewed out from the Big Bang.

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October

2006 Oct 14

narnia, corruption, and perfectability

I think the book in The Chronicles of Narnia that left the strongest impression on me was The Magician’s Nephew[site by Keith Webb][on wikipedia]. The setting that I remember most strongly is the ruined and blasted world of Charn, destroyed by the White Witch Jadis by using magic that seems strongly allegorical to nuclear weaponry. I was struck by how the monarchy of Charn started off being benevolent and wise, then became corrupted and evil, eventually spawning the monstrosity that is the White Witch. I also remember the hue of redness encompassing Charn. (Was C.S. Lewis trying to evoke medieval visions of Hell?) What was interesting to me was the explanation for this reddish light—Charn’s sun is a red giant star. While this could’ve just been an idiosyncrasy of this particular world, it actually evoked in me the idea that the civilization of Charn had existed so long that their formerly sun-like star had exhausted its nuclear fuel and was beginning to cool and expand. For some reason (although this is apparently not the reason for its destruction), this also reminds me of the destruction of the planet of Krypton, but that is neither here nor there.

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December

the first of the last (to sleep, perchance to dream)

(The track that is currently playing is "The Perfect Kiss" by New Order)

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2006 Dec 22

free association (craziness)

So I was eating by myself at a restaurant the other day, and for some reason they were playing all these late ‘70s/early ‘80s songs, like “I Say A Little Prayer” by Dionne Warwick, and then “How Deep Is Your Love?” by the Bee Gees. The latter especially took me back to my early childhood. My dad used to own a blue AMC Concord and it had an 8-track tape player and I think he had tapes of Neil Sedaka, Kenny Rogers, and the Bee Gees.

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2007

March

2007 Mar 26

treacherous conniving always beats a frank show of force (a discussion of duty and honor)

By various convolutions, I am led to the old, laughable screed by Kim du Toit entitled ”The pussification of the western male” written way back in 2003. I find what he says so ridiculous that I have a hard time believing that this guy is serious.

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April

2007 Apr 21

It’s been a long while since I’ve had to work seven days in a row. In of itself, that kind of schedule makes me cranky. Add to it the fact that this included two overnight calls, and that’s approximately 120 hours of work. Fun times.

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May

holding on to a thin strand of hope

I suppose if that’s all the medications accomplish, I’m still getting somewhere. For the first time in a long, long time, I actually believe that there’s a good chance that my life will get better. I’m actually looking forward to the future.

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2007 May 11

happiness, the continuing elusiveness of

Now I realize that happiness in of itself is a rather empty goal, reserved for victims of unusual strokes, the congenitally mentally incapacitated, and the clinically deranged. You lesion a few tracts in your brain, and you can be permanently happy until your dying day, singing “zippy-de-doo-da” out of your asshole, your face guaranteed to freeze with a rictus grin. I can see it now, a corpse grinning maniacally in his/here casket.

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2007 May 12

the parable of the cave

I have come to realize that the living room of my apartment resembles a terrorist command center. I have three computers and four LCD screens, seven speakers plus a subwoofer, a TV, and a receiver as well as all the requisite cables and hubs and what not in here, because (1) I couldn’t fit it all in my room anyway and (2) the first rule of sleep hygiene is to only use the bedroom for sleeping.

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September

2007 Sep 27

my mind is on overdrive

The problem I have with overly optimistic philosophies is that it seems to discount the seriousness of human suffering. I mean, seriously, try getting someone who, after 10 grueling years of intensive chemo, followed by an equally grueling course of bone marrow transplant complicated by graft-vs-host disease, just had a relapse of leukemia—try getting them to watch “The Secret” and see how perverse and even insulting that is.

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2007 Sep 30

karma is not a linear function

My interpretation of a mathematical theory of karma:

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November

2007 Nov 29

coping with existence

Not sure what exactly changed this evening, after I gave up with lying in bed, weary, defeated. Maybe it was the odd impulse to write this line on a random scrap of paper:

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December

2007 Dec 26

truth, truthiness, and authentic fiction

In the Western model of education, there is an operational distinction between physics and metaphysics. The former gets you grants from the Department of Defense, and opens doors to working at NASA or JPL. You get to work with nuclear reactors and supercolliders and fusion bombs and Einstein-Bose condensates. The latter is stereotyped as the demesne of hippies trapped in the 1960s and undergrads who have no idea what they want to do with their lives. Generally, the discipline is called philosophy and not metaphysics, but a rose is a rose. You know you're pretty marginal when even the social science and humanities people look at you with that "What the hell do you do?" look in their eyes.

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2008

April

2008 Apr 19

type-a personality

that which you seek to perfect
fussing and worrying over
will come to ruin
too much force
and the thing will break
too much care
and you will wear it thin
and all you're left with are the little pieces
useless debris, detritus

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June

2008 Jun 16

so you see, lonestar, evil will always win, because good is dumb

We all want the good guys to win. Most major religions prophesy that Good™ will triumph in the end, even against overwhelming odds, even if it seems that most folks are playing for the dark side.

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August

what is "real"?

One of the books I'm currently reading is A World Without Time: The Forgotten Legacy of Gödel and Einstein by Palle Yourgrau. Essentially, it concerns Gödel's conclusion that the Theory of Relativity naturally leads to a universe where time isn't real. I also started The End of Time by Julian Barbour, who comes up with a similar conclusion, though his formulation is much more recent, and in the few pages that I have read, he necessarily bases his ideas partly on the way that the brain processes information (without actually going into the messy neuroanatomically and neuromolecular details.)

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2016

January

2016 Jan 26

Not All Knowledge is Science

Ethan Siegel points out the obvious that science is not the only form of knowledge and that non-science clearly has value.

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May

2016 May 11

The Source of Richard Feynman’s Genius • 2016 May 11 • Maria Popova • Brain Pickings

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