oh the impulse

re-reading the mess i wrote four years ago has generated such a distinct pleasure that i can't help but feel that if i did not start writing again, i would be doing my four-years-from-now self a terrible disservice. Four-years-from-now Self, this is for you. it is also not for you. it is for me. more to the point, it is public, which means it is somehow for both of us and neither of us, or for others and not for others.

i say more to the point but it's more toward a point i haven't made yet but will right after this colon: before i gave into the sudden impulse of clicking "new post" i had to quickly assess why i was choosing to continue the activity of such a permanent, public mode of expression. we don't know quite how eternal the internet is (i'm sure my teenage angst is still plastered in the strata of The Old Web, in the fossilized remains of the LJ community. do i still have a Myspace?), and doesn't a hand-written journal seem a more appropriate vessel into which i may pour my badly-worded metaphors meant to convey the recording of my life? why subject myself to the possible embarrassment of people i respect finding the corner of the internet where i exorcise (or exercise) my insecurities and emotional vicissitudes? and, most importantly probably, does the potential public nature of my writing render my thoughts fundamentally insincere, since the curation of my thoughts could become equally as important as the content? 

what if Anaïs Nin had had a facebook? 

i think ultimately i am of the generation where the boundary between private and public is so blurred that i don't have to feel uncomfortable with the fact that i feel more comfortable with a blog than with a moleskin. i will probably find that much can be blamed on or chalked up to being of my generation, so i will bed convenience and stick with that.

Four-years-from-now Self, so much has changed since four years ago. never could Four-years-ago Self have predicted the directions we would go (although since we were too busy whining about being directionless, it wouldn't have even come up in the first place). we will find out the next step in 5 days. 

one week as a non-student is equal to what was half an hour when i was a student

i really don't know where my time is going. it seems like two days ago i was in Illinois making my yearly rounds to visit Lauren and to keep my brother in check by drinking all his chocolate milk and playing all his video games. since the Secret Guild of Little Sisters would prefer the rounds to be quarter-annual, and my brother is a Busy and Important Scientist Doing Science Things, we had to pack as much chocolate milk, gaming and episodes of the Office in as we could into four days. it was so nice to be in a place that is actually settled and comfortable (ie, without bedbugs, with bedsheets and fully functioning appliances) and familiar. it follows that i kind of dreaded going back, but the past two weeks have gone by in a rush of work and alcohol. aw, crap, i think i accidentally stepped in a puddle of "What Directionless People Do Shortly After College." luckily i'm not sinking into it, i'm just wiping it off of my shoe while i reach over and turn my responsibility switch into overdrive.

why? because tomorrow Nathan and i are moving into our new apartment, but by 'move', I actually mean "quarantining all of our belongings by throwing them in plastic bags, schleping said bags the 45 minute commute from the Upper East Side to Brooklyn, living without said belongings for two weeks while all potential bedbugs are saturated by poison, sleeping on a cot and a futon until we finally have the time to purchase beds and schlep said beds from Ikea to our apartment." yeah, moving. but I suppose one can also translate it as "putting a whole lot of effort into making life feel livable and ours for the first time in three months." oh quality of life, you are a puzzle to both sociologists and 22 year old girls who lack a transient nature. yeah, so i crave stability before i feel like i can actually accomplish anything else. what of it. call me bourgeois, i don't care, i want my couch and my cat and my robot and my books, and i want them in one place and i want them uninfested.

i was supposed to go back to Charleston for Halloween weekend and then head back to Rock Hill for my mom's birthday, but for reasons (which were really never clear to me), i didn't get the time off from work. i spent most of the weekend moping and desperately missing everyone, but since i was working all weekend, i managed to be semi-productive! i was paid cash money to mope! i did manage some social activity and went out with some friends (closer acquaintances? people teetering on the cusp of becoming friends? that giant, awkward gray area between just talking about social issues to talking about personal issues?), and on Friday i went out with a different set of the same level of acquaintanceship to St. John's Cathedral to see the Procession of the Ghouls. first we watched one of those expressionist films from 1920's Deutschland (Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari, in particular), and then the portal to hell opened behind the projector screen and all of these fantastic ghoul costumes slowly slinked out into the church behind a mask of smoke. it was pretty cool, bordering occult spectacle and creepy ritual. there was even a bedbug ghoul dangling from a bungee cord along the arches, and a satanic bishop ghoul that presided above all the other creepy ghouls (which is pretty liberal considering the location).

so i guess Halloween in the city isn't so bad. today, Luigi and a Banana were breakdancing in Union Square. i would still have much rather been in Charleston, and in one day my mom is having a birthday and i'm stuck mailing her a present instead of giving her one in person. sigh, when adult responsibilities conflict with personal desires, i want to cash in my maturity card and spend the rest of my life on the couch in Rock Hill. i know my mom wouldn't want that though, and, since it's her birthday, i'll put off my Franny act for at least another year.

Happy Early Birthday, Mummy!!

for the first time, I feel fully happy here

(it probably won't last long, but i'm embracing it while i can)

cheap and delicious Indian food eaten on a stoop off of Houston. old bars whose walls are covered in newspaper clippings since the early 1900's where you have to order two beers at a time and your only options for drink are 'light' or 'dark', which are subsequently brought to you by angry old codgers (who I am convinced have been the same angry old codgers since the 1900s) capable of carrying 8 beers in one hand. new bars whose walls are covered in hootch-inspired napkin drawings and where the same group of friends hangs out nightly. records, typewriters, old books, greeting cards from back in a time when it was socially acceptable to have blackface gags wishing you a Merry Christmas and Playboy was actually interesting.

today started by weaving in and out of the traffic on the 59th street bridge on the back of a yellow 1979 vespa wearing a kaiser helmet and being fully integrated into the Manhattan skyline as I tried really hard not to whack my leg against every taxi we passed. the weather was blue sky gorgeous scarf weather and the air was crisp and slightly chilly and the leaves are starting to fall and every bakery and coffee shop is now carrying pumpkin flavored everything. bodegas and grocery stores have big baskets of pumpkins for sale lining the streets and posing as dangerous, festive obstacles for those of us recovering from hangovers by forgetting to pay attention to the external world.

my job is going well. i work all the time and, while it is still painfully frustrating that i don't know how to do many things that i'm used to knowing how to do perfectly, i'm getting to know the crazy regulars and my eastern European coworkers are starting to open up despite the huge cultural gap that separates our sense of humor. there is one regular who is in his late 60's who talks with me on my break about all our favorite Old Masters and his obsession with physics. he's nicknamed me 'Symmetry', which is the most charming compliment i've received since i've been here, rivaled only by one other given to me by another group of late-60's regulars who get together in the evenings at the cafe to bitch about academia, who all agreed that I had the presence and poise of a modern day Myrna Loy. i get a lot of terrible ones. for instance, last week, two people on two separate occasions said that their favorite color was "the color of my eyes." i mean, come on, brazen males of Manhattan, your pick up lines are lacking and cheesy. take a number from the 1940s, maybe then you'll have a chance.

also i have discovered new things about my palate! turns out i love dark chocolate, but only when it's covered in salt and i love guacamole, but only when i'm drunk. yams and beets are still hated across the board.

"always stick to Bach and the early Italians."

good advice.

when one reaches the end of the high road, they must leave the carriage and continue on foot

pertinent only as a post script:

It's Ennui! — his eye brimming with spontaneous tear

He dreams of the gallows in the haze of his hookah.

You know him, reader, this delicate monster,

Hypocritical reader, my likeness, my brother!

i moved to New York because i have only the tiniest idea of what i want to do with my life. i hate it here more than i thought i would, but in the same vein i love it more than i thought it was possible to love a place. i love it by hating it, i guess, i don't really know. i love that i have such a massive amount of time to read. oh and do i read. i'm now the pompous asshole who sits on a bench and says to whoever is listening, "oh yes, I've read some Joyce and his theory of aesthetics, but right now I'm more interested in the form and color theories of Kandinsky and Itten."

naw, jk, i rarely tell anyone what i'm reading for fear of sounding like that kind of asshole. but the NYC used bookstores are definitely a haven for anything i could ever dream of reading, and oh have i been exploiting that (much to the decline of my bank account).

there is a homeless guy who sits at the foot of the 86th street subway station that i pass every day after work. he has a giant gaping wound on his leg and he moans about his misery and his diabetes and his woe, and i never know what to do when i pass him. i mentioned it to Nathan once, and in response he quoted Hamlet. it was appropriate, but i still don't know what to do when i pass him. worse, there was a woman in Union Square holding a baby in one hand and a sign that said "I am tired of prostitution, please help me." ngh, my heart breaks here, sinks, and rises only to be broken 6 blocks later. it's putting something in perspective, that's for sure, but i couldn't say what. there are things that i have noticed that i value less, like the opinions of those who no longer wish to matter in the world or even in my own world, mostly because it seems that the walls of my urban reality have begun to harden around me, while the floors and ceilings disappear. thankfully i noticed this happening to my heart that has always been so bloody and fleshy and ready to open itself to help whatever misery comes into its path, and i halted my defense mechanism's immediate response of indifferent shriveling, and have begun construction on a semi-permeable picket fence complete with daisy chains of prudence and colorful paper pinwheels of insight.

i have a job. i make cappuccinos for the agitated masses of the lower east side, which happens to include a handful of various celebrities. my coworkers consist predominantly of eastern Europeans. it's a good job. it gets me the money i need to pay for the studio. it's only two express stops away, so i only have to wake up at 4:30 in the morning to get to work on time. i have about 3 seconds in between customers to consider their personal lives and troubles and joys before i say, "I can help whoever's next!"
the other day my boss said to me, "Eve, you smile, but in the back of your eyes I can see a sadness." shortly followed by, "I can help whoever's next!" i'm pretty sure the sadness he thinks he saw is just an inability to rectify the eye contact of hundreds of people in the span of an 8 hour shift.

i suppose i actually live in the city now.

i wish i could say that i miss Charleston often, but often does not even begin to cover it. in the back of my mind there is a constant nagging question of whether or not i would have been more happy taking a year to relax before i threw caution to the wind and jumped headlong into a task i was no where near prepared for.

luckily, all it takes is a phone conversation with Matt and i know once again that i made the right decision.

dear new york,

what is the lesson that you're trying to teach me? geeze.

wow

i can't believe this is an actual wikipedia article

i have tried like a million times

to update my blog and talk about all the adult responsible things i'm doing with my life, but it always results in the 10 paragraph equivalent to "AAAAGGGHHHH BEDBUGS," and i really don't like appearing as if the only thing i can talk about is bedbugs. officially, i am banning myself from talking about anything concerning bedbugs! (post script: YEAH RIGHT) (post post script: it makes me feel a little better to know there are people out there who know my woe. click here to read other people who sound just as traumatized as me)

and.. then somehow i find myself unable to talk about anything involving New York. why? because everything is tainted by the stupid bedbugs.

i know there is more to life than bedbugs. but everything i look at just reminds me of them. it doesn't help that the city is plastered with signs that say "THEY'RE BACK!!!" with a giant picture of a bedbug in a big red circle looking monstrous. YES THANK YOU NEW YORK, I AM AWARE. IN FACT, I HAVE BEEN UNABLE TO EXPERIENCE YOU WITHOUT THINKING ABOUT THEM.

i know it's illogical to think that there is some universal law that is supposed to protect me from unabashed misfortune, and i'm really not cosmically insured against bad luck, but none of that knowledge stops me from wanting to rip off my itchy welty burny skin and whimper about how unfair this is and curl up in a ball of misery and be in a coma until someone finds a cure for bedbugs that does not involve vaseline or my face swelling up like a tomato.

aw, crap, here i am talking about bedbugs again.

other news, not involving bedbugs, i read this in Freud's work about civilization and its discontents. it seems pretty true:

"It was discovered that a person becomes neurotic because he cannot tolerate the amount of frustration which society imposes on him in the service of its cultural ideal"

now for some pictures!

washington² park! i met a traveling bluegrass band from Memphis, and a guy who covered himself with bird food and bread and was best friends with the pigeons. i didn't actually approach him because he was covered in about 60 pigeons

sky, buildings

more sky, more buildings

i am dolled up! this is what i look like when i am trying to look cosmopolitan. mostly it means i am covered in make-up and i tie my scarf fancy

this is what i look like everywhere else
thanks to the
...
bedbugs

in order to keep my blog from being a total bummer

i will not be blogging until i sort out this miserable mess that i have decided to make my life and we can look back on it and laugh at how ridiculous it all was.

in the meantime, this is frighteningly accurate.

i turn 22, nathan and i walk to Time's Square and back

i have been 22 for 3 hours!

also, a tiny mouse lives in our radiator. it is infinitely preferable to bedbugs, unfortunately we still have bedbugs. my legs look like a bitten mess. the exterminator comes for my birthday between 1 and 2, but somehow i feel it will be just as effective as the last three times he came. i confronted our landlord about purposefully withholding information such as "this apartment i want to rent you has bedbugs," and he tried and failed at talking his way around it.

on the bright side, this whole business is definitely a New York Experience. but no one come visit me any time soon.

ALSO BENSA MICAH AJA AND NATHAN THANK YOU SO MUCH you are all so great i can't even express it without getting teary.

i move to Manhattan, everything still feels surreal

i think it is a byproduct of having my personal belongings spread between Charleston, Rock Hill, Queens and Manhattan, but i don't really feel entirely put together.
today was the day that my gramma no longer needed 24 hour care, so i am now in the city with the intention of staying here for reals. except all of the personal belongings i brought with me from the south are still in the care of my gramma, for fear of a bedbug resurgence. it almost feels like living as a refugee, except in an upscale studio apartment instead of a UNICEF tent. same bug problem, better regulated environment. less politically charged strife.

i have to accept the fact that it'll be a pretty good bit of time and a whole lot more energy to get to a place where Milo and i can live happily in a little alcove together. and i still have not dealt with the idea that maybe moving Milo from a lake-side indoor-outdoor setting with birds n molez n volez to a totally indoor tiny studio apartment surrounded by cars and noise is not such a nice thing to do to a young pee cat.

i just don't know.

what i do know is that this cafe that i'm in smells like sage and incense and good food and dark lighting and velvet couches and it's my first Friday in Manhattan and i'm going to celebrate.

what would be worse than bed bugs

WORMS.

yeah. imagine that. infesting everything. wriggling, dividing, being some weird white color.

yeah that would be infinitely worse than bed bugs.
i'm almost thankful for just bed bugs.

aw, but now i miss Milo.
...
ew

queens! where new york turns kinda boring.

what better thing is there to do at 5 am than take online quizzes? besides emptying catheter bags, that is.

i'm an INFJ! whatever that means.

i am capable, i clean up a lot of stool: more related than i'd like to admit.

no matter how much i whine about the varying kinds of excrement these first two weeks have brought me, i have to honestly admit that there is very little i can think of that is more heart-warming and conscience-satisfying than having my newly cleaned and wiped grandmother look at me and say, "evie, you're so capable."

taken out of context, it's one of the most encouraging things i've ever been told.
(it's not quite as encouraging if left totally in context, in which case it means "evie, you're so capable of cleaning fecal matter out of my clothing and carpet," which, um, is true i guess but really i find that the specifics kind of trample the reassurance that i think was meant rather generally)

anyway, it's nice to be told you're capable, especially when the first two weeks of Moving Somewhere New are so downright discouraging. not that i'm discouraged. there's no complaining here. i'm sure once all the turmoil gets settled, life will pick up and move good places, it's just The Meantime that rings softly of whatever loneliness it is that accompanies the realization that one has removed oneself from the active lives of those one cares about in order to face an uncertainty that kind of resembles emptiness and kind of resembles happiness and absolutely reeks of cold cream and cat litter and occasionally looks at one and says, "evie, you're so capable."

capable! i suppose we'll see if that's an appropriate adjective. another great thing about living with my grandmother and not having any friends (except Nathan, but he is a two hour commute away for the moment) is that she gets the NYTimes every day. my crossword skills are improving drastically. also i am already on book 2 of Remembrance of Things Past. now if i could only get my resume completed and sent out, productivity would seem more balanced.

i.. i cheated to finish the top right corner
turns out Dustin Hoffman starred in a 6-letter, 1987 flop called "Ishtar"

4.5 hours of public transportation, 15 minutes in the city

the only productive thing that happened today was that i wrote a poem

steatopygous, in the subway stair(ier)
in her case, more ain't merrier
i'm trapped behind a broad-hipped barrier
no body shape could get more pear-ier
lady, please, i'm late
just move your derriere

nathan is here, we discover the downside to this apartment

we have a great apartment.

both Central Park and the Metropolitan Museum of Art are 5 blocks away from us. practically our backyard. there is a 24 hour deli right beneath our building. there's an elevator! there's a bagel place right down the street, all kinds of restaurants and bars, a bookstore, and the subway stop is a 4/5 express stop. we have hardwood floors, good water pressure, and high ceilings. it's pre-furnished, like i said last time, with two dressers, the flat-screen plasma television, a dvd player, a sound system, etc. new microwave. two-person dining table. and, up until this morning, bed bugs. bed bugs! BED BUGS.
i was told by Landlord (after i had already sent him 3 months of rent, of course) that the nutbag, lunatic crazy woman who had sublet'd before us and whose myriad belongings are still crapping up our dresser and closet (but that's another, less interesting difficulty of my Move To NYC. basically she is an incompetent nutcase, and she still has keys to our apartment. nngh), was the cause of a bed bug infestation 2 months ago. but, don't worry! there are no more bugs left! why, of course he had fumigated the apartment 3 times and replaced the mattress, and there was no problem because THEY WERE ALL GONE. i fretted, but i believed him.

YEAH RIGHT, LANDLORD.

Nathan and i returned from an IKEA shopping spree yesterday afternoon, half-exhausted but gleeful, only to discover a bug. a bug! just one, and it was tiny, a very tiny nymph, creeping obliviously over the old beat up leather of the couch. under normal circumstances this wouldn't freak me out, because under normal circumstances i really like bugs. it's just when they congregate and breed and become several thousand bugs that i become fully repulsed and horrified. since i had had my doubts about bed bugs in the first place, this situation required further investigation. and further investigation led us to this horrible discovery:

UM, EW.

they like to hide, even in bad-quality phone pictures, so i circled them in red to aid in vicarious revulsion.

the couch was thrown out (Nathan and i hired two hispanic guys off the street to help us move it, since in every case involving an infestation of my stuff by some kind of creepy-crawly, i suffer from terrible visceral convulsions and can only help by sobbing and waving my arms frantically in circles), and in a whirl of irrational and deranged adrenaline, i sprayed down the whole apartment floor with the first thing i could find, which happened to be a bottle of Febreeze. because bed bugs hate the smell of clean linen! YEAH, TAKE THAT YOU NINETEENTH CENTURY PARASITIC PLAGUE. DON'T EVEN THINK TO FEED OFF OF MY BLOOD OR YOU'LL GET ANOTHER FACE OF LAUNDRY-SCENTED DEATH. then this morning Exterminator came to take care of any of the icky stragglers that hadn't drowned in my frantic febreeze flailing. i hope they're dead.

Landlord told us to go back to IKEA and pick out any futon we wanted, on his dime. so we've solved sleeping arrangement problems, in case anyone wants to visit us. unfortunately, though, bed bugs are like a disease for houses, and they're contagious. i really wouldn't recommend anyone visiting us until after we are certain they're dead and gone.

luckily (for me, not Nathan), i'm spending the week in Bayside taking care of my grandmother. emptying her catheter bag every 4 hours, as it turns out, is infinitely preferable to bed bugs.

the first entry of this blog is this

really, i mean that. disregard all of the previous entries, which were just my desperate attempts to rectify my reckless procrastination regarding the infamous American Philosophy class, and are now kept for posterity (by which i mean to remind myself that i really was in college once and it wasn't just a 4 year-long dream and that one day academia will accept me back into her cold, dominating arms, and also to show naysayers that Philosophy, oo la la, she is a worthy thing to pursue)

so i did it, i relocated! well, kind of. it is the case that i have moved myself from one state to another, but it certainly doesn't feel like it yet. i have a hunch that my life decided, after my mom and i left on our road trip, that it would rather stay back in Charleston and Rock Hill, where it actually has best friends and close family and all its personal possessions and memories and love and everything that New York does not have and will not have for most likely a long time, until i really do finally make a comfortable home here complete with some friends and some family and some possessions, but i am afraid that if that takes too long my life might get the idea to pack its metaphysical baggage and hop a plane to Europe to "find itself" because it's been separated from me for too long and it has forgotten that it isn't actually lost, it's just uncooperative, as lives are wont to be.
so in lieu of my life, i'm living in a pretty weird transitory state which is actually a borough called Queens, where i'm taking care of my mother who is taking care of my grandmother who is recovering from rectal surgery whose more awful side-effect involves complete incontinence. to make a long, disgusting and deeply disturbing story shorter (but just as disturbing), the past week of my 218th Street limbo involves various liquid states of excrement. my mom is going home on Friday, and the responsibility falls on me until the catheter gets taken out.

but Queens aside, an apartment was found! once everything medical is finally settled and the horrible liquid after-effects of my grandmother's surgery subside and a nurse who has more qualifications than a bachelor's degree in philosophy is hired to replace me, i can start living in it. it is a sublet on the Upper East Side, a studio with big windows with a big view of 2nd Avenue construction. it's furnished, and it has a murphy bed and a couch and one of those really big flat plasma wall TVs that most people find cool and that i really just find kind of technologically repulsive. it doesn't really feel like home yet, but it definitely has potential. Nathan is coming tomorrow, and in the morning he and I are going to declare it Ours. we got the keys. there's even a mailbox key.

so it won't be until next week when I officially Live In Manhattan, but next week is certainly sooner than I thought it would be.

and in the meantime, when i wasn't tempering my mom's impatience or staring in horror at the prospect of old age, I did a lot of exploring Manhattan's east side on my own. it is beautiful, and i have yet to figure out how to fully express my thoughts. her streets are laden with introspection, and her subways are designed for the introvert. i mean, thanks to the subway system, i'm almost done with Swann's Way and i've avoided several potentially creepy interactions. one step closer to being more than functionally literate and an urban ice queen, and just one week between me and unfettered museum access!

post script: in academic writing, i create what Nathan calls "peanut-butter bubblegum sentences." in informal blogging, i abandon sentences completely in favor of disorganized, paragraph-long clauses that never really seem to get coherently completed. whoops.

12/13

Lewis and Rorty.

you know what?

screw it.


post script: i made a B in this class, and the professor recommended me to be a Philosophy tutor. ha! i can procrastinate an entire semester away and subsequently complete an entire semester's worth of work in two weeks, a month and a half after the semester has ended and i STILL get rewarded.
if only i did things on time, imagine how scary i'd be.

11

the third to last philosopher of this wretched weekend! Santayana!

"the American Will inhabits the sky-scraper; the American Intellect inhabits the colonial mansion." alright, Santayana, so transcendentalism and Calvinism are our American intellectual traditions, but they no longer suit our American way! Emerson can't be quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys and Edwards most certainly would not survive as a ladder-climbing elite in the industry of marketing CEOs. "the youthful willfulness of the country has outrun the old wits," but heck, maybe the future is bright and maybe we can combine the old wisdom with the new vitality, and maybe the best way to do this is through James and his will to believe.


oh god i am so obviously losing steam.

10

Royce!

the divorce of ideas and experience characterize every form of our human consciousness of finitude, weakness, evil, sin, despair, blah blah blah. through the unity of thought and fact and the feeling of total comprehension, an Omniscient Being can answer a bitter, "Why?"
isn't that nice?
so yeah, there is no universal experience of a concrete fact, only the hope of one. truth is experience. for us there is only experience. our experience is a fragmented version of Absolute Experience, which says, "beyond my world, there is no further experience actual."

he also talks about loyalty! we can't only just conform to conventional morality, we're more than trained animals. a morally significant life entails a life plan, but we are fostered in society to create certain plans. when someone becomes allied in their cause to a community who shares the same cause, a morally significant commitment develops around the shared cause. this commitment is what Royce defines a loyalty. a moral life is understood by the multitude of loyalties one has.

also, our lives are all sweetly unified by the very effort we make to assert ourselves somehow as individuals in our world. sure, maybe we haven't found our place, but the fact that we are all trying gives everyone a kind of unity of purpose.
true individualism finds its purest expression within a community of sociable people.

9

Dewey is another pragmatist. he claims that Darwinism provides an instructive model for understanding the relations and tensions between human beings and their environment. also, like James and Pierce, he believes that traditional empiricism (that what we can know is ultimately tethered to experience) isn't good enough on its own. it has to satisfy the dire needs and desires of people who need a philosophy. in fact, a viable philosophy has to address the urgent (although sometimes wholly unremarkable) concerns of the laymen.


er, uh, that's all i really know about Dewey.

8

this is James! he is also a pragmatist, albeit much more comprehensible than Pierce. for him, the pragmatic method is a method of settling metaphysical disputes that might otherwise be interminable. the conduct of thought for the pragmatist is "the sole significance." there is no meaning in the impractical! it's like empiricism, but more radical and less objectionable. theories are instruments, not answers to enigmas. we move forward in our theories, we don't lean into them like some cushion-y metaphysical toilet seat. pragmatism, in fact, turns away from depending on principles and looks into facts and consequences. theories are just a man-made language, a conceptual shorthand with which we write our reports of nature.
beliefs are pretty solid things, and for the most part we are all extreme conservatives in holding onto our beliefs. the most violent of thoughtful revolutions still leaves most of our beliefs standing strong. "time and space, cause and effect, nature and history, and one's own biography remain pretty much untouched." in fact, truth to us is just an addition of new kinds of facts to our trusty framework. day follows day, content is simply added as we go. the new concepts we attain aren't in themselves truths, the simply come and are. truth is what we say about them! we lean on old truths and grasp for new facts. truth is mutable and subjective and relative.

this is his scope of pragmatism! it is a method and a genetic theory of what is meant by truth.

in "The Will to Believe," he basically hypothesizes that beliefs become self-fulfilling prophecies. if we believe in something, we cause evidence for that belief to come into existence, and the evidence for us is satisfactory in proving the belief. a belief is verified if it leads to a happier interaction with the believers world, and so as long as belief self-validates for one person and makes them happy, why would anyone complain?

James is not a strict determinist! but he has determinist qualities. "soft determinism." just because the universe is determined does not mean the future is known--a person's actions can influence their future. fatalism is not the way to go for James. chance must exist, otherwise the world would sink into a pit of pessimism, where "what ought" appears impossible because of what is, and what is right now kind of sucks.

7

Pierce! he is a pragmatist. there were three essays, one about the dangers of fixated beliefs, one about how we can make our ideas clearer, and one about his conception of Pragmatism. what's kind of funny is that his essay on how one can make their ideas clear was the most boring, convoluted essay i read since Edwards.

the object of reasoning to find out, from the consideration of what we already know, something else which we don't know. drawing inferences is not so much a natural gift as it is a long and difficult art. it is either an acquired or constitutional habit of mind to draw one inference rather than another from a set of given premises. we have in us a guiding principle of inference! yeah!

then he goes on to distinguish doubts and beliefs. beliefs guide our desires and shape our actions actively, while doubts do not. doubt is a state of dissatisfaction from which we struggle to free ourselves and pass into a state of belief. "the irritation of doubt causes a struggle to attain belief." this struggle, Pierce says, is inquiry! and so the sole end of inquiry is therefore to settle some opinion or other.
we shouldn't cling to beliefs, he says! but unfortunately, we do, and in a multitude of ways:
.method of tenacity: the method of personally fixing onto a belief
.method of authority: fixing a belief societally. this leads to Inquisitions and Holocausts and Pro-Lifers and other societal horrors.
.method of a priori: metaphysicians do this and annoy pragmatists.
.method of science: YES THIS IS THE RIGHT ONE SAYS PIERCE. this is the method where we look at Reality! capital R!

then he talks about how to make ideas clear. we should be masters of our own meaning, he says! thought is a thread of melody running through the succession of our sensations. a belief is something we are aware of that appeases the irritation of doubt (which he covered in the previous essay). belief involves the establishment of habit (which can be dangerously fixed, which he also covered in the previous essay). habit is a rule of action in our nature. belief is a stadium for mental action.

the identity of a habit depends on when and how it causes us to act. attaining a 3rd degree of clarity in expressing ideas has a rule that involves this: "consider what effects we conceive the object of our conception have -- our conception of those effects is the whole of our conception of the object."

the Real is defined as that whose characters are independent of what anyone may think them to be. if something is hopelessly beyond the reach of our knowledge, does it not exist? well, who cares, says Pierce, but really, if investigation is carried far enough, it will yield a belief in what is real, but only practical distinctions really have meaning. for this reason is metaphysics (says the pragmatist) a study much more curious than useful.

what's his view of pragmatism? i don't really know it very well, it's like an aggregate of the things he said in the other two essays. doubt is a state of irritation to produce belief and also a privation of habit, belief is not a momentary mode of consciousness but rather a habit of mind that endures for some time and is perfectly self-satisfied and mostly unconscious. Reality is out there, but really it is only meaningful to investigate it if it is practical to our lives.

6

Wright! this guy i didn't really get a lot out of, either. i'm pretty sure i was losing steam at this point.

the doctrine of final causes is indispensable to the theologian, and it is furnished by science. but wait, how can we distinguish means and ends from causes that can be effects and effects that are also causes? science can't disclose a final cause!

but, the relation of means to ends in itself implies intelligence without further qualification, right? designed effects are ascribed not to intelligence, but to the causes of intelligence. "design" is an independent determination by an efficient agent. somewhere there were two propositions for the proof of God:
1 intelligence stands first as the absolute order of existence (the final preceded efficient causes)
2 the universe is governed by moral cause.

for Wright, progress in science is progress in religious truth. if some part of religion is refuted by science, the conclusion to draw is not that science is irreligious, but that the refuted aspect of religion was merely superstition that needed to be disregarded.
the wisdom of the unfathomable is not hindered by science! science, in fact, defines the boundaries between what can be discovered and what cannot. humility, cautiousness and the suspension of judgment in matters about which we know so little are tenets of science that ought be adopted by religion. i think.

then, in "Evolution of Self Consciousness" he talks about.. the evolution of self consciousness! self consciousness is an advent of the natural! evolution! mental powers and bodily powers kind of pretty much have mixed natures, for instance the voice can call or allure, warn or repel, create music, language, etc. the trains and degrees of intelligence are composed of pretty much the same basic things: memory and attention. in human intelligence, we simply add abstraction to the mix. the more basic, primitive forms of cognition are found in animals. we can see this by comparing a command of language to a command of sounds. then there's something about all in relation to outward things in contrast with passive relations of sensation and passive perception.. something.. er.. well, basically the intellectual self consciousness is characterized by the added attribute of the ego. I!

5

the fifth dude is Thoreau, in some excerpt or another from Walden. i sheepishly admit i did not glean everything i should have from this text. basically he just complains about the idea of shelter for a few pages.

the mass of men live in quiet desperation, he says. "resignation" is but confirmed desperation. the grand necessity of life is to keep warm, physically and socially. a poor man is wont to complain that this is a cold world, and to cold we direct a great part of our woes and ails. (that is all pretty much direct quotation with only some deviation, i think)

we used to be free and live in caves or.. tepees.. or something. and now it is rare for someone to actually own their abode! we pay for our houses in rent and mortgage! he thinks this is a pretty effed up fact of contemporary life, i think. erm, the basic idea is that clothing and shelter have rendered us domestic, and mankind has become the tools of their tools. self-sufficiency is where it's at, guys. let's all move to the woods and build our own houses and quit paying taxes. the government sucks! or.. something.

4

Emerson! his transcendental ideal is displayed in three texts!

the first is a description of The American Scholar. first, he laments the fact that man is divided into sects of laborers, which he sees as an indication that man is fractured into a multitude of stunted individuals. The Scholar is the delegated intellect, or "Man Thinking." the education of The Scholar is through three things: nature, books, and action. (can i take this time to point out that i am not sure if i have been consistent with my use of the Oxford comma? i think i'm going to quit using it from now on) for Emerson, "Know Thyself" and "Study Nature" are one in the same. nature is the measure of one's attainments. books, however, unlike nature, are subject to folly. when used properly, they are the best in imparting the past. when used incorrectly, they are terrible! one should only read when it inspires genius! one should only go to college to create. the layman hopes and regurgitates, but the genius creates! action is of utmost importance. there exists no Scholar without a heroic mind. inaction is cowardice, and without action, thought can never ripen into truth. life itself is the dictionary of The Scholar. drudgery, calamity, exasperation and want are all simply instructions in eloquence and wisdom.
the duties of The Scholar are to cheer, rise and guide men by showing them facts amidst appearances; they are the worlds' eye and the worlds' heart. it is within self-trust and self confidence that The Scholar should be free and brave.
the "sports of the office" are money and power, those things that are desired by "the herd" who, according to Emerson, need to quit sleepwalking through life and wake up to see what is of true importance: it is one soul which animates all men! what is important is the individual! individual governing is man treating man as sovereign nation treats sovereign nation! the near explains the far. the drop is a small ocean. a man is related to all nature. the True American Scholar knows that we cannot remain fractured in labor sects: if we all become one, we will form a Nation of Persons, each who believes themselves to be inspired by the Divine soul which also inspires all persons.

in his address to Divinity College, he harps on his notion of the transcendental divine. there is a difference between the empirical world and the world that we sense when our mind is open. moral sentiment is merely an insight to the perfection of the laws of the soul. we are and embody God. we get to know The Great by getting to know ourselves: it is invested in the power of the individual. one cannot receive instruction from another, just provocation. man should not merely be an appendage--he is whole and of himself. he is God!
JC alone saw that God incarnates himself in man. he was a true man, and the church has perverted this sentiment.

here, Emerson takes a page out of Paine and outlines two defects of the church:
1 deifying miracles and a Christ figure instead of the individual and beauty of the world
2 teaching as if Revelation happened only at the time of Christ, as if God is dead Now and we can only learn from Then.

this loss of true worship leads to the decaying of all things: genius haunts the senate and the market, not the temple; literature becomes frivolous; science becomes cold; society lives to trifles; age is without honor. the two errors of Historical Christianity lead to defrauding and disconsolating the worshiper.
love God without mediator, yells Emerson! without veil! without the church! God is, not was! He speaks, not spake!

fashion, custom, authority, pleasure and money are nothing in the face of the immeasurable mind. Emerson suggests not a method of a new doctrine, nor does he suggest a new system, since Faith makes us and not we, it. he says the remedy to all this is the Soul, always the Soul.

the Soul, of course, is tied into the importance he rest on the Individual. in "Self Reliance," he says that genius is to believe in one's own thought, and that what is true for oneself is true for all men. in every work of Genius, we see and recognize our own rejected thoughts. he offers two suggestions:
be a nonconformist, he says! it is easy in the world to live for the world's opinion, and it is easy in solitude to live after one's own opinion. the true earmark of greatness is to live in the world with still the perfect sweetness of solitude.
consistency is ridiculous, he says! it leads us to stick to opinions that cannot evolve. live ever in a new day! be misunderstood! to be great is to be misunderstood!

the essence of genius, virtue and life is spontaneity, instinct and intuition. this is true self-reliance. we lost it when we measured the esteem of others by what they have rather than by what they are.