This past weekend, I continued with my lecture-attendance trend and made my way to Hyde Park for a major Darwin conference at the University of Chicago. As you may know, 2009 is the 150th anniversary of The Origin of Species original publication, and the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin. For this reason, this year has been filled with Darwin celebrations of various sorts. 50 years ago, at the University of Chicago, another Darwin conference was held which went down in history as an important one for the Darwin community. This was also quite exciting, although I doubt that it will be as historic as the previous one. Anyway, I have not been thinking a great deal about Darwin lately, so listening to these lectures brought to life ideas that had fallen dormant. I continue to find a lot of value from attending lectures, and I will certainly continue to do this. This weekend, however, I am taking a break. Three consecutive weekends of lectures and conferences have been fascinating, but a bit exhausting too.

In short: Lecture attendance is good.

Anyway, I have about forty minutes before I need to start my commute, and I wanted to re-visit my philosophical principles. I don’t think I have anything new, but it has been so long since I’ve given it serious consideration that I feel inclined to review. Instead of starting from scratch, I’m going to go back to a previous post, include those principles here, and see if I can add any worthwhile commentary.
This is from February 8, 2009:

(Feb 8 text follow the numbers. Today’s commentary follow the bold note that follow each number’s proposition.)

1. The world, properly understood, is one in absolute flux– there are no discrete ‘things’ because they are constantly changing, affecting and being affected by the world around it. (For any given object, there is no discrete line between where the object ends and the rest of the world begins) Note: I include ideas, but not minds, as things of the world too. This includes two implications. FIRST, ideas are also in constant flux. Each time I recall an idea, whether it is a memory, a desire, or process of reasoning, the idea is slightly different than in previous instances (and in cases where it is identical, it is by accident). This is because every idea that arises to our mind is a cocktail of memories, sensations, emotions, strength of drives, and opinions of who the self is within the ever-changing context of one’s life. The self is never the same, because it is constantly acquiring new memories and finding itself in a different place of ones life. SECOND, the existence of minds are largely illusory. By “mind,” I understand that singular, indivisible thing that a person refers to when she says “I.” Concepts such as individual responsibility (although understood differently by different people), free will, and sometimes “knowing one’s self” are dependent on this notion of the mind, and are therefore flawed and in need of revision. Rather than residing in the indivisible mind (or soul), a more accurate picture of the self is of many strands of “idea-streams,” each of which is striving for different ways of being. These “idea-streams” have personality tendencies, modes of self-identification, are inspired by different conditions, and constantly affect one another. As with all psychological phenomena, different people are affected by the force of this more so than others. A person who has exceptionally disconnected idea-streams is thought of as having multiple personality disorders, for example, while someone who has fewer or exceptionally connect idea-streams is thought to be a very steady and consistent person who rarely behaves very differently than normal. Most of us are somewhere in the middle. This post goes into some more details of this notion, and this Atlantic article from last year references both philosophical and psychological precedents. As a side note, David Brooks of the New York Times recently wrote an article that tied in the Atlantic article with the movie “Where the Wild Things Are.” On a further note, it is on this point of idea-streams where I see the opportunity to tie in Spinoza’s concept of the Conatus, Things, and Adequate Knowledge, Nietzsche’s Overcoming, Forgetting, Guilt, Bad Conscience and “Philosopher as Attempter,” Darwin’s Natural Selection, and Dewey’s Democratic spirit. But I write this not for the reader, who can only guess what I mean by this, and more for myself, so that I can remind myself where to pick this up next time I revisit it.

2. The flow is determined by laws that are not subject to the will of the mind, but can be understood to some degree….

3. The essential part of all things is the striving for their own preservation and increased power. Note: However, as expanded on below, the thing can only be aware of its existence if it has a mind, it must understand the links between cause and effect in order to have power, and the principal effect, which determines whether or not any knowledge is trivial or worthy by whether or not a cause directly links to it,  is the preservation and increased power of the thing itself.
4. There is no ‘I’ in the soul/cogito sense– the mind should be understood as a stream of ideas, brought about by previous causes and bringing forth new conditions.
5. Obviously, the ‘I’ has no freedom– from 2 and 3.
6. Knowledge of the laws of process, and the streams that largely flow through the self, allow one to better steer one’s self in accordance
7. The mind is our fundamental place of existence– we do not ‘live’ in the material world– we live in the phenomenal world.
8. In order to have freedom, the mind must grow in its understanding of the world.
9. Our ideas of the world are formed by looking at clashes, conflicts and resolutions.
10. Education depends on exposing the mind to contrary ideas that we believe are relevant to the expansion, preservation, and empowerment of the self.
11. Incorrect ideas, especially in regards to Good and Evil and the nature of truth, destroy our freedom.
12. One’s character is moldable over time, by first understanding how to mold it and then having the strength of will to bring into affect the necessary conditions to motivate the change.

13. The pursuit to preserve one’s self and to increase the breath of the self (which, recall, is not the body, but the body of knowledge of one’s self) is the greatest human virtue: happiness.

NOTE: After finishing the notes on #1, I ran out of time. I will revisit this soon and record the updates, both content and time. Last update: Notes on #1, 5:04am, November 3.

I love teaching. It is a worthy challenge to take the philosophers I love and present them to minds near the beginning of a higher education and participate in their reaction. However, one feature of teaching first and second year students is that I am usually unable to discuss those more subtle and sophisticated arguments about correct interpretation or the most well-formulated reactions. In short, I still need peers and teachers to keep me stimulated and challenged. I have had little opportunity, or at least not taken advantage of opportunity, to pursue these conversations. As a result, almost all of my conversation on philosophy are with my students. The task there is to achieve basic comprehension and engage at a level of conversation where the student feels that their own inquiry (instead of my lecturing) is advancing their knowledge. If I am incorrect, sloppy, or vague on a subtle point, it is rare that I will be challenged, or even that it will matter as my students work to get a basic comprehension.

My trip to Eastern Michigan University reminded me of the pleasure, contentment, and intellectual stimulation that I receive from peers and teachers.  I realized that a good portion of my mental activity had been dormant.  Driving back to Chicago, I decided that a change was needed. But simply deciding that “I will be more stimulated” has not been sufficient in my life. This time, I decided to pursue as many free lectures as I could.

Lectures. When I was in undergrad at Bemidji State, I would frequently attend the free lectures that were provided by the University’s faculty every month, no matter the subject. It felt great to attend a lecture that was not required. I recall that I was probably happier at that time than at anytime since.

For some reason, living in Chicago, I have not been attending lectures. There are probably a lot of motivators for this. I was a little traumatized by graduate school, I think, although I was largely able to overcome that and teach community college classes. I also never felt at home at the University of Chicago, unlike Bemidji State University. I always felt like an impostor or outsider.

Probably out of a combination of desperation, enthusiasm from Michigan, and self-realization, I ran searches for philosophy lectures on the 4-year institutions in Chicago: University of Chicago, DuPaul, Loyola, University of Illinois-Chicago, and Northwestern. I found a few for this weekend and decided I ought to go. I attended three lectures in all:

1. Ironic existence in Socrates and Kierkegaard, by Johnathan Lear.

2. Roman Stoicism

3. The continuing archaeological research on the so-called “Fortification Tablets” from Persepolis (Iran) being conducted at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute.

They were all excellent, although the first was by far the best. The second was an excellent lecture, but it was aimed at the complete neophyte of ancient philosophy, and it was entirely descriptive. I picked up a few new things, and the lecturer was very talented and knowledgable. But it was not stimulating in the way that Lear’s was. The last one was a bit disappointing, mostly because I was more interested in what we knew about Persepolis, whereas the lecture was focused on the state of the research project itself, including political, legal, and technological concerns. The few historical pieces were interesting, though.

Anyway, it has been a great weekend. I usually spend my weekends resting and doing some casual grading and reading, feeling that I am too exhausted from the week to do anything intellectual. But I discovered and remembered an important pattern about how my mind works: when my intellectual curiosity is stimulated and compelled, it is not exhausting, but energizing. It makes me want to do more, not less.

And so this is the new plan: every weekend, I will seek lectures around town. On philosophical subjects when possible, on others when not. The lecture is great, because so long as I go through the relatively easy process of moving my body to the correct time and place, I will receive something, even if my mind is exhausted and depressed. In this case, it is better than a book, because if I am exhausted, I will easily put it aside and do something (or nothing) else.

After the lectures, I walked around campus for a bit (I am writing this from Reynolds Hall, in fact). And I noticed with fresh eyes how much is going on here. It is amazing how much I forgot about what goes on in this place. But most of the things I saw posted are not things that I would travel to Hyde Park for, although if I was in Hyde Park, and frequently inhabited the campus, I would attend them frequently. It got me back to thinking why I live where I do. My friends are on the north side. I have more access to music, movies, and people in general. I have had fun up there. My favorite bars are up there. But do I need them? These things bring me pleasure, but how much happiness does it induce? My friends certainly are necessary for my happiness, but I rarely see them more than once per week. And everything else I can live without. But can I live without lectures? I have, but perhaps having them will increase my happiness.

Hyde Park is a neighborhood  that is all about academics. The number of bookstores, lectures, and people who are devoted to ideas is unmatched in Chicago, with the only rival being Northwestern in Evanston (and I am far more alien to Northwestern). I posted before that I would consider a move to Hyde Park when my current lease is up, and that I would need to make some trips down here to make a decision. Well, here I am, and I like what I see. Again, this is a big decision. It is still a very long way from my friends, and I would more or less be moving to a different city, although one where I could make visits about once a month without difficulty.

Anyhow, my current hypothesis is this:

Given the conditions of my mind, my interests and habits, attending more lectures is a powerful cause for an increase of my happiness, my mental stimulation, and progress toward my professional and personal goals.

Furthermore, given the relatively isolated location of Hyde Park in relation to the rest of Chicago, and its distance from my friends and favorite bars, living in Hyde Park would cause me to have an increased tendency to work on intellectual interests.

On the other hand, for the same reason, moving to Hyde Park may be the cause for a greater erosion of my social skills and social life. Habits that do not come easily to me may be eroded even further. I may become depressed and despondent.

To help test these hypotheses, I will spend much more time travelling to Hyde Park and spending days here, attending lectures and working in the library. I will keep track, through journaling, how I am feeling and how well I am thinking. Will I produce more written works than I have been doing? Will I read more books? Will I drink less? Will I feel more motivated to leave the apartment and engage in fulfilling activities? Will the quality of my conversations improve? I think inquiring into these questions will not provide a certain answer, but a topic like this one does not permit for certain answers: it only permits for approximations.

I am about to leave for Michigan. I have rented a car. By sheer luck, they did not have any of the economy cars that I reserved, so I was given a free luxury car upgrade. I have never seen so many mysterious buttons.

The problems that I have expressed in the previous post seem to be coming to a head. Yesterday,  I had my first excellent conversation with my brother in months, since he was married. Then, I had an excellent evening with one of my best friends. We talked, saw other people, and then talked alone some more. All in all, we were together for ten hours of conversation, and I had more emotions bubbling up at that time than I have had in a very long time. Today, I will see old professors, mentors, and friends. I will see people who only know me from the book I helped to write, I will meet people with criticisms, and people with praise. I will likely be respected by people who are my senior. I am not entirely prepared for this weekend, but I will focus my energies on it until Sunday. Wish me luck. It is time for a battle.

To be frank, I have felt emotionally mute since the beginning of this semester. Probably more than at any previous time in the past few years, I have “lost touch with my emotions,” although it is difficult to state precisely what that means. I know that I have feelings for people that I have not been acknowledging, either to myself or to those people. Rather than dealing with the people, I have ignored the emotions and focused on school as my distraction. I recognized this for the first time last week, or perhaps the week before. But simply acknowledging my sublimated emotions does not call them to the foreground. I believe, however, that there is a need to actually weep over what I have lost, or what I have allowed myself to lose. And I need to weep in order to move on. But I do not feel strongly enough to weep. It is like there is some sort of emotional blockage or dam beneath my consciousness, and I do not know how strong the force is that is building up behind that damn. Perhaps it is so powerful that once the dam breaks, I will be shattered. Or, perhaps the reason that it does not break is because there is not anything there, and my imagination is the only thing that is causing me to think it is so. But there is some emotion that is there, although I do not actually feel it. I somewhat feel like I am not a whole man, but only the outline. Is this the feeling that caused the idea that a person can lose one’s soul?

Nobody thinks about ethics in a productive way when there is no conflict. Conflict is the empirical test of ethics. Whether that conflict be political, social, or within the breast of a human being, without a conflict of any sort, the human being has nothing to think about. Ethics become nothing but niceties and pedantics. It embraces love of mediocrity, relaxation, and the enhancement of simple pleasures.

But in conflict, it is absolutely necessary to think about ethics. When the alternative is to conquer or be vanquished, then those traits that promote conquering need to be examined. Excellence is loved. Mediocrity is thought pathetic. Behavior that is reviled in times of peace and tranquility are thought of as the interesting character flaws of heroes in times of conflict.  You lust after women other than your wife? In peace, you are pathetic and weak. In conflict, you are a red-blooded, masculine creature of nature. Your virtue has nothing to do with the absence of lusts that offend other people: your virtue has to do with having powerful lusts and exhibiting some level of control over them.

In peace, it is easy to be good without passion. In conflict, it is always difficult to be excellent. What is worth more? What is the mark of the best human being?

To improve my teaching:

During preparation, always mark my book with those specific passages that I want to discuss in class. I know these texts well, but especially when I switch editions or anthologies, I sometimes lose track of the passages that I want at inopportune times. I occasionally get lazy and assume I will remember which passages are important. Usually, this assumption proves correct. But we don’t prepare for when we get lucky: we prepare for when we are unlucky.

During class, write a critical passage on the board, as discussed in previous post. This has worked well everytime that I did it, and when I do not do it, discussion is more difficult to get started.

Although classes are going well, socially speaking I have been relatively withdrawn for months. I do not know what the cause of this is. But it will bite me later if I don’t figure it out.

This is just a thought. There are no plans to move to Hyde Park. I visited Hyde Park and the University of Chicago yesterday. I was giving a tour to my friend Jose, whom I met ten years ago in the Marine Corps. He has become very interested in computer science, mathematics, and artificial intelligence, and his occupation as a computer engineer verifies that he has the mental chops to deal with these things intelligently. Anyway, that is a different story.

It has been many months since I visited Hyde Park last. Every time I am there, I am inspired by the tranquility of the Quad, and the single-minded purpose that the entire environment seems to be designed for. I felt in awe, and I felt that I wanted to be closer to this place on a daily basis.

My life is changing, and I think for the better. I lived in Hyde Park four years ago, for the duration of one year. I was filled with anxiety at the time, as this was a new place and I was getting accustomed to a new level of education. Frankly, I was not prepared for it. By the end of that year, shocked by the size of my debt, I was not certain if I had made the right decision. And for years afterward, I wondered if the track I was on would lead to anything of fruition. It was the most difficult time of my life, I believe.

Things have changed for the better. I am now a fairly successful adjunct professor of philosophy, and it seems that a full time position will be secured for the Spring. But my long term goals are not to simply settle in to this position and continue to think at the same level that I have been thinking, simply because it is adequate for the current job. No, that is not my goal. Rather, I seek to improve my dedication and knowledge of philosophy to ever higher levels. In many ways, I am behind my peers. That is, in those things that are proper to the study of philosophy, I know far less, and my ideas are far less sophisticated than those individuals who have never left the school. In other things, I am far ahead: I have spent years of my life outside academia, and it has taught me the more real lessons of life in a way that is irreplacable.

The advantage and disadvantage is largely obvious: I am advantaged because every reading I do in philosophy is considered from more perspectives than my peers. I am disadvantaged because my conceptual sophistication does not allow me to dig as far as my peers within a single perspective. Both are important to philosophy, but unfortunately, the latter is probably more important for the sake of peer review. This is not to say that it should be that way: it is simply the condition of contemporary academic philosophy.

How do I remediate my disadavantage? I spend more time studying technical material, and being hard on myself when the ideas that sit in my mind are fuzzy. I surround myself with those people who are most likely to have intelligent criticisms of my views. I put myself in an environment that encourages contemplation and academic pursuit.

My current home is very pleasant. I sit in a small apartment in “Boystown,” on the eastern edge of Lakeview in Chicago. I have three grocery stores within a ten minute walk. Public transportation whisks me to my school in thirty minutes.  I have never felt the least bit afraid, and crime is a relatively rare thing here. I am close to my friends and my favorite drinking establishments. I can get on my bike and explore the city to no end. This is excellent, and I have enjoyed my three years in Lakeview. But when my lease is up next June, and I have a full-time job as a philosophy professor, do I want to continue living this life? Or is it time to arrange certain aspects that are more harmonious with my long term goals?

The answer seems obvious, but it is not without difficulty. This will mean a greater distance from my friends, and likely more loneliness. I have never quite fit in with the Hyde Park community, and I cannot say what the prospects are for doing so in a future attempt. Grocery stores are more distant, my commute time increases, and I will leave the home that I have become accustomed to.

I will have to think on this, and perhaps repeated trips to the University of Chicago are in order this year.

Music is pleasurable to listen to.  My desire to listen to music is nearly addictive. It is unpleasant to sit in a room without music going on in the background.

But it does require some degree of attention. Although the bulk of my attention may be going to another project, such as reading a book, part of my attention always seems to be dabbling with the music.

In many cases, this is not a problem. Many tasks do not require my full attention. However, in some cases, such as reading or writing philosophy, my mind is perceptibly distracted.

At this point in my life, however, I am sufficiently accustomed to the music that being in a room without music is even more distracting than being in a room with music.

This is a problem: I am not operating at my peak efficiency when listening to music, but it is currently better than the opposite.

But the cause of the disturbance while I am not listening to music is the fact that I am in the current habit of listening to music. Breaking a habit is difficult and causes a sensation of anxiety. In this case, not great anxiety, but it is still there. The habit can be changed merely by following a different mode of activity.

Therefore, I will resolve to work this morning without the use of music. Specifically, today I aim to brush up on my symbolic logic. As I am trying to teach it to myself without the pressure of class assignments and grades, I must exercise more discipline. I anticipate this to be a difficult project, because I am a man of weak will.

Thought requires conflict. Give me conflict.