"the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful; it is that they are unconscious"

Excellent little meditation on awareness, reframing and dealing with our default perspectives from David Foster Wallace (2005).

via reddit

Whitman's sentiment

16
I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise,
Regardless of others, ever regardful of others,
Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man,
Stuff'd with the stuff that is coarse and stuff'd with the stuff
    that is fine,
One of the Nation of many nations, the smallest the same and the
    largest the same,
A Southerner soon as a Northerner, a planter nonchalant and
    hospitable down by the Oconee I live,
A Yankee bound my own way ready for trade, my joints the limberest
    joints on earth and the sternest joints on earth,
A Kentuckian walking the vale of the Elkhorn in my deer-skin
    leggings, a Louisianian or Georgian,
A boatman over lakes or bays or along coasts, a Hoosier, Badger, Buckeye;
At home on Kanadian snow-shoes or up in the bush, or with fishermen
    off Newfoundland,
At home in the fleet of ice-boats, sailing with the rest and tacking,
At home on the hills of Vermont or in the woods of Maine, or the
    Texan ranch,
Comrade of Californians, comrade of free North-Westerners, (loving
    their big proportions,)
Comrade of raftsmen and coalmen, comrade of all who shake hands
    and welcome to drink and meat,
A learner with the simplest, a teacher of the thoughtfullest,
A novice beginning yet experient of myriads of seasons,
Of every hue and caste am I, of every rank and religion,
A farmer, mechanic, artist, gentleman, sailor, quaker,
Prisoner, fancy-man, rowdy, lawyer, physician, priest.

I resist any thing better than my own diversity,
Breathe the air but leave plenty after me,
And am not stuck up, and am in my place.

(The moth and the fish-eggs are in their place,
The bright suns I see and the dark suns I cannot see are in their place,
The palpable is in its place and the impalpable is in its place.)

17
These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they
    are not original with me,
If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing, or next to nothing,
If they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle they are nothing,
If they are not just as close as they are distant they are nothing.

This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is,
This the common air that bathes the globe.

Walt Whitman "Song of Myself" Leaves of Grass (Project Gutenberg)

I like these lines as a snapshot of Whitman's larger project in Leaves of Grass which was something like "preach every one to everyone else". A friend of mine graduated law school recently and one of the profs quoted some Whitman to express the job of the lawyer. The prof didn't explain it so clearly but what I think she meant, from the lines of Whitman she read was "you need to learn to be the voice of every man". Because as lawyers they must be the voice for those they represent.

--
Compare Whitman's sentiment in the lines above with Nietzsche's sentiment:

“Pity for all”— would be hardness and tyranny toward you, my dear neighbor!—

BGE IV #82 (Kaufmann)

His statement is helpful as we think about morality in a more global context but the attitude associated with it isn't one I want to adopt. Nietzsche does recognize that generosity is genuine when produced by an overflow of the spirit (i'll have to dig up that quote) but I don't think he was after a generosity of spirit directly. It seems better to aim towards something closer to Whitman's attitude.

philosophy as therapy

At first glance, in fact, one might wonder if the conceptions of wisdom were really all that different among the schools. All Hellenistic schools seemed to define it in approximately the same terms: first and foremost, as a state of perfect peace of mind. From this viewpoint, philosophy appears as a remedy for human worries, anguish, and misery brought about, for the Cynics, by social constraints and conventions; for the Epicureans, by the quest for false pleasures; for the Stoics, by the pursuit of pleasure and egoistic self interest; and for the Skeptics, by false opinions. Whether or not they laid claim to the Socratic heritage, all Hellenistic philosophers agreed with Socrates that human beings are plunged in misery, anguish, and evil because they exist in ignorance. Evil is to be found not within things, but in the value judgments which people bring to bear upon things. People can therefore be cured of their ills only if they are persuaded to change their value judgments, and in this sense, all these philosophies wanted to be therapeutic. In order to change our value judgments, however, we must make a radical choice to change our entire way of thinking and way of being. This choice is the choice of philosophy, and it is thanks to it that we may obtain inner tranquility and peace of mind.

Pierre Hadot "What is Ancient Philosophy" p. 102

I like this quote in conjunction with this Nietzschean pluralism I posted a while ago.

Being philosophically minded. -- We usually endeavour to acquire a single deportment of feeling, a single attitude of mind towards all the events and situations of life - that above all is what is called being philosophically minded. But for the enrichment of knowledge it may be of more value not to reduce oneself to uniformity in this way, but to listen instead to the gentle voice of each of life's different situations; these will suggest the attitude of mind appropriate to them. Through thus ceasing to treat oneself as a single rigid and unchanging individuum one takes an intelligent interest in the life and being of many others. (HAH, I, 618)

What I really want to say though is this --

Whatever you are after, head straight for it. Don't get caught up in distractions. (false religion/false philosophy/etc.)

introverts of the world, unite!

Oh, wait... that would involve other people.

My friend bob wrote this recently and I relate to the sentiment.

I do know that I’ve “been out there and tried to mix with those animals”, and while it hasn’t left me full of humiliated confusion, it has left me with a desire not to mix with those animals. Which is how I’ve felt the past few days. Unmotivated and not liking people. Camille thinks this is directly related to how much sleep I get. I think that is an interesting theory. So, how about I take this week to write a post a day? Then we can see how my mood changes with the passing days. Or how my lack of motivation is reflected by my lack of posting. Ok, here goes then. As Henry Rollins says, “This time is real. Your time is now. It’s hero time.”

a Nietzschean pluralism

Being philosophically minded. -- We usually endeavour to acquire a single deportment of feeling, a single attitude of mind towards all the events and situations of life - that above all is what is called being philosophically minded. But for the enrichment of knowledge it may be of more value not to reduce oneself to uniformity in this way, but to listen instead to the gentle voice of each of life's different situations; these will suggest the attitude of mind appropriate to them. Through thus ceasing to treat oneself as a single rigid and unchanging individuum one takes an intelligent interest in the life and being of many others. (HAH, I, 618)

why bother changing the way we live?

For us to wait for legislation or technology to solve the problem of how we’re living our lives suggests we’re not really serious about changing — something our politicians cannot fail to notice. They will not move until we do. Indeed, to look to leaders and experts, to laws and money and grand schemes, to save us from our predicament represents precisely the sort of thinking — passive, delegated, dependent for solutions on specialists — that helped get us into this mess in the first place. It’s hard to believe that the same sort of thinking could now get us out of it.
...
You begin to see that growing even a little of your own food is, as Wendell Berry pointed out 30 years ago, one of those solutions that, instead of begetting a new set of problems — the way “solutions” like ethanol or nuclear power inevitably do — actually beget other solutions, and not only of the kind that save carbon. Still more valuable are the habits of mind that growing a little of your own food can yield. You quickly learn that you need not be dependent on specialists to provide for yourself — that your body is still good for something and may actually be enlisted in its own support. If the experts are right, if both oil and time are running out, these are skills and habits of mind we’re all very soon going to need. We may also need the food. Could gardens provide it? Well, during World War II, victory gardens supplied as much as 40 percent of the produce Americans ate.

From this short article by Michael Pollan.