Skepticism is a way to solve problems

Given the modern usage of “skeptic” this doesn’t make a lot of sense.  When we say “I’m skeptical” it seems to me what we’re articulating now is that we’re wary of belief or that we’re hesitant to even fully consider some opinion or another (likely because of our prior beliefs).

  

Ancient Skepticism asks us to deeply consider the belief and also deeply consider a contrary belief.  If we’re incapable of coming up with a competing theory that’s compelling, the Skeptics would say we need to work on that capacity so we are able to suspend judgement and thereby attain tranquility. 

When problem solving, it’s valuable to create both a plan of action and a competing plan of action. If we don’t have much attachment to one particular plan, we can create two divergent plans that both accomplish the same goal.  If one of the plans just doesn’t look good enough, we’re not working hard enough on exploring/choosing alternatives.  The tension between the two gives each plan more strength. Since the goal is the same, it may not matter a whole lot which plan you end up choosing. Even if you have to choose before fully developing a secondary plan, this way of thinking can enrich the plan.

Regarding tranquility, YMMV.

Hobbits are Epicureans

Well not exactly but close enough.

When Tolstoy writes about his aristocratic epicurean friends, a voice in my head responds, “Let’s not disparage the Epicureans, old man.”

Epicureans were into simple pleasures and promoted a simpler life than even the Hobbits. But there are a lot of similarities. They’re both into gardens and love their food and friendships. Neither group was aspiring to power or wealth beyond basic sustenance. Neither was after the hifalutin pursuit of the good and both were into mostly keeping to themselves.

It’s those nasty Stoics like Aragorn and Gandalf that get in the way of their peace and quiet.

In any case there’s some sort of morality trap when you start to over rationalize goodness instead of just trying to provide aponia to yourself and the people around you. Many of our daily choices have global consequences now and you need a super rationality to make sure each act is “good”. But that’s really inhuman, we’re terrible at that. We’re better at treating each other well when we have strong contextual cues, when our needs are met by people who are in close proximity.

The wider world has encroached on the Shire though so what to do?

It’s likely impossible at this point but we should rehumanize, hobbitize, epicurianize.

I mean unless you feel like you’re Gandalf and can go slay the Balrog and all that. By all means, go do it. And if you’re Frodo too, go ahead and heed the calling.

I’ll see if I can keep the Shire going while you’re gone.

dogs are better than people

Simon is an asshole.

When we walk him he tries to attack strangers. You might think he’s all bark and no bite but he’ll definitely bite. You have to keep him away from everyone. He will only treat people well after he’s met them a few times and they’ve greeted him in the right ways (usually with treats). He also growls whenever hears the voice of a child. He hates kids. Even with the people he knows and presumably likes, he’ll lose it sometimes and end up biting. You have to watch out for subtle cues. He’s bitten me a couple times, I don’t think he’s drawn blood but that’s just because luckily I was wearing clothing where he was biting. We can’t take him to the vet without muzzling him.

Every time I walk towards Sarah he follows me around and he’ll growl at me especially if I kiss her for too long. It’s like living with a junior high chaperone.

He’s a rescue dog so that likely explains a lot of his behavior but we’ve had him for quite a while and his behavior hasn’t moderated nearly as much as we thought it would. He’s also pretty disgusting (I’ll spare you the details). His main redeeming quality compared to other dogs is that he’s cute and small.

Even with all these negative traits, interacting with him is usually a pleasure. Why is that?

Well, it’s because he’s not a human. I've always been overly conscientious and empathetic so interacting with people has an emotional cost. He’s not carrying around a bunch of human concerns so when I interact with him I’m forced into another state of mind. He can’t tell me his problems or relate to mine. He’s just focused on dog things like treats and smells and sometimes a belly rub. He’s got serious issues so that has taken a lot of time to work through but it’s all been an escape of sorts.

Interacting with him is a shortcut to getting out of myself. I know there are people out there who aren’t into animals and likely can’t experience this escape. I don’t trust them.

blagging like it's 2008

As you've seen, I'm out here blagging again.

The reason I started blagging again is because Bob decided it might be a good idea to get back into the blagosphere when reddit seemed to be imploding.  So I figured Bob would start to blag but I haven't seen much yet.

I don't really want to be using blogger anymore but I know switching platforms will slow down my blagspeed.  What I'd really like is a static site publishing blag software that I run myself.  It's not a huge deal to blag like that but like I said, don't want to put obstacles in the way of the blagging energy i've got right now.

I also don't really care about comments, I'd rather not have them and also these sharing icons need to go. If you're reading this you're likely my friend and we can chat about subject matter on telegram or irc or something.  If you really want to have some in depth discussion, write about it on your blag and if I ever really make my own platform i'll start doing tracebacks (remember those?) using referrers.

when meaninglessness matters

I was skimming my old blog posts and ended up re-reading this old article about Tolstoy going through a sort of midlife crisis. Given the way our friend Nath died, this quote in particular felt poignant:

The third escape is that of strength and energy. It consists in destroying life, when one has understood that it is an evil and an absurdity. A few exceptionally strong and consistent people act so. Having understood the stupidity of the joke that has been played on them, and having understood that it is better to be dead than to be alive, and that it is best of all not to exist, they act accordingly and promptly end this stupid joke, since there are means: a rope round one’s neck, water, a knife to stick into one’s heart, or the trains on the railways; and the number of those of our circle who act in this way becomes greater and greater, and for the most part they act so at the best time of their life, when the strength of their mind is in full bloom and few habits degrading to the mind have as yet been acquired…

Reading through the whole thing I thought Thomas Nagel’s The Absurd is probably a good response to it or at least a place from which to see the types of mistakes he’s making. Tolstoy was in a really bad mood. A long mood for sure but a mood and that was his fundamental problem which led to all this rationalistic churn he couldn't seem to find his way out of rationally.

And that oddly enough brought me back to this Camus quote from the Myth of Sysiphus which hits on the problem nicely:

Great feelings take with them their own universe, splendid or abject. They light up with their passion an exclusive world in which they recognize their climate. There is a universe of jealousy, of ambition, of selfishness, or of generosity. A universe—in other words, a metaphysic and an attitude of mind.

The thing is, when you’re feeling good, it doesn’t matter if life is meaningless. And if you’re feeling bad, it doesn’t matter if life is meaningful. What matters is how you feel and you'll take that feeling into your rationalizing (as our Scottish friend likes to say, "reason is the slave of the passions").

And I've rarely had rationalizing get me out of a mood. To get out of my long mood I needed art (flow) and I needed a lot of it. I needed a change of practice.

(If only there was a balm, we could call it mood-be-gone. This is why my psychotherapist aunt is always trying to get people to take drugs.)

What is Taos?

When my grandpa returned from World War II, he married his sweetheart. They built a house in Ranchos and my grandma gave birth to their first two children. It was hard to find work in Taos so they moved to Utah where he had a position at the army depot. They left their house but didn’t sell it immediately as they intended to return eventually. A couple of his siblings too (and other Taoseños) made the migration north.

At some point in the 80s my grandpa and one of my uncles went back to Ranchos, fixed up the house and sold it. Recently I learned they sold it to one of my grandpa’s nephews (Sonny). Sonny asked my grandpa why they were selling and he said “we aren’t going to move back, too much of the family is in Utah now and we want to be with them”. When we bought our place in Ranchos Sonny said “welcome back”.

Taos for me is a return. A return to nature from the city, to the west from the east, to the past from a dehumanized present, to family from strangers. A return of my grandparents to their home.

Utah has some good things about it (especially southern Utah) and there’s still so much family there but it also has some negative things I’d rather not surround myself with for the rest of my life. At first I thought I wanted to move back there but a few summers in Utah cured me. Heading to Taos in the middle of summer for a respite from Utah really clarified where I want to be. For my grandparents Utah was a mixed bag. Their children generally were more successful than the children of those who stayed in Taos. There was more economic opportunity in Utah overall and that may still be the case today.

My grandparents are gone. Their headstone is in Utah but their souls are in Taos. When I touch and smell adobe walls I’m with them again. When I speak and break bread with their nephews, we’re together again.

The Fiestas are this weekend and sadly, we’re away.

Viva los conquistadores! Viva la gente de Taos!

get in where you fit in

Nath (the philosophical friend of ours) wrote about a “calling” being one reason for moving back to Utah from Seattle. I’m not sure what he meant by that and he didn’t clarify.

For me a calling isn’t something profound you get from a religious experience but simply what you get when you recognize who you are as a puzzle piece in the larger things happening around you. When you don’t find that spot or find that your puzzle piece doesn’t really fit anywhere you might feel life isn’t worthwhile.

You might also just have oversized expectations for meaning. This life has meager offerings and the religious narratives many of us were raised with no longer provide a whole lot when you can no longer personally take them seriously.

The meager offerings life provides are a context you’re born into and your genetics. Using these you can derive a lot of things about what you should do with your life. This is probably why I don’t feel like I lack direction though figuring out what to do may take some discovery.

Secondarily, if I look to what life aspires toward and give myself those things (food, shelter, exercise, health, growth, yada), I can take a sort of side path to give myself meaning. What does a body need? I better give body that stuff. Feeling like shit? probably better sleep on it.

The larger sense of meaning that many religious narratives seem to provide is something like your whole life being one big video game created specifically for you. In this video game every choice is uniquely designed for you and even if things don’t seem to make sense, in the end there’s a video game creator who will give you justice.

Even if some version of the video game narrative were true I don’t see how the “calling” would be a whole lot different. I’m mostly into pursuing the overlap between what you’re good at, what’s valuable to the world and what you find personally satisfying (assuming there is something in that space). All other routes including good for good’s sake, rationalistic pursuit of the good (or whatever) seem to have negative surprises along the path (ressentiment).

In any case, I know of no sense of meaning that can’t be demolished in an instant. Viktor Frankl seems to think there’s something special about how we endure suffering. I have a lot of respect for the guy but I’m brought back to Hölderlin:

“We speak of our hearts, of our plans, as if they were ours; yet there is a power outside of us that tosses us here and there as it pleases until it lays us in the grave, and of which we know not where it comes nor where it is bound.

We want to grow upward, and spread wide our branches and twigs, yet soil and weather bring us to whatever is to be, and when the lightning strikes your crown and splits you to the roots, poor tree! What part have you in it?”

friend of the devil

I was raised as an evangelical Christian. Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that. I was baptized Catholic and my dad was an ex-Mormon but my mom and dad divorced when I was 6 months old. My mom’s parents helped raise me those first few years but my mom “became a Christian” when I was probably 3. I “became a Christian” when I was four and got baptized when I was twelve. I went to an evangelical Christian school and all that.

During my first few years of college I was involved in an evangelical Christian group and attended bible studies and such. I was pretty into the imitation of Christ and tried to get others in the group to “be more committed to Christ’s teachings and example” or something. As I studied more philosophy I became less of an evangelical and more of what I’d call now a theologically oriented and then agnostic Christian.

One day a friend of mine wanted to meet me for breakfast at McDonald’s. She was a fairly close friend of mine who I’d discussed quite a few things with. She was from the UK and a bit of a feminist. A few friends and I had been distancing ourselves from the activities in the group mostly because we were engaging with non-Christians and I was studying theology and philosophy with an ex-Mormon friend who was taking similar classes. This is how my approach to evangelism had always been, at least since middle school. I would talk to strangers and friends about God but refused to do it in any sort of scripted way.

So I meet my friend at McDonald’s and we start eating and drinking coffee. At some point she brings up how me and a few friends haven’t been as engaged with the group and tells me I’m being “used by Satan” and “leading people astray”. At this point I get up from the table and get ready to leave. She starts crying and tries to get me to stay but I walked out.

At first I was mad at her but it didn’t take long until that wore off and I realized how much she was just being used and it was the evangelical Christian context that was creating and defending these kinds of behaviors.

That moment at McDonald’s was both clarifying and freeing. From there on it was soo easy to see what was happening and I could step away from that group without remorse. At some point months later she apologized and asked me to forgive her but at that point I was already just happy about the whole thing and told her no hard feelings.

In the end I was really grateful. This friend too passed away in the last few years.

Rest in Peace. And thanks. And hail Satan!

the things you aspire to are no longer available

That to me is the crux of the midlife crisis.  Not all of us go through it but I'm in that age range and I can speak to it a bit.

For a while there I was just done.  It wasn't that I was depressed but I was sad and increasingly unwilling to put up with much nonsense at all.  And as you well know, this life throws a lot of shit at us so an unwillingness to put up with nonsense can be incapacitating.

My cousin Chris died and his death wiped the horizon.  The possibilities for the future changed.  Things I thought would eventually happen with him and his family were no longer going to happen.  I'm not the kind of guy who tries to have a lot of expectations and I don't believe in doing much planning for that reason (though I do a lot of contingency planning).  However, even someone like me has unwitting expectations in place that apparently can be shattered at a moment's notice.

Chris's death wasn't the only disappointment I experienced.  Professionally I was successful but increasingly irritated by the work and rolling that same rock up that same hill again and again.  When you're a cog in a company machine the value of your work is contingent upon other people's values and ability to deliver.

To say I'm disappointed in others is an understatement.  They've given up the game.  At this point it also seems evident the game was rigged from the beginning, we won't as a group overcome some really significant problems.  The snowball that brought us here has been rolling a long time and it's really picking up steam.  This problem requires significant re-framing.

When it comes to health, you start to see it at 40, sometimes earlier, sometimes a bit later but you'll start to see the signs of your inevitable demise.  And weird shit like hairs that grow who knows where and why (Ear lobe hair, what the fuck is that for?).  You get to the point that you must exercise (your exercise routine will likely be unique to your body) in order to just keep basic functionality going and you know it will get worse.

Long ago I aspired to create something inspired that would speak across generations.  I wanted to create a great work.  Now that just seems futile, the future isn't what it used to be.  

So I found myself in that space and started to put my energy into artistic expression because it's an easy spot for me to find intrinsic value.  I poured and poured myself into that and all the sudden I'm ready to be a good cog again.  

Phew.

death in the family

A philosophical friend of ours passed away in 2019.  I only learned of it in February of this year.  He was one of the most influential people in my life.  It wasn't that we spent so much time together or were very close in the last decade or so but during college we struggled though a number of issues together and pressure tested some lived philosophy.  In the last message I had from him, a few months before his death, he was reminiscing on those times fondly.  My emails from there on out went unanswered and I didn't know why.  He wasn't the most consistent communicator over the years so I didn't think too much about it.  He had expressed the desire to meet up next time I was in town so when I didn't hear from him I searched the internet and found his obituary. It was an odd way to learn of a death.  And it's odd to mourn, years late.

Here's one of the last images I sent him (never received).  He always loved the Tetons. Rest in peace, friend.  I wish we could have one more meeting of minds, it might have made a difference.