I’m clearing out some blogs I started for various reasons. It looks like my first–and abortive–foray into broadcasting my thoughts into this electronic world actually happened back in 2007. I read it now, and as happens often to me, I find myself agreeing with myself, and realizing I have phrased some things better in the past than now. Anyway, here it is:
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Welcome!!!
It is with a mixture of sadness and relief that I inaugurate this blog.
Sadness, because my intent is here to “publish” for the world intellectual content in the development of which I have invested enormous effort. My prior intent had been to collate my ideas, present them to a publisher, sign a nice book deal, make loads of money, and retire somewhere warm and watery.
Last night, however–in the sort of development which I don’t think is unique to my particular psychology, but which may appear to some dysfunctionally ideosyncratic–I had a series of dreams which convinced me that I ought instead simply focus on getting my ideas out there, hopefully to generate some concrete good in the world.
This decision is in fact a relief as well for that reason. It is hopeless, I think, in most cases to fully tease one’s own vanity out from a received vision of reality; however, it must be said that I think some of these ideas, in their precise formulation and order, are both unique, and potentially world changing. Because I believe that in many important respects our culture is heading in the wrong direction, I likewise believe that with better quality ideas, we can begin–in small ways, in small places–to improve upon the foundations we have built with Western Culture, rather than continue to destroy them in the act of building. . .what? That is the question, isn’t it?
In a series of roughly 20-40 paragraph posts I will outline a system of morality which in its precise formulation is to my knowledge unique. There is a pronounced tendency, especially among the educated, to see something and say “this is nothing but x, y, and z”.
This sort of superficial overview is in a broad sense responsible for a great many human problems today. As I will argue, proper perception requires the ability to generalize, to examine issues in excruciating detail, and–most importantly–to move flexibly back and forth between the two, and to never cease this process. I call this perceptual breathing. You breath in, you breath out. Neither alone is sufficient to the maintenance of life, and neither the general nor the specific is sufficient to the task of proper understanding.
My preference is for the word Goodness. Both the words “morality” and “ethics” have a sort of bloodlessness about them that I find quite unappealing. They have a distance and a lack of personal immediacy about them that is attractive to philosophers but few others.
What most people want to feel, to know, is that they are “good” people. In the movie “Saving Private Ryan”, the now old and fading Ryan asks his wife “Tell me I’ve led a good life.” One gets the sense that when he passes on–or not, depending on how our universe is actually constructed–his dying thoughts will be on the nature of his life, how it was lived, how he conducted himself, and the standards he uses will not be intellectual. They will arise from within and be treated from within his gut.
There is nothing that cannot be rationalized, and thus there is no human evil which has not arisen from within a system which would seem on the face of it to oppose such evil. I will argue, though, that there is also nothing which can be hidden without a profound cost.
With that I would like to conclude my inaugural post. I will have a long day tomorrow, and am going to drink some beer tonight.