Tao-ish..

Out side the breeze makes it seem like trees are breathing. Whole sections of branches slowly rise and fall together. Everything seems so simple, the branches just exist, and sway. I want to just sway. The sun is very warm, but then the breeze picks up and suddenly i'm a bit cold again. Suddenly i feel like the earth is breathing, not just the trees. The breeze is its breath on me. Birds are flying back and forth like little particles sucked in and pushed out. I feel wrapped up in some living thing i can't begin to describe.

Darwinian Observations

The Height of trees and the placement of branches is very intriguing. There is an evergreen tree with blue berries on it in front of me. Stretched across the the branches are some thin dead vine-esque strands. They resemble garlands on a christmas tree. I believe they are older dead branches that have wilted and been caught by the strong living branches. It seems that natural selection has let this happen to further attract birds to the tree. The dead branches would seem to be perfect for a bird's nest. The berries, which would feed the birds and spread the seeds around, exist inches from these dead branches.

Beau-Tao-ful

I know very little about taoism, but these poems and wisdoms are really awesome. I love "long winded speech is exhausting, better to stay centered" - I have definitely been subscribing to this thought since i had to read the Republic for Leadership class. "having leads to profit, not having leads to use" makes sense... if i have enough money i'm not going to work extremely hard. if i have no money, i'm going to work like crazy to get some. I also like "Understanding the ordinary: enlightenment...Mind opens" This definitely reminds me of American beauty, how the ordinary can make your mind open: click here

Picking and Choosing.

Ah, the wonders of sexual selection. I never really thought to compare male's working out and putting cologne on to a peacock's tails. It all makes sense, and in humanity it seems the females do it as well, with usually the same tools as males. So for humans it seems to have become less of a display and more of a dance...which makes me think of Moulin Rouge...which is probably a bad idea.

I thought it interesting that darwin claimed males who need to "invent and fashion weapons" apparently "requires the aid of higher mental faculties" and he accredited women with empathy and increased perception. I've always seen those as the stereotypical traits of women, and never really thought the ability to sharpen a stick needed higher mental faculties. Darwin, through his research, found these to be true. So i guess there is some truth in those stereo types?

Systems

Darwin is very wordy. I'm not a very scientific minded person, but his last line summed up what i was thinking the during most of the reading. 

"these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other,and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us." 

The complexity of the world around us is really insane. For an art class we used an electron scanning microscope to take images of really small things, and the complexity of some of our simplest items (hair skin etc..) is really amazing. I can't get the picture to work so go here . 

Its also very interesting the amount of adaptation we as humans do socially. What we'll do to fit in or to gain status or prestige can be pretty drastic. Especially here in the first year of college, many things change. People change names they drop old activities and add new ones. We change many things so that we are more comfortable, successful or to fit better with our beliefs. Well...those were my thoughts.

naturally selected

One of Darwin's big ideas was that of 'Natural Selection' that nature in a way chooses the best species or members of species to survive in different areas. As humans we defy this law daily. Now there is the old morbid joke of when someone gets hurt or killed because of very stupid activities that 'natural selection' took its toll, but that aside we fight natural selection constantly. Modern medicine is the main opponent. Without modern medicine I wouldn't be here to think about how without modern medicine i wouldn't be here. When i was about 2 i had a massive asthma attack that hospitalized me. Without the hospital i would be dead 16 years ago. My little brother is extremely prone to hand injuries, he would be at the very least 2 fingers short of his current ten. Many people would be practically blind which would most likely cause an early death. Just keep thinking about all the other ways modern medicine has saved us over the years and, if we hadn't had that, who would still be alive?

One quote that sparked my interest was on page 169 : "we forget that each species, even where it most abounds, is constantly suffering enormous destruction at some period of its life" This made me think about all those statistics that environmental and animal rights activists use. Say someone is opposing a mini mall being built by a wooded area. They'll sight that in Town C just 10 miles down the road that green frogs decreased by 10 percent after the construction of their mini mall. Now i don't doubt that sure the increased human activity did have some affect on the wildlife, but also there could have been a very cold winter, or a shortage of rain, or a disease that ran through the green frog population. It pretty much just made me want to question statistics.

Finally i thought of natural selection as applied to my life. Like how i wouldn't be here if i hadn't been in the boy scouts or how i wouldn't have gone to Africa if i hadn't dated a certain girl etc... It was very interesting to look back and see how events unfolded leading to new events. It also made me think of what if i hadn't done some of those things, or had been born a slightly different person...which of course made me think of a song. song/video - to hear the song fastforward one min.

The Soul

 Maybe its just me, but it seems like possibly, deep down, Socrates was a wee bit scared of passing on and therefore HAD to convince his friends that the soul is eternal and will go elsewhere after death and theoretically to greater beauty and truth. Maybe thats just me being cynical because his ability to reason in very long complicated dialogue tested my brain a little too much and i want to doubt him...so i think i'm a little biased.

Ok, on to more meaningful things. On page 28 Socrates tells his friend Cebes to 'search  for such a charmer among them all...you must also search among yourselves for you might not easily find people who could do this better than yourselves' pg 28 (near the # 78). This stuck out because Socrates is always teaching, probing, asking questions, driving the dialogue and hunting down a truth, but here he is giving his friends some advice. He is telling them to find a friend, a mentor, a guide, pretty much find another Socrates. I have mixed feelings about this, maybe he is just looking out for his companions, or maybe (this could be too cynical) he doubts their ability to exist/think/reason without a mentor/guide. I doubt that socrates really thought that, but he seems so coldly rational that it could be possible.

I, as insane as it is, disagree with Socrates on a point. This could be very unwise of me, but i'm willing to attempt it. On page 34 socrates states: every pleasure and every pain provides, as it were, another nail to rivet the soul to the body and to weld them together. It makes the soul corporeal, so that it believes that truth is what the body says it is.

I do believe that pain and pleasure, joy and sorrow, etc... have effects on our soul, but that they more thoroughly bind our soul to our body? no. I think they help to shape our soul, the pleasure and joy providing a release of pressure from the soul and the pain sorrow and suffering applying pressure. This letting off and applying of some metaphysical 'pressure' is what shapes us our characters and our beliefs.

The end of the story absolutely boggled my mind. The ambiguity was interesting and at the same time obnoxious. "it is through Beauty that beautiful things are made beautiful" 51. Yes, i understand, there is a higher purer beauty that can be seen through beautiful things on this earth, but still. Sorry to harp on you Socrates but that statement was a bit redundant. The one that really got me was "an opposite will never be opposite to itself" 54. Now i understand that in proving a maxim or theory simple premises must be made...well i guess that justifies this one, so i have no reason to be annoyed with Socrates...

The end scene is pretty interesting. He calmly just dies. I admire his ability to handle the situation so calmly. Bravo Socrates.

I struggled to think of a fitting song for this one...i couldn't find one. I thought i could make something fit, but i couldn't my apologies. i'll get one next time.

Do You Realize??

If it was the day of my execution, i doubt i would be that calm and collected. Socrates was just relaxing with his friends discussing how he was semi-excited about going to find True Knowledge...even if thats true, I think i would still be terrified about being on my death bed.

"either we can never attain knowledge or we can do so after death" - pg 15, E

I also thought his concept of newborns having souls from the underworld very interesting. Essentially souls are being recycled through different bodies, and learning is really just 'relearning'.

"would not we call learning the recovery of our own knowledge, and we are right to call this recollection"? -pg 26, E

This forces me to 'recollect' the old quote "there is nothing new under the sun" - (I believe thats from Ecclesiastes but don't hold me to it)

Now, in keeping with the past few entries, while reading this a song kept running through my mind and i thought it was fairly fitting: lyrics song/video (video is odd i wouldn't pay much attention to it, song is very good though)

Quite the stud.

For all his fancy language and cleverly annoying manipulation of arguments, Socrates has my full respect. His Defense of himself, (if this is possible..i'm sure it is) was rationally beautiful. He speaks with absolute humility: "I show myself not to be an accomplished speaker at all" (21, b); "I am very conscious that i am not wise at all" (24, b). He does this (i believe) to supplicate himself before the jury, admitting to them that he knows they are wise men and he won't even claim at reaching their level of wisdom. 

As his 'apology' continues though he becomes more argumentative (for lack of a better word): "'That man Socrates is a pestilential fellow who corrupts the young.' If one asks them what he does and what he teaches to corrupt them, they are silent, as the do not know..." He puts up a great defense, but sadly the city seemed set in their determination to kill him. The poor guy was a little shocked by how many stones were cast against him.

As wise and (i believe) right as Socrates was, he was still killed at the hands of seemingly intelligent, if not wise, men. Great men can be destroyed at the hands of good men acting in what they see as the 'greater good' I don't know what that really means...The greater good can be a very good thing, but so can men like Socrates. If nothing else i've seen the fragility of life (how odd to see that in Socrates/plato?) and the ambiguity of many real situations.  Thats what really caught me, though i side with Socrates on this, i can see where Athens is coming from, and the grey areas don't have a place here. I usually don't like gray, i like black or white, but maybe now i do...

another song: lyrics song/video - i promise this will be my last Bright Eyes song for a while.

Oh Socrates...

Poor Euthyphro, Socretes just toys with him and then shows him that he can't figure out what he believes in.  I'm sure Euthyphro knows what he believes but Socretes, the ever-clever thinker, keeps leading his arguments around in circles so that Euthyphro never really gets a word in that is 'constructive' to his beliefs. 

This does on the other hand prove Socretes' skill at logic and argument.

Wait...what?

That is how i felt after reading this, i'm sure many of the other people reading this did as well. The last 20 pages of white castle are confusing!

The mentioning of 'Fight Club' in class is now ringing true. I am interested, intrigued and confused. 

I assume things unfolded like this: Hoja became the Italian and lived his life as if he had just returned from enslavement. The italian became Hoja and worked for the sultan and Istanbul. Eventually the original Hoja wrote a book about 'the italian' (who he now 'is') and the original Italian wrote a book about 'Hoja' (who he now is). A fan of the original Hoja (new italian) visited him and learned from him. the fan then came to the Italian (new Hoja) and talked with him, but since the original italian is also the narrator he exposes the full truth and lets the visitor read the book. 

I'm guessing that last scene of the book the visitor flips back to the scene where Hoja and the Narrator swap and had to try and believe the story.

White Castle 2

With the most recent reading story telling continued to be a big theme within the novel, but i was more intrigued by the slave-master relationship. The narrator seems to have gotten extremely comfortable in his roll until the plague breaks out which prompts him to flee Hoja. This all seems normal, what was interesting was when Hoja catches him he feels 'secure'.

This may be completely off the wall but i'm reminded of the documented torturer-torturee relationships from past wars. That those being tortured would actually hug and care about their torturers because of strange relationship built by their actions. If anyone has ever read 1984 the end of the book where the main character is being 'remolded' in a sense back into society is the best example i can think of.

The other thing that caught my attention is how in a few pages months or even years will fly by. I can't imagine the monotiny of living with Hoja with nothing too exciting happening for six years, and while thinking that this song came into mind (don't pay too much attention to the video) 'Sunrise Sunset'

I'm also very curious to see what the weapon really is...though i doubt we will.

Finally, the last scene of the reading was really cool. The masquerade, the costumes obscuring the Identities of those he loves, him seeing his youth before him, he has actually become 'at home' in istanbul instead of missing his home in vienna..which means that all those emotional connections have radically changed as well.