I should be reading Emerson right now, but I've decided after reading "The American Scholar" that he is mostly confused and full of shit. This makes it difficult for me to buzz through 35 pages like a drone in a hive while he talks about how great nature is over and over and over. Yeah Emerson, I think nature is fucking great too, but I don't need you to write me a novella about it. Emerson doesn't seem to write as if he is building towards any kind of point though. It's like he was sitting around thinking of good quotes and just writing them down one after another. Anyway, I could bitch about how I don't want to read anything that I'm supposed to be reading for class all day, but I won't.
I've decided today that I will be using the word "the" a lot more in reference to people I deal with on a regular basis. Mom will from hereon be referred to as "The Mom"
I keep seeing the girl around. I can't help but notice the girl's presence. Sometimes I want to talk to the girl, but things with the girl always end up badly with me hurting. Thus I will continue with my previous plan of action, which is faking amnesia in case of any future contact with the girl. I must think of the past as I life I once lived, and have now finished with. My current life is the only life I have. The present moment is my breath, my pulse, my only reality. Blah, blah, blah, philosophy and so forth.
I've kind of hit a dry point reading Plato's Republic. I've gotten to the point where Socrates is now talking about censorship and stuff like that and I'm not entirely sure if I agree with him. Plato seems to fail to see that while all the negativity that has come from poets and bards (i.e. the media) set a lot of people up to suffer and act without virtue, that same sort of environment produced people like him and myself, who have become commited to spiritual growth and understanding. Who is to say that without something false to question, we can ever know truth? The whole idea of Socrates's conversation with Meno is that Meno thinks he knows what virtue is, but when Socrates and Meno begin to delve into the question of what virtue is, neither one of them can really answer. Meno had been going on his whole life as if he knew what virtue (or arete) was, making speeches about it and so forth, and because he thought he knew it he never questioned what it really was, never really knew what it was that he was talking about. Assuming that you know truth is what keeps you from looking for it, and most likely from finding it. So if we have no false claims to search through, to test our interrogative powers, to keep our introspective speculative powers well exercised, would we ever be able to discern truth from falsehood? Does not one create the other? But I suppose the real point is that we should constantly put our beliefs to the test, to make sure that they still have meaning to us and to give them a real validity.
I've decided today that I will be using the word "the" a lot more in reference to people I deal with on a regular basis. Mom will from hereon be referred to as "The Mom"
I keep seeing the girl around. I can't help but notice the girl's presence. Sometimes I want to talk to the girl, but things with the girl always end up badly with me hurting. Thus I will continue with my previous plan of action, which is faking amnesia in case of any future contact with the girl. I must think of the past as I life I once lived, and have now finished with. My current life is the only life I have. The present moment is my breath, my pulse, my only reality. Blah, blah, blah, philosophy and so forth.
I've kind of hit a dry point reading Plato's Republic. I've gotten to the point where Socrates is now talking about censorship and stuff like that and I'm not entirely sure if I agree with him. Plato seems to fail to see that while all the negativity that has come from poets and bards (i.e. the media) set a lot of people up to suffer and act without virtue, that same sort of environment produced people like him and myself, who have become commited to spiritual growth and understanding. Who is to say that without something false to question, we can ever know truth? The whole idea of Socrates's conversation with Meno is that Meno thinks he knows what virtue is, but when Socrates and Meno begin to delve into the question of what virtue is, neither one of them can really answer. Meno had been going on his whole life as if he knew what virtue (or arete) was, making speeches about it and so forth, and because he thought he knew it he never questioned what it really was, never really knew what it was that he was talking about. Assuming that you know truth is what keeps you from looking for it, and most likely from finding it. So if we have no false claims to search through, to test our interrogative powers, to keep our introspective speculative powers well exercised, would we ever be able to discern truth from falsehood? Does not one create the other? But I suppose the real point is that we should constantly put our beliefs to the test, to make sure that they still have meaning to us and to give them a real validity.
Those are some interesting points you made about the classical and rock music thing, I never thought of it like that.