An Experiment in Teaching the Essay: Brainstorming 2

[This is part three of a series of posts. Sorry for the delay: Spring break handily destroyed my motivation for doing work.]

Session 3

[Preface: Although the last two sessions do not clearly offer anything in the way of a constructive problem, today, I realize that it has had a positive affect on my mind. Many thoughts and anxieties that have been building up needed to get released before I could have a more clear mind.

Also, as I was nearing the end of page 2, something struck me as interesting: I was looking at the keyboard the entire time, and not getting distracted (see session 2). There are a few reasons for this, I suspect [this computer is not the same as the computer I had been typing on. The keyboard is much smaller and I am unaccustomed to it, and therefore make more mistakes, and therefore depend on looking at the screen more often. Also, this computer has been infested with a virus that makes web-surfing much more annoying than usual, and my drive for checking the internet is overcome by my extreme annoyance. Actually, when I first turned on the computer, I automatically checked a few sites, but became so frustrated that I closed the web browser down.

I say all this because it reminds me of something very important: the importance of writing down thoughts and beliefs as detailed hypotheses. Yesterday, I knew from observing my own experience that I often get distracted while typing on my computer, and also observed that staring at the ceiling allowed me to concentrate. I built an explanation around this using Hume and the association of certain ideas and impressions. My hypothesis eventually included the idea that I cannot look at the keyboard without getting distracted.  But today, I am concentrating without staring at the ceiling. Therefore, my explanation could not be exactly as I constructed it yesterday. If I did not delve into the detail, I would not have been in a position where I could have corrected myself. Thus, by the very act of writing, stamping ideas into solid form, reviewing them, thinking about them, and paying attention to how I behave, I realize that I actually ran a simple experiment within my mind.]

I woke up around 8am this Saturday morning. After deliberating what I should do, and resisting the temptation to play some video games (there is reason to wish I was immortal so I could play video games without sacrificing more worthwhile activities, but because my days are numbered, everything comes at a cost: usually, I forget this). I sit at my desk and take pleasure at the view out my window. My apartment is near the lake, 10^th floor, facing east. Generally, I can see the lake, lakeshore park, lake shore drive, people running on the path, a harbor, and the house of worship that sits between myself and the lake. I say generally, because today there is a light fog (not nearly as fierce as yesterday’s fog, which seemed to consume three quarters of the Trump Tower, and the color of the sky and lake are nearly identical, a soupy white. At the bottom of this soup, there are the changing dark spots, that I know to be waves. But as I look higher, the dark spots are harder to see, and I cannot perceive where the lake ends and the sky begins.   Because I do not go out much, this view has been an important reminder that I am in Chicago, that I should walk through the park, that there is a world outside of my room, that it is exhilarating to run along that path with my fellow Chicagoans. When I live on the other side of the building, my view was directly into a brick wall. It was the opposite of inspiring. The light was poor, the room was crammed, and I felt crammed and sick in that place. Here, in this new apartment, I can feel at ease.

To feel at ease: it is something I have always craved. For whatever reason, I am the opposite of that sort of person who can lie down on the couch and while away hours of time. I have lost days to this. I am not actually happy about this, but the drive is too strong. I am naturally a soft person. When I was growing up, I would much rather stay inside and watch television than play outside or read a book. Not always, but usually. The books I read were not sophisticated or literary. I would generally read fantasy novels, with dragons, warriors, and wizards doing battle with one another. I am sad about this now: I recognize that many of my academic peers used their time much better than I did in terms of cultivating their mind and character. School bored me to tears, and I did what I had to in order to get by. But although I recognize the disadvantages of this, I can’t quite feel regret. I was only a kid, and I didn’t know any better. I had never been exposed to the mental contours of being excited, of feeling competitive, of feeling the thrill of overcoming who I am. Why would I devote myself to a work for which I felt no reward? I remember occasionally  telling myself, especially at the beginning of the new school year: “this time will be  different. I shall change my ways. A fresh slate. I will remake myself.” But I never did, not entirely.

This youthful anxiousness, however, did allow me to do one thing: one day, it gave me the impetus to drive down to the Marine Corps recruiter and sign my life away. If I wasn’t going to remake myself, then I needed something that would….but I have lost my focused. This is the third day of playing with ideas without direction. It is now time to constrain my thoughts, to give some structure, some good soil from which my ideas can grow.

But there is one last thing to say: one lesson that I have learned from all of this that I realize I want to explore, that I have explored many times before, but generally only in the nebulous cloud of my thoughts, without language, without the solid, unchanging stamp of the written word. When it is only in my mind, I can only see a few steps of logic before the first steps and propositions shift and fade like the stream of smoke that the fighter planes leave in the sky outside my window during the air and water show every year. That idea is born from the following propositions:

1. It is the nature of my mind and body to crave rest and inactivity. This is my most stable drive.

2. It is also the nature of my mind and body to desire excellence: a strong, capable, active, self-created process of thinking, and process of movement and physical force.

3. However, the desire for these things does not seem to be a drive. Or, the drive has a long-term goal. When I possess it, that drive seems accentuated. [But all this is cloudy: let me try and first be direct, if unclear, and later be more clear…perhaps this is the problem I wish to attempt to solve]

4. That because of 2 and 1, I generally feel anxious. I want to do something active, but I cannot bring myself to do it.

5. That I am most comfortable when the [drive of 2 is at its weakest, if there is a drive] or [I am forgetting the want of 2, if it is a want]. (What is the difference between a want and a drive? I think I could describe it, or get close to a description, but not immediately, so I will leave it behind).

6. I feel most fulfilled when 2 is so strong that it overcomes the drive in 1, and I am pushed to action, self-creation, and excellence.

7. This is best said as an addendum of 2, but because, at this moment, I am trying to illustrate the thinking process, not the presentation process, I will include it here: it is of secondary importance where this the strength of this drive comes from. I felt fulfilled in the Marines, even though the Marine Corps was pushing me like a stubborn mule to achieve excellence. But I feel more fulfilled in my civilian life where I pushed myself like a stubborn mule.

I am getting tired now. I think my mind needs a rest. I do, in fact, feel fulfilled this morning, and if my claims thus far are true, it is because I overcame my original desire to play video games while eating bacon and drinking Bloody Mary’s and coffee, and instead gave voice to my ideas, and a voice that will not dissipate throughout the day. But I am also feeling anxious. Because my body is right now actually crying, demanding that it too enjoys some strain and exercise. I have been neglecting my body for the past two months, and it has been begging to be taken out for a walk. Like a dog, I suppose.

But I need to actually wrap this up. If I leave it without some direction for next time, I may very well begin yet a fourth session scrambling in the dark. This session, however, I have the startings of some problem: some first statements that I want to explore. I do not yet have specific questions, but I have the beginnings of a framework within which I can ask questions: play the game of problem-solving, because I have the beginnings of a problem, so to speak.

My hypothesis, then, is going to be something that I have been thinking for a long time: my fulfillment and the easy pleasure of my life are two mutually exclusive things. I cannot have both, and therefore must learn how to navigate through them. This is not specific enough, but it is something. There are more questions, or a refinement of this question, that needs to be constructed before I go any further.

But what use is this for others? Why would others be interested in this idea? Is it just my narcissism that makes it so? I do not think so. I will admit that perhaps it is a narcissism that drives me to share my thoughts, in the hopes that they will be read and understood. But I do think there is something here of importance to many people, although I need to understand what that is: I will not expect my audience to indulge in this essay if it is truly about my own thoughts and no one else’s.

I am reminded of what Thomas Hobbes wrote at the beginning of his Leviathan:

“Concerning [the  inquiry into “what is man?”], there is a saying much forgotten of late. That wisdom is acquired, not by the reading of books, but of reading people. Consequently and however, those persons, that for the most part can give no other proof of being wise, take great delight to show what they think they have read in other people, by speaking nastily behind one another’s backs.

But there is a another saying not of late understood, by which they might learn truly to read one another, if they would take the pains; and that is, Nosce teipsum: READ THYSELF, which was [meant]…to teach, that for the similitude of the thoughts, andPassionsof one man,to the thoughts, and Passions of another, whosoever looks upon himself, and considereth what he doth, when he does think, opine, reason, hope, fear, and upon what grounds, he shall thereby read and know, what are the thoughts, andPassions of all  other men, upon the like occasions.”

In short, by understanding myself, I open the door to understanding others. Yes, the contours of my mind are different than the contours of most people’s minds. How my life has grown is quite different than how most people’s life has grown. But the laws are the same. Under the same conditions, I will presume that the effects will be similar as well.

I do not know this for certain, but this is true: if it is not true, then we are incapable of learning about how the mind works. If it is true, then we have some foothold, we have the potential for learning something new. And in fact, it seems that humanity has indeed made great progress in learning about how the mind works, thanks to philosophers, psychologists, certain novelists, computer scientists, and many others. If we were truly different, these advances would not be possible: what we learn about one mind would not be applicable to another in any way. We can certainly go too far in our claims, but claims that are made, can be critiqued. Claims that are not made, cannot be critiqued.

Therefore, I shall be brave in my assertions, but cautious in my convictions. I will shift my inquiry from the purely subjective inquiry of how my own mind works, to a more general inquiry to how minds work in general. I will remember that many of the things that I am discussing are not universal, but I am also unsure which are the universal, and which are more conditional and subjective. And so I depend on my reader: I will make the claims. When my reader agrees, that helps me to understand what may be universal. When my reader disagrees, then either we have found something that is purely conditional and subjective, or that my reader in fact is in denial. I therefore understand that the inquiry, even if done well, will have numerous questions left open when I am finished, and I shall be careful in paying attention where those questions lie when I am engaging in the essay itself.

But for now, I shall lay this “pen”> down, and go walk my dog.