Confucius say
Confucius say: “Man who run behind car get exhausted, but man who run in front of car get tired.”
Confucius say: “Man who run behind car get exhausted, but man who run in front of car get tired.”
In the past five years or so, I have experienced a recurrent and surprisingly urgent need to “figure it out.” It must be that the changing scenery and conditions of my young life cause me to attempt to assure myself I’m on the “right” path. As a result, I’ve taken a simultaneous keen yet shallow interest in philosophy: as if a cursory overview of the topic would yield the viewpoint for which I search. The Weepies sing that, perhaps, “this is not your year.” However, if I was to take guidance on life from media, it would not be that particular song (great though it may be). I would, in fact, take inspiration from the most profound (and, incidentally, most existential) comic I have ever read. That would be this strip of Zippy the Pinhead published on my Mom’s birthday, the 16th of September:
A recent book called Devices of the Soul by Steve Talbott argues how the preponderance of technology that claims to make life easier seems to, in a fundamental sense, make life harder. That, admittedly, is a rather poor exposition of the thesis… but you need know only the general idea here. Incidentally, this book is predated by a rather more famous example of a similar philosophical exploration called The Technological Society by Jacques Ellul. Basically, both works discuss the implications of “technology.” Don’t think of technology as simply computers, however. Here’s a helpful comment from the Amazon page selling The Technological Society (emphasis mine):
I suddenly began humming and whistling “New York, New York” in biochem lab today, which in and of itself is not all that interesting (and a bit embarassing, as I am embarassed by most things that I do). However, when I got back to my room - amazingly - there were round-trip plane tickets to New York slid under my door! No, no there were not. That was a lie. A fib. A stretcher. In truth, I returned to my dorm room and promptly looked up the lyrics to said song.
Panopticon - When researching that previous link, I ran across the panopticon, a prison designed by a philosopher (sounds interesting already) that would: “allow an observer to observe all prisoners without the prisoners being able to tell if they are being observed or not, thus conveying a ‘sentiment of an invisible omniscience’.”
Reading Plato’s Republic, I called Mykala over to share a passage with her about Plato saying “But I am too stupid to be convinced by him.” I never got there because the “him” was Thrasymachus. Now, while reading the passage, I went with the pronunciation Thrassy-maykuss, which caused both of us to halt a minute or two later. “What?” Mykala asked, genuinely puzzled by my pronunciation. “I was just trying to read through it and get to the point,” I replied. Mykala took one glance at the page and said, “Oh, Thrasimakiss.” Stunned silence from both sides.
There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want and, after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.
— Logan Pearsall Smith
The surprise Shayla one day before Shayla’s birthday went off well. Although we ended up not at the house we had intended and the surprise part was rather difficult. I would say it went off with a hitch. Good lord we had a lot of fun with the balloons, though. Did you know you can play music with balloons when correctly struck? Oh, and in addition they make excellent insulators of body heat - quite remarkable if you ask me. But that was a solid party for the birthday. I hear a second surprise took place as well later this past weekend. I should clarify; surprise occurred at UWRF as well. Cake batter ice cream with graham cracker mix-in! Oh yes it’s that good.