Some more Philosphical Musings

Wild Philosophy Ideas:


1) Happy people are not more selfish, lazier, or less unimaginative. We could put this in terms of depression in the chemical sense (bipolar, manic depressive and all of the rest); but also in terms of just ordinary happiness and ordinary sadness. I'm using specifically Gretchen Rubin's insights from her Happiness Blog, but also I think I might be using the Dalai Lama's Art of Happiness introduction in that book.

2) Nietzche saw it all as a whirlwind of colors whipping at our faces. He saw objectivity as a facade! He thought so much of human life was hypocrisy and facade. What does this mean? It means ditching philosophers who said this life is not a whirlwind who used that lack of whirlwind as a sense of objectivity. (Would Nietzche have made a shitty scientist? Would it have mattered?)

3) For that matter, Mahatma Gandhi is against hospitals. He said Hospitals weaken the people and that they are not really a sign of civilization. The people get to thinking that they need hospitals in order to be healthy, or that it is natural to extend life in the way that humans do. Both Nietzche and Gandhi (and Nietzche and Deleuze speculate, my main man Spinoza) believe we get into a sort of death worship when we care about death so much through fear. To quote Spinnerzzzza, "Hope and fear are part of the same thing." That is, we get outside ourselves, and into living a sort of third person life, where we're only commenting on the life we're living instead of living it.

4) Marx thought that working can lead to alienation (his concept). Alienation means that the life force that went into making the goods just leaves us.

5) Schopenhauer thought that all of this is THE WILL. I am he as you are he as you are me is all the Will to Schopenhauer. It's just a force. What's this you're reading? The Will. What's the point of all this? The Will.

5b) He thought that you can satisfy the Will, and thus staunch it, by listening to music. Schopenhauer thought that Music is the Best. He was correct in this. Whether this is actual escape from the Will, I cannot say. I don't even know if I believe in the Will.

6) If you want a comprehensive philosophy of empowerment, you don't get much better than Nietzche, which is probably among the reasons why Nietzche is popular with Americans, and young men. Nietzche's philospohy to me feels like, "Shut up and be empowered." or "So what? God is dead. Make up your own." or "There is no free will. Do whatever you want and feel good about it."

7) John Rawls rules. He's the most famous political philosopher outside of John Locke, and he argued for egalitarianism. Egalitarianism is a belief that the most advantaged should help the least advantaged. John Rawls is a hero of many of us young philosophers. He's also awfully recent, and the problems of political philosophy are among the most practically and obviously and readily applicable to life.

8) I agree with my friends. Popular music, the stuff that's on the radio, is philosophically vacant. I like Lady Gaga, but that's the apex of it all, and that's it. There's no greater philosophy in there. (3 years ago's) T-Pain's "I'm in love with a stripper" is a little bit postmodern in that he is being outrageous by saying that, but that's the pressing issue. It's nothing more than that. If you're looking for more behind the lyrics, it's just not there. On the radio now, "Empire State of mind" by Alicia Keyes and Jay Z is the top 100 for the "Billboard" sales chart is the same message as "New York State of mind" by Billy Joel. I like the new one better, but that's arbitrary, at least in terms of philosophy: it's the same idea as some thirty years ago.

Nietzche calling: why should popular music have any greater good or philosophy attached to it?
Marx calling: all artwork is ideological
Schopenhauer: music is our sanctuary, our way out!

9) David Foster Wallace (not a philosopher?) said in his essay about Dostoyevsky (not a philosopher?) in Consider the Lobster said that without Dostoyevsky there would be no Nietzche. Something that DFW says Dostoyevsky realized that Nietzche liked is our love affair with our problems. We aren't ditching them. We aren't working on them. We are just complaining. We are to some extent in love with our suffering.
Modern psychology collates this (I'm quoting from my Industrial Organizational Psychology class); saying that many times people who hate their jobs don't do anything about the jobs or being in the jobs.

10) When I'm having a good moment, sometimes my whole life looks great. When I feel like hell, it feelsl like my whole life has been hell. Perspective means so much. Nietzche formulated Perspectivism, that everything is from a perspective, that perspective cannot be lost and all there is is interpretation.

Gloom doom boom! Wazooo!
Glad Happy Explosion! Hartabokahshoo!!!


I said to my history professor Dr. Ambaras, that this is history for me. This was the last time I was going to see him for this semester. His last test (not a final? He says it's not a final) and his last essay are both entered on line. He cancelled class for Thursday. I said that this is one of the times that we know history is happening.