Posts tagged philosophy

Updating, yes I’m still here, sometimes…

Jan 9th

Posted by Michael in general

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So I feel guilty about not updat­ing at all in December.

I hate feel­ing guilty.

In a way its why I hate being in debt (to any­one for any reason.)

I also hate new years res­o­lu­tions, but since I had such a great time over the past few weeks, I made one this year.

Its not the typ­i­cal res­o­lu­tion, I can’t stand peo­ple that think an incre­men­tal change of “1” is going to sud­denly improve their for­tunes in life, love, busi­ness, etc.

Just because the year is now 2010, doesn’t mean you’ll sud­denly get a great pro­mo­tion, or lose 20 pounds, or get engaged/married/pregnant/etc.

The year isn’t the prob­lem, WE are the prob­lem, and we can change when­ever we want.

But yeah, so rant aside, I made a res­o­lu­tion, its a stretch (not really a lie, right?) to say it was entirely a “new years” res­o­lu­tion, because really its been on my mind since the day I was dis­charged from the navy last september.

I can’t even post the real res­o­lu­tion, because its too per­sonal, too raw, too absolutely insane, and I’m way too scared of how peo­ple will react, friends I might lose, and fam­ily that may dis­own me.

Instead I’ll post a use­lessly vague sen­tence that could encom­pass an infi­nite num­ber of issues/problems/etc. and hope that its enough to set my mind at ease for now.

So what’s my hope­lessly vague sentence/resolution?

To finally con­front my deepest/darkest fear/issue/denial, and hope­fully find some solace and help in mak­ing future deci­sions, and reliev­ing these intense feel­ings of guilt and uncer­tainty that plague me every day of my life.

So much for writ­ing a happy blog post.

So yeah, I’m still here, life is fairly nor­mal, there are ups and downs (and of course an infi­nite num­ber of over­lap­ping waves to these cycles) and right now seems to be com­ing off a short up, and hope­fully into a short down.

I really don’t like being on the down/bottom of these curves/waves, but I under­stand that the ups can’t last forever.

Every­thing bal­ances out some­how, right?

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exploration and beginning…

Nov 21st

Posted by Michael in general

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And I’ve real­ized tonight that I have more un-resolved issues to rec­on­cile than I pre­vi­ously thought.

Think­ing of the past, and fan­ta­siz­ing about what lives my pre­vi­ous acquain­tances might now have, it makes me feel lazy, and unim­por­tant.

(both might be true)

Maybe its a last-ditch attempt to try and impress old friends and make old flames jeal­ous (even though they ought not be?)

I’m not sure of any­thing any­more, except that, regard­less of how socially awk­ward I was and still am, I miss my old friends.

Frankl said it best, life can have mean­ing in one of 3 ways, and one of those was by expe­ri­enc­ing some­thing OR encoun­ter­ing some­one.

Maybe mean­ing can be found by sim­ple encoun­ter­ing friends, even if they have no super-meaning for soci­ety as a whole?

Or is this another futile, fruit­less attempt at self-affirmation? Another attempt to direct what lit­tle ambi­tion I have left at defin­ing myself in spite of what I have failed at, what I may have suc­ceeded at, and what I have still yet to dis­cover about myself?

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P.S. Paradigm shift

Nov 10th

Posted by Michael in general

2 comments

An adden­dum to my writ­ing on the topic of “affirmation.”

To pre-empt any con­fu­sion (though I believe cousin Cather­ine under­stands pre­cisely  what I wrote about) I’m talk­ing about affir­ma­tion as writ­ten about by Con­rad M. Baars, M.D. in his book, “Born Only Once: The Mir­r­a­cle of Affir­ma­tion” which I absolutely devoured tonight, in one sit­ting over coffee.

The sec­tion on Self-Affirmation was enlight­en­ing, not merely as a means of learn­ing that I alone can­not affirm myself, but as a means to build a deeper under­stand­ing of my clos­est friend­ships as well.

It also sad­dens me to real­ize that the state of being inad­e­quately affirmed is so preva­lent, espe­cially among my generation.

I won’t apol­o­gize for my sad­ness, but instead, will try and pon­der every­thing that I’ve read tonight, to see how I can truly, effec­tively come to “be” and then as a result “do” what­ever is best to help be an affirm­ing per­son, once I myself am prop­erly affirmed, how­ever long that may take.

Like­wise, I’m not going to apol­o­gize for being angered by the occa­sional actions of my friends, but I do hope that I can learn to help my friend­ships be mutually-affirming instead of mutually-denying, and at the same time, I hope that those friends of mine who are them­selves inad­e­quately affirmed, just like I am, will exam­ine their own attempts at self-affirmation, and real­ize that there is so much more out there for them, just as there will be for me, once we come to be fully affirmed.

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Affirmation

Nov 10th

Posted by Michael in general

3 comments

I sup­pose this is a mes­sage intended for every­one, and yet only one per­son at the same time, or per­haps more pre­cisely, that it will find some mean­ing with all, but most mean­ing with only one.

I’ve spent a while tonight read­ing about “the mir­a­cle of affir­ma­tion” and how cen­tral it is to find­ing true human hap­pi­ness and joy, and I’ve come to see that while I am likely not totally unaf­firmed, I am cer­tainly inad­e­quately affirmed.

But more than that, I think my fun­tional decline in life is tied to a con­tin­u­ally decreas­ing level of affir­ma­tion, which I’ve tried to com­pen­sate for through self-affirmation.

I also feel that my declin­ing affir­ma­tion level is aggra­vated by my being sur­rounded by so many peo­ple who are also inad­e­quately affirmed, or totally unaf­firmed, but are yet mate­ri­al­is­ti­cally suc­cess­ful in civil society.

I think my sib­lings fall into this cat­e­gory too, and as such, any attempt by them to help affirm me, is futile.

So how do I rec­on­cile all this and halt, and begin to reverse my recent declin­ing level of affirmation?

I have some ideas of course, but am per­haps too scared to attempt to act on them yet? Or per­haps I’m too scared of being let down again, by myself, or others?

Or per­haps I just don’t yet know for sure that I’m ready to attempt it?

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untitled

Nov 2nd

Posted by Michael in general

No comments

Just some great quotes/passages from a book I ought to have read years ago.

“Hux­ley and Orwell did not proph­esy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be over­come by an exter­nally imposed oppres­sion. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive peo­ple of their auton­omy, matu­rity and his­tory. As he saw it, peo­ple will come to love their oppres­sion, to adore the tech­nolo­gies that undo their capac­i­ties to think.”

and some 40 pages later…

“… As Richard Hof­s­tadter reminds us, Amer­ica was founded by intel­lec­tu­als, a rare occur­rence in the his­tory of mod­ern nations. “The Found­ing Fathers,” he writes, “were sages, sci­en­tists, men of broad cul­ti­va­tion, many of them apt in clas­si­cal learn­ing, who used their wide read­ing in his­tory, pol­i­tics, and law to solve the exi­gent prob­lems of their time. A Soci­ety shaped by such men does not eas­ily move in con­trary direc­tions. We might even say that Amer­ica was founded by intel­lec­tu­als, from which it has taken us two cen­turies and a com­mu­ni­ca­tions rev­o­lu­tion to recover.”

– Neil Post­man, “Amus­ing Our­selves to Death” 1985

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