Agnoiologist

I really like Mike Singletary:

All I know is right now, when I look at the situation we had yesterday, we go on the road, we play a team, we lose, you come back, you’ve got a choice to make, do you dwell on that - ‘Wow, I wish we would have won the game. Man, I wish we would have done this differently. Man, I wish we would have done that differently.’ No. I think you take it. You’re man enough take it. You chew it. You spit it out. You learn from it and you get ready for the next game. You get ready for the next opportunity. I think winners let it go. Winners move forward. I think losers sit there and just wallow in it and talk about it all week. And, it screws you up for the next opportunity going forward.

I really loved this piece, “Professor Noonan? No Thanks,” attacking Noonan’s writing style.

I particularly enjoyed this paragraph:

Of course, Noonan has spent her career demonstrating that this distrust and disrespect are well-earned. Her writing traffics in the prosaic and the vague. She does not get to the point. Instead, she hovers above the point, looking down in a manner that is supposed to be magisterial and dignified. She sighs softly, clucks her tongue, and tosses words in the general direction of ideas.

That last sentence is gorgeous. It’s a refreshing way to express the idea that her writing is weak. The verb “tossing” is key. I just can feel how weak and absent passion her prose would be.

I went to Davis this weekend, and I didn’t get a chance to make any last-second changes to my fantasy football roster. I have a feeling this “having a life” thing may interfere with fantasy football domination.

I’ve been doing some IT work for this company in Vegas, and today is the first time that something worked on the first try. This being my first time working with Windows Server 2003, I had so many issues figuring out how to get things to work. And not only did one thing work on the first try, but a second thing worked on the first try. Furthermore, this second thing was something that I wasn’t sure would work in the first place. I am so shocked. I must have some luck; I should go play some poker.

Tonight, I line-danced in another man’s shoes.

No, that isn’t a contrived metaphor, but a literal description of how I spent my night. They wouldn’t have let me in wearing my flippy-floppies.

Today’s meditation session wasn’t great. My mind was racing. Sometimes I would take a breath and it would interrupt my thought with emptiness. That felt good.

By the end, I hadn’t achieved the state that I would like, but I did feel really calm. I felt equanimity, which was good, and something I haven’t felt in a long time. I have been craving. And I had been leaning toward a philosophy of constant craving and goal-setting and ambition. I don’t outright reject the latter two, but after feeling equanimity… Hell, it’s a lot better than craving. It may even be more productive, but I’m not sure. Sometimes I write great things when I’m filled with emotion.

Okay, I guess I don’t have to choose to live completely one way or the other. In any case, it would be good to cultivate this equanimity. It feels good to switch things off without distracting one’s self with television. (Note: I still love television.)

Today was fun. I tried out meditation, for like 10 minutes in the morning. I figured I’d try to start small and ease back into it after not doing it for years. I thought about different events, but then tried to focus back on breathing. What was odd, though, was that my mind kept narrating things. I kept thinking about how I’d tell the story of my meditation session. It was not very productive, I’ll tell you that. I think meditation will help me become more mindful and cure some of my resurgent narcissism.

I spent the rest of the day hanging out with my friend. It took us somewhere around 4 hours to film 3 lines. This wasn’t because we were lazy, but because there was a lot of prep to do. Part of it was making hats. At one point, I noted, “You know, if we had jobs, we could just buy hats.” I guess (relative) poverty forces you into creative fixes.

Afterwards, we watched the season premiere of House. I fucking love television. Lately, I’ve been struggling with being authentic. I went on a hike the other day. It was fun, and I want to do more stuff like that. I want to be exciting some days, but I also want to be a guy who uses some nights to just sit at home and enjoy some television. I had a good time watching TV with my friend. I really, really miss my old roommates and watching TV with them.

… well, I’m done writing this. I just realized how much I miss everyone who was in my life back at JHU. Wow.

I haven’t been commenting on politics lately because the depth of my ignorance is amazing. I don’t know shit about policy. And I don’t want to comment on the horse-race issues. I don’t want to talk about whether Obama’s health care speech made him look good or not. A real citizen should care more about what health care reform will do. The odd thing, though, is that I’m not informed enough to really know the answer, and most people aren’t either. Yet democracy is all partly about convincing this ignorant people to support health care reform. This sounds elitist. I used to have a deep-seated article of faith that the people were always right. Right now, I don’t have many deep-seated beliefs. They make one stagnant and dogmatic. I like having principles, but every single one of my convictions is always up for empirical analysis.

Part of the way around this is to read the right people. Believe the correct experts. This isn’t an impossible task. First, filter out the liars and the spin-masters. Then, look for people who are deeply interested in the issue. With the power of the internet, I guarantee you that this isn’t a Herculean task. If enough people listen to the right people, then democracy works out pretty well. Even though I may listen to the right people, which I do sometimes, I don’t care to blog about it because I don’t want to regurgitate. I need to become an expert in something, instead of dicking around in generalities.

Finally, I haven’t been commenting much because I don’t have much love for Barack Obama. No, no, I haven’t flipped back to the Republican Party. I certainly don’t want to be associated with the jackasses in charge of that party. I don’t think Republicans are jackasses, but I think the party is controlled by jackasses.

Here is my problem with Barack Obama: Preventative Detention. On civil liberties, Obama has been as dangerous and disingenuous as Bush. Here, he broke his promises. He has not created a more transparent government.

Yes, politicians are apt to break promises. And I wasn’t expecting him to be perfect after the debacle with warrantless eavesdropping, but preventative detention should be some joke. It should be a phrase devised by a Swiftian satirist, not a legitimate phrase. It is more chilling than even harsh interrogation (or whatever euphemism of the week they’ve switched to these days — and by they I mean both the politicians and the mainstream media).

Obama may do great things. He may reform healthcare, save the country from an economic crisis, help stave off global warming, but none of this really matters if he fails us on civil liberties. He may save the body, but he is destroying the soul. So, yes, I said it, Barack Obama threatens to destroy the soul of America. Now I sound like a ridiculous jackass. I was wishing I’d sound more like Cicero.

I hate to go all doom and gloom. It is at this point that I wonder if the America I know will disappear. It is an inevitable thought after I invoke Cicero. The troubling thing about Cicero is that by some accounts, the Republic was pretty much already dead by the time Cicero was around. See Sulla. Perhaps everyone will look back and see the fall of America at about the time it became an empire.

It becomes even more discouraging when preventative detention isn’t on the front page of newspapers. I don’t want to say we’re myopic as a culture and too focused on the day to day. Everybody has those tendencies (or rather, cognitive biases against long-term rewards), and it is unsurprising that this would manifest itself at the societal level. It is useless to rail against this myopia. I’m amazed at the Founders’ genius. They didn’t say, “I wish people were less ambitious. This government thing would be easier. I guess it will never work.” Instead, they set ambition against ambition and set up multiple branches of government.

Look how resilient America is. We survived McCarthyism, did we not? We still have freedom, even though we were the country of both slavery and Jim Crow. Interesting feat, isn’t it? Slavery trampled upon ancient freedoms more than any offense Barack Obama could commit against the Constitution. Hell, we have a black president. Holy fucking shit. That’s progress. So I’m not full of despair.

A few things truly set my soul alight when it comes to politics. The first two, which are interrelated, are civil liberties and ending the empire. I don’t want America to even have the ability to start any war it wants. In fact, my radical idea is to eliminate our standing armies, but maintain our strong navies. Yes, this will mean we will be unable to prevent some atrocities. However, we never fixed Darfur anyway and we start much more shit than we fix. We should not be able to project military power anywhere because this power will be abused. It is not a matter of being more responsible because you can’t shift human nature. The next thing that sets my soul afire is the issue of corporate money in politics. That’s the biggest structural source of corruption right now. At least, it seems so from my very ignorant point of view. I suppose it would be wise to add Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights to my reading list.

There are other issues that I think are very important, but they don’t speak to my soul the same way. I have to listen to my soul. I have to focus.

“Reality is my drug. The more I have of it, the more power I get and the higher I feel.” — 50 Cent

I’m currently re-reading Robert Greene and 50 Cent’s new book, The 50th Law. On my first read-through, I thought that was just a cool quote. In fact, even on my second read-through I could only appreciate it in some abstract sense. A few days ago, though, I experienced the truth of that quote.

I will leave out the insight, even though this makes for less compelling writing, because it is a bit personal. Thus, I will speak a bit abstractly. What happened was I recognized a connection between two incidents that were spaced years apart. I saw a pattern in my behavior that I hadn’t noticed before. With incredible clarity, I realized mistakes that I had made.

Normally, recognizing one’s failures isn’t a cause for joy. But instead of despair, there was an odd detachment. I recognized what I had done without judgment. I simply saw the world as it was. It was then that the rush came. I felt a high better than any buzz I had received from alcohol. The only thing I can compare it to is a peak experience.

I also felt the power. I pierced through the world’s obfuscations; I pierced through my worldview, biases, and delusions. This is true power, is it not? It’s an ability to learn from one’s mistakes without dealing with emotional baggage. It’s an ability to see the world without any distortions.

Ah, this is only the beginning. I need more. Slowly, ever so slowly, I am changing the way my mind works.

I love Cicero. But the thing about Cicero is that he never saved the Republic and he got himself killed.