It's oh so quiet... shh! shh!
I'm observing Lent this year for the first time. DRJ and I are giving up Facebook together 6/7 days a week until Easter. I guess Christians like to take a break on Sundays... even from Lent. Plus it makes the math work out so you get 40 days.
Today is the first day without Facebook. So far it's quiet.
I must admit that I've found myself composing little status updates in my head periodically throughout the day - most ironically, thinking of status updates to summarize what I am doing and thinking in lieu of Facebook. I think it's part of the withdrawal process.
Status updates are strange little creatures & there is some art in saying what you want to say with brevity, but they also discourage the development of thoughts. I remember when I was in college, taking this "Core" class, which was the bane of my existence at the time, that our professor had this bright idea to have us summarize the gist of each reading assignment in 30 words or less. At the time, I felt like it diminished from the reading to try to over-simplify it. Who knew this skill would come in handy nearly 15 years later in the construction of Facebook status updates? I guess that horrible professor was actually on the cutting edge!
Core was a class that all freshmen had to take at my liberal arts college and thus there were a lot of professors who taught Core. You got assigned randomly - no choice of who your professor was. I got a chemistry professor who was job-sharing a position with her chemistry professor husband and looking to pick up another course to teach for more money.
She was a Catholic scientist who was supposed to teach us the history of Western thought from the Greeks onward. It was excruciatingly painful.
Some people were lucky enough to get philosophy professors for Core. Wow - how great that would have been! I got stuck with someone who was reading a lot of the material for the first time with us, and who was extremely stubborn about her world view (liberal Catholic scientist). She hated me because I continually challenged her in class and I thought differently about things than the rest of the students, so I didn't get any back up either. It was really a miserable, combative experience in class every day - but I was really stubborn - if I thought she was wrong, I couldn't keep my mouth shut.
I read all these greatest hits, but she didn't illuminate them the way a really good professor can. Thank goodness I'd taken A.P. American History, A.P. European History, & lots of really wonderful English classes in high school so I had some context for what I was reading - but when I think back now on the experience, I am angry that I didn't get more out of "Core". What could have been an amazing foundation of knowledge was lackluster, not to mention emotionally scarring at times.
I had much more fruitful breeze through history in Art 101 & 102 through the lens of visual culture... then became firmly rooted in the art and critical thought of the last couple hundred years.
Now I am seeking to round things out to get a fuller picture of the evolution of Western thought. It's time. It's actually well-past time.
There's something really wonderful about seeing your short-comings. People hide from short-comings and weaknesses because it's kind of uncomfortable at first to address 'flaws' in yourself, but when you really see them... then you can resolve or diffuse them. "Knowing's half the battle," so to speak. Since my first Saturn return, my life has continually revealed it's short-comings to me and once I got over the intial shock of this process, I really started enjoying taking steps to round out the short-comings.
One of my short-comings, as a Cancer, is being overly emotional. Couple that short-coming with my nasty Core professor & a couple skeevy/screwball philosophy professors...
Aside: one was female professor who macked on frat boys in her class, tried to join a sorority "as a social experiment", and posed as the cover model on her own book and the other was a guy who married one of his students and made snide comments about how women's brains were more akin to animals that to men's brains. (I was the only girl in that class,except a really butch lesbian).
Okay, back on track! Combining my natural tendency toward over-emotionalism with a few bad &/or crazy professors led to an aversion to philosophy classes, despite the fact that I actually find the subject very interesting. Instead, I came at it from the angle of art and critical theory. Reading Schopenhauer or Nietsche to understand German Expressionism or reading Foucault, Lacan, Derrida, and Barthes to understand Post-Moderism photography made sense. It was practical. But it wasn't very systematic.
I only just recently realized how an uncomfortable response was ingrained in my psyche when I thought of tackling philosophy head-on, as I read this introduction to a modern history of philosophy textbook that DRJ recommended. It gave me a little identity-politics fueled moment of crisis... then I noted this as interesting & finished reading. I ended up liking Bertrand Russell much better than the contemporary book, though.
So why am I talking about all this... other than the fact that I can't waste my time of Facebook without breaking my Lenten vow? Because I just learned a short-coming in the way that I think, which is quite a boon, really.
I just started reading Erdmann on Google Books, which I'd been meaning to do for a while, as I don't have a paper copy... but I've previously been tempted to fuss around with Facebook in lieu of reading the history of philosophy on my computer. Not so with the new Lenten vow in effect.
In the very first paragraph, Erdmann outlines three types of minds:
learners - who have a tendency to treat everything as equally true.
sceptics - who have a tendency to treat everything as equally false.
eclectics - who have a tendency to treat everything as buffet from which to pick and choose bits of truth.
I felt like I was looking in the mirror when I read the description of an eclectic as someone who "discovers fragments of the truth in all." But I didn't really get an insight about this until the eighth section:
A philosophical treatment of the history of philosophy takes an interest, like the merely learned, in the finest difference of systems, admits, with the sceptics, that they conflict with one another, and concedes to the eclectics that there is truth in all. Hence it neither loses sight of the thread of growing knowledge, as the first, nor regards the result as nil, like the second, nor like the third, recognizes in every system pieces of developed truth, but the whole truth only in undeveloped form. And thus it does not, like the first, beguile us into regarding philosophical doctrines as mere fancies and opinions, nor does it, like the second, shake the confidence in reason necessary to philosophy, nor lastly does it, like the eclectic method, make us indifferent towards dependence on a principle, i.e. towards systematic form.
I found this quite insightful because it defines three treatments of philosophy, identifies their strengths and weaknesses, and illustrates the danger of finding oneself weighted too heavily toward any one treatment.
A "philosophical treatment" balances all three tendencies. To give things a philosphical treatment, you need to be learned, skeptical, and eclectic in a balanced way. In my case, that means looking more toward principle and systematic form.
So, I'm currently reigning in my eclectic impulse to correlate this with the three doshas in Ayurveda and am going back to reading Erdmann. Good night.
Today is the first day without Facebook. So far it's quiet.
I must admit that I've found myself composing little status updates in my head periodically throughout the day - most ironically, thinking of status updates to summarize what I am doing and thinking in lieu of Facebook. I think it's part of the withdrawal process.
Status updates are strange little creatures & there is some art in saying what you want to say with brevity, but they also discourage the development of thoughts. I remember when I was in college, taking this "Core" class, which was the bane of my existence at the time, that our professor had this bright idea to have us summarize the gist of each reading assignment in 30 words or less. At the time, I felt like it diminished from the reading to try to over-simplify it. Who knew this skill would come in handy nearly 15 years later in the construction of Facebook status updates? I guess that horrible professor was actually on the cutting edge!
Core was a class that all freshmen had to take at my liberal arts college and thus there were a lot of professors who taught Core. You got assigned randomly - no choice of who your professor was. I got a chemistry professor who was job-sharing a position with her chemistry professor husband and looking to pick up another course to teach for more money.
She was a Catholic scientist who was supposed to teach us the history of Western thought from the Greeks onward. It was excruciatingly painful.
Some people were lucky enough to get philosophy professors for Core. Wow - how great that would have been! I got stuck with someone who was reading a lot of the material for the first time with us, and who was extremely stubborn about her world view (liberal Catholic scientist). She hated me because I continually challenged her in class and I thought differently about things than the rest of the students, so I didn't get any back up either. It was really a miserable, combative experience in class every day - but I was really stubborn - if I thought she was wrong, I couldn't keep my mouth shut.
I read all these greatest hits, but she didn't illuminate them the way a really good professor can. Thank goodness I'd taken A.P. American History, A.P. European History, & lots of really wonderful English classes in high school so I had some context for what I was reading - but when I think back now on the experience, I am angry that I didn't get more out of "Core". What could have been an amazing foundation of knowledge was lackluster, not to mention emotionally scarring at times.
I had much more fruitful breeze through history in Art 101 & 102 through the lens of visual culture... then became firmly rooted in the art and critical thought of the last couple hundred years.
Now I am seeking to round things out to get a fuller picture of the evolution of Western thought. It's time. It's actually well-past time.
There's something really wonderful about seeing your short-comings. People hide from short-comings and weaknesses because it's kind of uncomfortable at first to address 'flaws' in yourself, but when you really see them... then you can resolve or diffuse them. "Knowing's half the battle," so to speak. Since my first Saturn return, my life has continually revealed it's short-comings to me and once I got over the intial shock of this process, I really started enjoying taking steps to round out the short-comings.
One of my short-comings, as a Cancer, is being overly emotional. Couple that short-coming with my nasty Core professor & a couple skeevy/screwball philosophy professors...
Aside: one was female professor who macked on frat boys in her class, tried to join a sorority "as a social experiment", and posed as the cover model on her own book and the other was a guy who married one of his students and made snide comments about how women's brains were more akin to animals that to men's brains. (I was the only girl in that class,except a really butch lesbian).
Okay, back on track! Combining my natural tendency toward over-emotionalism with a few bad &/or crazy professors led to an aversion to philosophy classes, despite the fact that I actually find the subject very interesting. Instead, I came at it from the angle of art and critical theory. Reading Schopenhauer or Nietsche to understand German Expressionism or reading Foucault, Lacan, Derrida, and Barthes to understand Post-Moderism photography made sense. It was practical. But it wasn't very systematic.
I only just recently realized how an uncomfortable response was ingrained in my psyche when I thought of tackling philosophy head-on, as I read this introduction to a modern history of philosophy textbook that DRJ recommended. It gave me a little identity-politics fueled moment of crisis... then I noted this as interesting & finished reading. I ended up liking Bertrand Russell much better than the contemporary book, though.
So why am I talking about all this... other than the fact that I can't waste my time of Facebook without breaking my Lenten vow? Because I just learned a short-coming in the way that I think, which is quite a boon, really.
I just started reading Erdmann on Google Books, which I'd been meaning to do for a while, as I don't have a paper copy... but I've previously been tempted to fuss around with Facebook in lieu of reading the history of philosophy on my computer. Not so with the new Lenten vow in effect.
In the very first paragraph, Erdmann outlines three types of minds:
learners - who have a tendency to treat everything as equally true.
sceptics - who have a tendency to treat everything as equally false.
eclectics - who have a tendency to treat everything as buffet from which to pick and choose bits of truth.
I felt like I was looking in the mirror when I read the description of an eclectic as someone who "discovers fragments of the truth in all." But I didn't really get an insight about this until the eighth section:
A philosophical treatment of the history of philosophy takes an interest, like the merely learned, in the finest difference of systems, admits, with the sceptics, that they conflict with one another, and concedes to the eclectics that there is truth in all. Hence it neither loses sight of the thread of growing knowledge, as the first, nor regards the result as nil, like the second, nor like the third, recognizes in every system pieces of developed truth, but the whole truth only in undeveloped form. And thus it does not, like the first, beguile us into regarding philosophical doctrines as mere fancies and opinions, nor does it, like the second, shake the confidence in reason necessary to philosophy, nor lastly does it, like the eclectic method, make us indifferent towards dependence on a principle, i.e. towards systematic form.
I found this quite insightful because it defines three treatments of philosophy, identifies their strengths and weaknesses, and illustrates the danger of finding oneself weighted too heavily toward any one treatment.
A "philosophical treatment" balances all three tendencies. To give things a philosphical treatment, you need to be learned, skeptical, and eclectic in a balanced way. In my case, that means looking more toward principle and systematic form.
So, I'm currently reigning in my eclectic impulse to correlate this with the three doshas in Ayurveda and am going back to reading Erdmann. Good night.