What I was listening to while writing the previous post

What I was listening to when writing the previous post. 10 times and counting. Perhaps that can explain.

I have a tendency to loop songs consciously and unconsciously. Add me there if you have an account.

Anyway, here it is:

Moby – Everloving

Philosophy: Am I needed?

I feel so mouldy. I’ve been at home (home referring to my house and the few places I frequent to such an extent that they qualify to be my ‘home’— I guess the internet is counted too) ever since PW ended, eating the same things (or the lack of), doing the same things, thinking about the same things (or the lack of). I feel like doing something ‘crazy’. But how ‘crazy’ can anything get? As far as I’m concerned, it will get nowhere. Nothing surprises me, nothing makes me feel what I have never felt before. I am eternally bored.

If you haven’t caught it, I wrote this in my self-introduction for a short period:

..One thing you should know is that anything and everything makes me feel bored. I can get interested, but I must be bored at the same time. If not, the lack of the bored persona will result in insanity. Nietzsche does not like this. I am sad. Sartre raises an eyebrow at me. He says, ‘angst’…

So do I mean that I want to be insane? For Neech to like me? (am just poking fun) Frankly speaking, I don’t care for them (philosophers or philosophers who don’t call themselves philosophers and whatnot) anymore. The fascination is somewhat gone. Why?

Speaking directly, it’s because I’ve been exposed to a fatal amount of them for the past week. I feel like my brain has been displaced and at this same awkward moment, the new material (gosh, this sounds so horribly like memes. No way.) does not feel comfortably adjusted at home.

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Speaking more sensibly, it’s because I’ve been thinking of a topic for my thesis (I thought I’d settled on one but no) and  I TELL YOU: I DISCOVERED THAT WHATEVER I THOUGHT THAT I HAVEN’T READ HAVE BEEN SAID BY DEAD PEOPLE CENTURIES AGO.

I really felt like breaking down when I encountered a major incidence of something like that (something that mattered to me)— it’s like you feel that your work has been plagarised but at the same time knowing that it should be the other way around.

I felt like a talking toy duck programmed to be special yet repeatable. Alright, I don’t make a lot of sense in the previous sentence. But I felt like my life has been drawn out of me.

If this were taken to science— it’s like a person in the 21st century (who didn’t read up) ‘discovering’ the law of gravity and was so glad to have done so, only to discover that it had already been ‘discovered’ by this other guy.

But that’s alright, there are so many other things to think about in science. Or maybe not, but whatever.

(For example, I’ve thought about Hume’s Is-Ought before I knew it was already in literature there was a name for it, environmental anthropocentrism– weak and strong, the other ethics stuff, the general epistemology stuff — I’m sure everyone has had such encounters with this one and whatnot— I do not proclaim myself to be ’special’) I’m totally alright with those being already in literature but the problem is that I wanted to do something for my thesis and during research, I find out that it has already been done. I do not like to repeat— referencing and stepping on the shoulders of ‘giants’ is okay but at least an appreciable measure of the paper should be original. But of course, I am aware of how things can be repeated and are normal (that’s why there are so many schools where there are many members).

I feel drained. And perhaps, substitutable. But that’s what I’ve thought of philosophy and stuff for a long time— that what you’ll be doing is most likely to be done or will be done. So I very much prefer to be either in something that explicitly says that (loosely speaking) everyone is substitutable (like non-research science and medicine) or a service-oriented field that applies substitutable knowledge to be unsubstitutable.

I am aware that there should be a lot of weak links or bad logic in this post, and even bad language but I can’t bring myself to ‘correct’ them. I feel, like I said, very mouldy, in the breathless-in-a-heavily-perfumed-room kind of way.

Bye.

Hilarious BAD Quotes

I received my usual quotation of the day and as usual, it was funny so I went to google for more and came across these epic ones:

“Jake liked his women the way he liked his kiwi fruit; sweet, yet tart, firm-fleshed yet yielding to the touch, and covered with short brown hair.”

-Gretchen Schmidt

Entry in San Jose State’s bad writing contest: 1989

“As she fell face down into the black muck of the mud-wrestling pit, her sweaty 300-pound opponent muttering soft curses in Latin on top of her, Sister Marie thought “There is no doubt about it; the Pope has betrayed me.” “

-Richard Savastio

Entry in San Jose State’s bad writing contest: 1983

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ROFLOLMAO. I was laughing out loud until I’ve got a pain in my tummy. They made my day. They indeed live up to their name— bad.

To see more equally laughable (but not as ridiculous) quotes within that page: http://www.helium.com/items/1290839-writing-quotes

Sketch / Drawing: What I have been doing today

Click for the larger version

What I have been doing: I have made an extremely irrelevant but nevertheless enriching (un-boring) trip down to a place for a relevant task for a person that wasn’t fulfilled. But at least it made my day less boring and proved that I can actually draw (not too bad)! And the person admits it looks like him.

Took this with my cellphone camera though it does not show well— maybe just a 70% efficiency. I expect highly from technology.  Both my scanners are weird. The first one which was abandoned for the second one was moldy and the second one had too high a contrast, leading to an almost complete white out.

The book on the piano is mine. It’s Nausea by Sartre and I’ve been reading it and I like it.

Existential phenomenology?! Bwwaattt?!!

I think:

Quantum physics is to physics is as existential phenomenology is to philosophy.

In the same way how Feyeraband complains that modern physicists are wasting too many young bloods to a wasteful brain-drain endeavour– quantum physics.

(I fully understand and appreciate existentialism though but.. huh??!!)

Have been wandering around the net and all I see that is original and written by people who are alive on youtube, on blogs is ‘existential phenomenology’. Was researching a topic for my thesis and no matter what I search, I’ll be bound to return to the two words again.

And along with the fact that I don’t understand what the heck is Heidegger talking about… (in the wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sein_und_Zeit)

I feel like it’s either I’m really stupid and missing out on a lot of things or that I am sane and balanced. Me being me, I tend to think that it’s the former.

Near-death encounter in a dream that got me living

I was taking an approximately 3 hour nap an hour ago. Although I was frustrated that a nap of such a magnitude and needlessness occurred, I was ‘glad’ that I took that nap. I dreamt and after that dream, I will never entertain any thoughts of willing voluntary death on myself for ill-founded reasons. It was also odd because it was one of the only dreams where I was not conscious that it was a dream— until much later when I was awaking. And this dream affirmed what I thought about dreams— that even if they are irrational in a certain way, they are founded on what you believe about the personality of characters appearing in your dream.

Because I did not immediately write anything down or forcefully commit it to memory, some parts might be missing. I was too relieved that it was just a dream (such a dream of this nature only happened once before— when I was 5/6 and I dreamt of skeletons circling around my bed and I was in the land of ghosts and so on). Also, at least 3 other dreams took place together with this dream.

I shall be brief about the dream:

For some odd reasons that I forgot (but it was a really ridiculous and light reason), my entire family was sentenced to capital punishment— all of us are to be executed. But another leap in the logic appeared and only my brother and I are to die. And so, fast-forward… my brother is killed.

Bear in mind that in my dream landscape, the venue that all these are taking place was more like a classroom (just an empty room with body-sized) holes dug in the ground and a pile of soil at the foot of it to bury people?) than anything and there was literally no guards or anything like a courtroom or place-where-you-execute-people or a jail. My mind got the ‘burial’ picture from Star Trek TOS episode 2 or 3 and the room from my school.

And I was talking to my mom. I didn’t want to end up dying because heck— any parent would be insane if both of their children died. Especially my parents. Because they see children as a kind of human stock or whatever but in a more compassionate sense, I should add. To deplete their children would be to go bankrupt. That is why in life in real time, I do not want to do anything dumb that concerns my existence because as horrible as things get, they did not choose to invest in me as their stock, as their child. They are, as unfortunate as me if you were to take it that way. That is also why I feel sorry for being their child.

Also (back to the dream), I was scared— but this was because I thought I was going to be buried alive— a logic leap. Does this mean that in real life, I see little difference in death and being buried alive— or at least being alive after death? Mistaking it for being buried alive, I even went to the toilet because I thought— how am I going to go to the toilet when I am buried? Do my business there? How smelly. But after coming back from the toilet, I realised that error.

But all of the time, I never thought I will actually die— which is a reasonable thing to think because one can never imagine what will happen after death as said in one of my previous post. But at the same time, logic tells me that in all religions or non-religions, non of them says that you will continue living the same way after death. So I was a little despondent but I still did not believe that I will die. I kept imagining what they will do to me— hang or stab or whatever and wondering what it would feel like and what will happen at the moment where I ‘die’. And I didn’t want that to happen. I am not a very adventurous person. I do not want to experience any sharp sensations.

Oh, I forgot to mention— in the toilet while looking at the mirror, I was asking myself do I really want to die or not. Because I have been wishing for it for so consistently. And it came. So why do I want to avoid it? And me being me, I always think that there are other ways out, so I thought that further appeals at litigation would surely lighten the sentence.

So I talked to my mom about it. I have always recognised how ridiculous the sentence is— 4 die for some small and light reason? But I think at first, I didn’t want to change it in any ways because I was wondering if I should die in that way or not. Because I wanted to die and was not able to get myself to kill myself. I’d always wished that something or someone can kill me. And so it came.

This was the moment where I started to wake and I was conscious that it was a dream. But I went back to sleep to ‘finish’ the dream but I didn’t— I went on to the second dream.

I think the ‘deepest’ thing about this is that it was reality to me, it played out physically before me. It wasn’t introspection where you have all the time in the world and where you can be a little dishonest by dramatising. I had been put through a near-death experience— it doesn’t matter that it was actually a dream. It was real. I would have been curious to find out what will happen if I am killed but I am sure that ‘I’ (my subconscious, perhaps) will never allow myself to die or be killed.