The Crutch: The Beginning of an Apologetic

We are told leaning on a psychological crutch is bad, but who amongst us sees all, who can foresee the future, who can calculate all possibilities, has perfect knowledge of all things great and small.

Some deny that they have faith, but they do that only based off experience which themselves could be fabricated. A man without two good legs may need a crutch. Another without good eyesight will require glasses. Every man though, requires faith. We trust in things we cannot sense, and we sense things we wish to trust. The human condition requires us to hobble around, constantly running into walls. Common sense is a broad spectrum, for even the most sensible man may err because of things beyond his sight.

“Morals are illusory!” people may cry. “God is dead”, others implore. Yet, when a child is raped, or a homosexual is bullied to commit suicide, “JUSTICE!” is what they cry. The man who tells you there is no good or evil should not be concerned when a man lies with his children or when a woman kills her spouse. Society needs to maintain order some say, indeed, but to what end? If there is no ethical delimma, then order is neither good nor bad, only advantageous or the counter. Should not we then simply seek our greatest happiness? Why worry about who shall be executed or starving people in Africa?

Ontology is the study of being; being is a constant study. He should not be swayed by the fear of impeding death, for death is no more than a permanent inhibition of the senses. Man fears what he does not know, yet he is quite sure of what will happen when the light fades, he fears he may be right.

I Have Returned

I began my summer vacation yesterday. I plan on accomplishing many things over the next 100 days and I figured restarting my blog would be a good way to make sure I keep myself accountable. I plan on: preparing for the Graduates Readiness Exam (GRE), working heavily on graduate school, staying in shape, and working on my relationship with Linden.

To prepare for the GRE I am going to be tutored by Otis, a high school math teacher who goes to my church. I also plan on studying Latin and GRE vocabulary words. My reading schedule should help me to stay on top of terms. My favorite part about preparing for the GRE is I feel like a knight training for combat. When I go in, I will feel fully prepared for whatever the test has to throw at me. My goal is to study for at least two hours a day when I get into the swing of things. I plan on writing an essay a week as well, to keep up with my writing.

Graduate school preparation consists of: developing my resume, staying in contact with my professors, maintaining my GPA, staying on research, and finishing my research proposal. My resume has a lot of information I have yet to put on it and hopefully I will buff it with the information most impressive to the universities I am applying to. My professors whom I wish to receive recommendations from appear to approve of me, but I still need one more professor to make it a trio. Research is very important to me. It is probably the most exciting part of being an undergraduate. I really want to run my hypothesis under lab conditions. My plan is to finish my proposal by the end of the week.

Staying in shape should be relatively easy, as long as I can keep myself entertained. I plan on continuing martial arts through the summer and working on parkour. There is a Hapkido class in Harker Heights I may partake in, depending on Chris’s review of it. I am trying to setup my living quarters for parkour training, but there are just so many darn bugs, specifically hornets, yellow jackets, spiders and scorpions, that may make it painful to train outside.

Monkeys in Action

I have been MIA for the last two weeks because of my studies and it has made many of my activities suffer from lack of practice. My overall view on this is, I am paying to go to get an education not to participate in school activities so I am glad to see my money is being put to use. The narrow view I have on it is, I can’t wait for finals so I can spend less time in classes and writing papers! I’ve become very lax in my parkour training, which shows itself especially in my overall sense of self. The key to parkour is flow, connecting with your environment, feeling your energy move over, under, and around obstacles. I have been able to continue going to the gym and am really happy about the recent muscle growth spurts but my cardio has undoubtedly suffered because treadmills are for guinea pigs and ellipticals are nothing more than a wannabe gundam cockpit.

A few days ago I won wireless headphones from the school’s food site. I never pay to enter contests, so I was pleasantly surprised to see my meal ticket(literally) earned me something as sweet as those bad boys. It goes without saying, I will be dreaming of them for the 6-8 weeks before I receive them. I have four tests next week along with the objective of completing my research paper on Hobbes. It looks like I am going to have a lively few days ahead of me.

Thoughts of the Day:

Isn’t it ironic you can have muscles so big they can’t lift themselves?

How exactly can time be found or lost if it is a construct of the mind?

What is the price of fulfillment?

Standard Procedure

For the last week I have concentrated all my writing energy on my research paper for history of psychology. To make up for this poor excuse I will make this entry a bit lengthier than normal because I have had plenty of time to think about what I wish to complain about (kidding). My first few days I was very proactive in conducting excursions but after I started to run short on ideas I spent more time being unproductive. Purpose is essential in the continuity of self-progression. We cannot make a better world if we do not define what “better” is. The relativistic argument on this is “everyone has a different definition”, well there can be no progress if this is really true and I find the common mind to be quite agreeable on specific definitions such as what is sweet, sour, salty, and bitter or even pain and pleasure on a nominal scale. Applying Utilitarian Calculus would at least be a step forward.
There is a great disservice being done to our country by embracing the idealism of virtue ethics, most greatly expressed through the current high school/college generation. We have the brightest, best educated, most technologically advanced young adults ever recorded yet they have no idea what their purpose is. What is the point of a remote without a television, or a light without electricity? Many ideas are being fashioned and considered accepted by the culture most of them have been created by capitalist media empires. My question is, what is the meaning of your life?

A man who continues to think two ways at once will eventually tear his mind in half.

A Misologist’s statement “I don’t have any authority on the subject but the facts are the translation is a correct interpretation.”

Welcome back from the beach, isn’t life academic?

For Those about to Rock

It has come to my attention that I am involved in too many different activities and have far too many peers to possibly dispute everything they say that I find to be faulty logic. This has brought me to the decision I will not dispute anyone unless it is directly influencing my life and/or the attaining of my personal goals. This is quite egotistical of me, but when people start figuring out in college what was pristine to me in elementary I find myself “put off” by them even talking. I don’t presuppose I am better than them I am simply tired of seeing the same play for the twentieth time and consider it “original”.

Have you ever tried jumping from one point to another in the rain? Well, unless you are crazy don’t try it. I was vaulting around campus to get back to my dorm and I attempted a precision (a jump from one point such as a sidewalk ledge to another similar point) from the side walk curb to a two by six that was pretty far away, I landed it but because I had to use so much force to jump it with my backpack on I slipped after landing it and landed on my butt and back with two cars watching me. All I could do was laugh.

I am breaking form to write, GASP, a third paragraph because I have been feeling funny the last three days. I realized I don’t like emotional highs, because they are always followed by lows. Over the past few months I have been able to maintain incredible levels of contentment because I avoided major emotional investments. Often I would have “contentment highs” where I smile soberly over the many, many small positives in my life that make it so fulfilling. Unfortunately this weekend I was thrown a little off my rocker with unexpected fortunes and it put my mood through the roof. I am still contemplating if I have been too emotionally distant from things I enjoy or if I had the coke classic formula right.

Thoughts of the Day:

If we are all striving for happiness and happiness is nothing more that no want to change, than why should I change my life at all if I am comfortable?

Blood and sweat are two key ingredients for making a man.

Tears and stress are for making a woman.

Judgment Call

Have you ever covered information that you can understand so fast that it gave you a headache? That is what some of my history of psychology classes are like. Facts required a very low amount of brain power to comprehend but when you are bombarded by a century of information it tends to cause the same feeling as being hit in the head with a mallet. There are so many concepts, dates, philosophies, and experiences that unless I live forever I have no chance of realizing them all. I have to choose what information is worth collecting and then what I want to do with it. Right now I am slowly easing into a homework-loaded week that will be filled with scheduling, time optimizing, and copious amounts of caffeine. I am excited.

Friday’s are my most laid back class day. I only have one class which if it was a free lecture I would probably still go to because I find the evolution of thought so fascinating. I am currently sitting in my robe contemplating what I want to study first. This is essence of my idealized college life. When I was in high school and pictured going to college I dreamt of a world focused on philosophy, where everyone hungered for knowledge and saw utilitarianism as more that an a nice idea. Even if this is stepping on the side of optimism, I believe if everyone understood the benefit of knowledge we would all be scholars.

Thoughts of the Day:

If positivism was applied to attractiveness do you think I could be a judge?

Equilibrium is the key to the door of successful living.

ra ra ah ah ahhhh roma rommmaaa…

The Divorce of Logic and Knowledge

Ever have one of those days where you feel exhausted by thought? I came in contact with several questions today that frustrated me enough that they did not even elicit a response. Here I am, trying to understand the intricacies of sexual paradigms(that is something you can get a pair of for ten cents) and there are people asking questions on “who was the guy who said that thing about Sartrian idealisms?” While I am all for discussing who Sartre thought he was and find it ironic that he being an existentialist, excuse me, THE existentialist it is a fun fantasy to picture him describing himself, I wonder if we should create a new system for allowing questions. I have long been a fan of the “you can say as many words a minute as your IQ score” I am also willing to settle for a “you can ask as many questions as answers you got right on the last test, times 33%.” Yes, yes I appreciate the quantitative weakness of this statement but you get the general idea.
Nearly everyone in class today, myself included, was having a difficult time understanding the definition of a “within subject design” on a factorial level. Some of us were over analyzing it, some hadn’t read the material, and then others simply could not materialize their ideas. When it comes to scientific methods it is manifest that you understand it is a collaboration of empirical observations… with rational assumptions thrown into the mix. Personally, I excellent in empirical observations, I say about myself “I can just watch someone else set themselves on fire to know it burns”. However, when it comes to rationality or cognitive jumps, I sometimes have an issue with verbally stating why I believe something or not. The lecture today was completely rationally based. I knew what he was saying, but I simply couldn’t say it back to him. By the end of class he actually said we may hold off on the test because enough people were flabbergasted by the conceptualization of higher level factorial within subjects design(try saying that three times fast). I thought almost everyone in my class was the crème de la crème of the school, but upon further retrospection I realize that they just think exactly like me, (says a lot for my ego-centralism right?) empirical disciples. This force me to move from traditional IQ views to the more modern/post-modern idea of “different kinds of intelligences”. I know, those of us who still live in 1879 are retching at the idea, but it is something I am making more common place in my thought daily.
Thoughts of the Day:
True genius is not just inspiration but aspiration…and a few dozen bottles of Advil along the way.
You have to love a teacher who tells you not to read the chapter on ethics so you can spend more time on studying experimentation.
Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we dye our perceptions of reality and turn what was once white into yellow, then green, then red, then black.
~Fin~