A Shot At the World

My perspective on philosophy is very, very simple: Make it applicable.

I presented a little bit of Gramsci in a class and tried to go in a different direction, which worked sometimes and didn't at others. I made it personal. Like, painfully so. We are the consequences of our actions and the influences of the people we've gathered around us, yes? So I asked, what behaviors have rubbed off from former lovers and that immediately focused their attention. Human nature is a process, yes?

Human nature is in the little things we do or don't. The tiny bits we get comfortable with, like crossing our legs or tapping our fingers on the desk. I don't view it as something grand, then. If you want to see human nature, don't just look at things like having to die, but also whether you urinate in the shower or your body language while ordering coffee.

According to Gramsci, human nature is something learned, not solely something installed on the harddrives of our psyche by our extraterrestrial creator. (Yes, God and computers. It's a bit of a cliche, isn't it?) But I looked and I saw open eyes and even a look of shock on a couple faces. when I applied it to a domestic point. Something snapped into place behind their pupils and watching that transpire is a feeling that's better for my soul than a hundred mental health days.

That's what philosophy ought to be. It ought to be something that shocks and surprises, like going through a haunted house from the inside out. It should implore its practitioners to ask deeper, more probing questions and for a brief moment, it might have. This all is very idealistic. In this case, it's my idealism and that makes all the difference. (It doesn't.)

It was that granular applicability that made the point corporeal, powerful and frighteningly useful. Given a little more time, the discussion (a kid just admitted that he took his parents lives for granted, for God's sake!), cut off, could have been interesting. It wasn't to be, but I got something special out of it nonetheless. I got a single moment of clarity, an instant of demystifying power against a lake (not an ocean or sea) of unimpressed faces. I could get used to that.




I am listening to a lot of Thursday, in quantities that I never did before. A City By The Light Divided has been keeping me company, but it's War All the Time that I listened to through first. Asleep in the Chapel is off War All the Time, and it's strange in that when I don't pay attention, I like it more. But when I try to describe why, I can't. The verses are so good, the chorus less so. Plus, it uses the phrase "sing hallelujah", which almost always scores good marks in my book.

One Part Monday, One Part Everything After

"Injustice, then, is simply inequalities that are not to the benefit of all."

There's more of the meat of A Theory of Justice, but I'm struck by the consiseness of that sentence. Look at it again. It carries a couple ideas, that inequalities are things that are unevenly distributed and can be discussed as something that benefits people. Injustice as a benefit. Huh. It happens all of the time in cities and in places we don't care to pay attention, but stated outside of a context of a particular injustice, it resonates even more with me.

It's only after I grew up that I'm even thinking in the process of inequality as as a possible positive. And here I am trying to dissect a single sentence of injustice years after the fact. Bad things happen, this is a part of life, but, when they're done to benefit a specific party, therein lies the injustice.

It's a sentence that clarifies conflicts. Not what happened, but why, to whom and for what? Who profits, but years later. Injustice as a thing that can be calculated, almost real, like an element. Injustice that straightforwardly expressed. At 530ish pages of words, brevity isn't Rawls' strong suit, but it's hard for me to understate the force inherent in the economy of that sentence.

That sentence meant to be the culmination of a bunch of philisophical steps, but it also works as a statement of purpose. It's the kind of thing I wish I could write.




No dance music this time: Thursday's cover of the Buzzcocks' Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn't Have?) There was one day, when I was young, I ended up playing this song on Rock Band 2 with the other side of a love triangle I was in. I played "guitar", he sang (his range is really impressive), the girl watched. There's bitter moments in my life that make me smile. That one was magical.

Announcing A Theory of 2666.

I was talking with a couple kids about snap decisions on the way back from St. Peter's yesterday (a monument that took over 120 years to build) and I ended up dispensing sage advice to the effect of "sometimes, the only way you're going to do something is to say you're doing something gigantic and then start doing it before you can stop and think better of it."

In that vein, I'm announcing A Theory of 2666, publishing every Wednesday. As I mentioned before, I brought Robert Bolano's 2666 with me on the trip, but I also brought the classic of modern philosophy and ubiquitous judicial citation, A Theory of Justice by John Rawls. I got about 90 pages through A Theory of Justice before putting it down for something that would fit more easily into a satchel and I never got back around to picking it up again. I'm intimidated by 2666 (It is supposedly a rejuvenation of the Latin American literary genre and I've read an entire one book by Gabriel Garcia Marquez), as I've mentioned before and used that as an excuse to let it sit on the shelf or on the dresser. No longer.

I'm reading both, starting now. Well, I'm switching between the two, this week it's 2666, next week it's A Theory of Justice.

I'm only 35 pages into 2666, and already, there's a love triangle that must collapse at the worst possible time, a strange and reclusive author with no pictures that inspired four main characters, one of those characters, as a reader, I expect to die. But, what's most surprising to me is a sentence, starting four lines from the top of page 18 that ends near the bottom on page 22. Now, in terms of width and height, 2666 is 8x5, which seems normal to me.

5 pages without a fucking period or, more crucially, a paragraph break. First things first: If you can construct a sentence like that and have it work, as it does in 2666, my hat's off to you. You're unreal at what you do. But as a reader on a bus or between classes, it's a display of virtuosity that is infuriating. Well, aggravating. As a person that plays with words, I'm humbled and immediately aware I am watching a person who has truly mastered the written word. Comparatively, I play with blocks. Legos, if I'm lucky. As a person that has to read it and does so in a world where I have to negotiate other human beings and the bookmark slips, I pray, feverishly, for a paragraph break or period or a chink in the armor of the paragraph to save my place.

There is no such solace. Then again, I'm reading 2666, not some trashy Chandler ripoff. The message I take from 2666 is that I need to up my reading game. If not that, then, at least understand this is the terrain I am getting myself into now. I am getting into books that more is expected of me. Oh! I like 2666. I mean, it's challenging reading, but I enjoy the time I spend with it. How did I not get to that?

I can get to that next week! Two weeks! See you Friday.




Today's song is Far's Mother Mary, as covered by Thursday at Hellfest, with the aid of Far's singer. One of the things I have a weak spot for at shows is male camaraderie and this video is saturated with it, a five minute piece of bro-ing out onstage overflowing with emotion. Yes, this is what I love and hardly often get. The song is about how we're gonna die and the only way we're gonna be remembered is for what we do, in what media we leave behind, which has a thematic simliarity to 2666, as there are four main characters chasing a reclusive author, whom they only know about through media.

I would say I planned it, but I didn't.