Good post summarizing the stuff I've been thinking about lately
Etc.
---
Started trying to actually write fiction yesterday. Descended into deep depression for my troubles, ended up thinking of the levels of suicide. I don't have any normal go-kill-myself-suicide in me. I defeated that I think permanently about 18 years ago. But there is stuff like driving down the road and wishing you might wreck the car and die. (I don't wish that.) There is kind of wishing you'd just get some disease and get the pointless boring absurdity over with. Or, working at a hospital, here and there in the past having wished I was a patient, I have done those a few times. Some kind of creeping suicide. I'm in a good mood at the moment as it's morning. Takes a long day of contemplation (futilely trying to write fiction for example) to reach the point of thinking enough, compiling enough of the pointlessness, etc of it all.
But I won't ever do such a thing. No worries there if anyone happens to be reading this blog (which was essentially meant as a private matter exactly so I wouldn't have to worry about such misunderstandings. Endless misunderstandings possible through reading all this.)
But the blog was ultimately a vague experiment and it can go where it may.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
For the hell of it I made a few final changes and tried to connect the cheap laptop again and what the heck, it worked. I kind of wish it would quit occasionally working so I could just get a new laptop...
---
The Godfathers (Birth, School, Work, Death)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2SLs7EWyIk
Heard just the last minute of this on the radio (internet radio, regular monopoly radio wouldn't play this) and I liked it. Hearing the whole song lessens it. I think it would sound better to just repeat the chorus over and over again. Maybe a guitar solo and that's it. Just get rid of the verses. I wish I could forget I'd heard the rest and instead vaguely imagine the rest of the song sounding the way I wish it did. Also could do without the images...
People make too big a deal about repetition being some kind of negative thing in music. In real life our moods don't change 8 times in 3 minutes. Simplistic loops are underrated. Being nonrepetitious just for the sake of not being repetitious is just no good. Even on the rare occasion you do successfully find something that actually really works, there's still the knowledge that the process was wrong.
This isn't to say I only like repetitious music. I have an ideal of something more which I've barely attempted yet. An ideal of being very symbolic instead of the "duh, it sounds good" usual process of music writing. What's held me back is first off, you can't manage it using presets. I'm about there now where I don't need them. About time to make a better effort I guess.
Then there is this:
I'm reminded of Brian Eno talking about recording some traffic noise and how even that, if you listen to it over and over again, your mind starts to wait for that jake brake, etc and it has a musical quality in that sense.
And so something like this on a single listen just seems entirely random. But you listen to it over and over again and it starts sounding pretty good.
...I wonder though if it's a trick. That I can just get the exact same effect with a 10 second repeating loop just by doing a good job at forgetting...
I wonder if there's some self deception going on with writing such music...? That on an initial listen it seems so random. Must one pretend otherwise to bother writing such a thing while waiting till like the jake brake it starts making some weird kind of ritual sense...?
It can be done though symbolically. Helped along by having good samples and knowing how to make sounds with some good synths. Although I think the symbols must be kind of crude and must still end up relying on some randomness. Not sure how far it can be taken. Simplistic mood loops might still win out.
---
The Godfathers (Birth, School, Work, Death)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2SLs7EWyIk
Heard just the last minute of this on the radio (internet radio, regular monopoly radio wouldn't play this) and I liked it. Hearing the whole song lessens it. I think it would sound better to just repeat the chorus over and over again. Maybe a guitar solo and that's it. Just get rid of the verses. I wish I could forget I'd heard the rest and instead vaguely imagine the rest of the song sounding the way I wish it did. Also could do without the images...
People make too big a deal about repetition being some kind of negative thing in music. In real life our moods don't change 8 times in 3 minutes. Simplistic loops are underrated. Being nonrepetitious just for the sake of not being repetitious is just no good. Even on the rare occasion you do successfully find something that actually really works, there's still the knowledge that the process was wrong.
This isn't to say I only like repetitious music. I have an ideal of something more which I've barely attempted yet. An ideal of being very symbolic instead of the "duh, it sounds good" usual process of music writing. What's held me back is first off, you can't manage it using presets. I'm about there now where I don't need them. About time to make a better effort I guess.
Then there is this:
I'm reminded of Brian Eno talking about recording some traffic noise and how even that, if you listen to it over and over again, your mind starts to wait for that jake brake, etc and it has a musical quality in that sense.
And so something like this on a single listen just seems entirely random. But you listen to it over and over again and it starts sounding pretty good.
...I wonder though if it's a trick. That I can just get the exact same effect with a 10 second repeating loop just by doing a good job at forgetting...
I wonder if there's some self deception going on with writing such music...? That on an initial listen it seems so random. Must one pretend otherwise to bother writing such a thing while waiting till like the jake brake it starts making some weird kind of ritual sense...?
It can be done though symbolically. Helped along by having good samples and knowing how to make sounds with some good synths. Although I think the symbols must be kind of crude and must still end up relying on some randomness. Not sure how far it can be taken. Simplistic mood loops might still win out.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Looks like my used $200 laptop is finished. Just won't connect to the wireless internet anymore. No rhyme or reason. ...I had some good favorites saved on it. Better than this desktop.
----
I played Quake 4 some finally. Think my video card isn't quite good enough. A little choppy exactly when it needs to not be.
I wonder if that fear is good (Quake induced fear). Keeps a person young maybe? I suspect though that fear does things like make the body direct more energy to reproducing, etc which in turn causes a person to live a shorter life... but also a more alive life probably.
----
''If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things.'' Albert Einstein
Someone thought that Machiavellian. Of course Einstein wasn't but I guess it can look that way. I said, "His goal wasn't to gain power, but to bring about positive change to the world; instead of being consumed with trying to impress people/get people to like him."
But it does matter, making people like us. If no one does, then how can you be happy? You'd have to be like a machine. Not human. To live as if you didn't care if anyone ever liked you is to live like an abomination.
One should care. But that doesn't mean trying to impress people. Just treating them well.
... but you should try to treat them well no matter what...
I can't think of any action really that should be tied to wanting people to like you. (Even though you should want people to like you.) (Every action should be done totally aside from that concern.) Which is why it seemed maybe that's living like I don't care if people like me... Like an abomination, like a machine.
----
I played Quake 4 some finally. Think my video card isn't quite good enough. A little choppy exactly when it needs to not be.
I wonder if that fear is good (Quake induced fear). Keeps a person young maybe? I suspect though that fear does things like make the body direct more energy to reproducing, etc which in turn causes a person to live a shorter life... but also a more alive life probably.
----
''If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things.'' Albert Einstein
Someone thought that Machiavellian. Of course Einstein wasn't but I guess it can look that way. I said, "His goal wasn't to gain power, but to bring about positive change to the world; instead of being consumed with trying to impress people/get people to like him."
But it does matter, making people like us. If no one does, then how can you be happy? You'd have to be like a machine. Not human. To live as if you didn't care if anyone ever liked you is to live like an abomination.
One should care. But that doesn't mean trying to impress people. Just treating them well.
... but you should try to treat them well no matter what...
I can't think of any action really that should be tied to wanting people to like you. (Even though you should want people to like you.) (Every action should be done totally aside from that concern.) Which is why it seemed maybe that's living like I don't care if people like me... Like an abomination, like a machine.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
I've caught a cold. First since I became a vegan 5 years ago. The jogging in the cold didn't help I'm sure. Oh well. Also pink eye which I've never had before. This right after bad food poisoning. Of course as soon as I get some time off to relax and have fun this is what would happen.
---
An existential nihilist who believes carefully making some good self deceptions is the way to go... It's no good to turn solely to rational thought because one can only claim 100% rational thought is a good thing if they aren't actually living it.
We are not entirely rational creatures as we have a subconscious. We have emotions. I don't think we could survive if we effectively eradicated either. Also we aren't going to exist forever. We cannot actually live rationally in the light of that knowledge. Thus the most rational thing to do actually is to abandon rationality when it comes to that. And I think probably, maybe, the same with the former somehow, in some way...
But how to only make good, nonharmful self deceptions without opening a pandora's box?
---
An existential nihilist who believes carefully making some good self deceptions is the way to go... It's no good to turn solely to rational thought because one can only claim 100% rational thought is a good thing if they aren't actually living it.
We are not entirely rational creatures as we have a subconscious. We have emotions. I don't think we could survive if we effectively eradicated either. Also we aren't going to exist forever. We cannot actually live rationally in the light of that knowledge. Thus the most rational thing to do actually is to abandon rationality when it comes to that. And I think probably, maybe, the same with the former somehow, in some way...
But how to only make good, nonharmful self deceptions without opening a pandora's box?
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
http://www.shaviro.com/Blog/?p=707
This process is called “optimization.” It leads to a “blessed clarity that filled my being,” the narrator says; or, more objectively, it leads to an “absolute clarity of thought, even during emergencies. Freedom from prejudice and superstition. Freedom from the tyranny of emotion.” Instead, when you are optimized you have access to “information” that previously you had “ignored or repressed.”.....
Optimization makes for perfect corporate employees. I would think, as well, that it makes for the sort of “bright,” rational, and illusion-free personality type so desired by rationalist crusaders like Richard Dawkins. Indeed, one of the effects of optimization is that it leads almost immediately to the rejection of any prior religious beliefs: their delusive, compensatory quality simply becomes too obvious, and is no longer required....
The narrator of “Wild Minds,” however, is a reactionary and an ironist; he chooses not to be optimized, and he fervently embraces the illusions and consolations of religion. He clings to Catholicism’s sense of guilt, repentance, and possible redemption. “The thought,” he says, “that a silicon-dosed biochip could make me accept [the murder he committed] as an unfortunate accident of neurochemistry and nothing more, turns my stomach.” He clings to his sense of guilt precisely because he knows that after optimization he would no longer feel this way; that doing what turns his stomach would insure that it would no longer turn his stomach. He accepts that “being human” is no longer “essential”; yet he “cling[s] to the human condition anyway, out of nostalgia perhaps but also, possibly, because it contains something of genuine value.”
This process is called “optimization.” It leads to a “blessed clarity that filled my being,” the narrator says; or, more objectively, it leads to an “absolute clarity of thought, even during emergencies. Freedom from prejudice and superstition. Freedom from the tyranny of emotion.” Instead, when you are optimized you have access to “information” that previously you had “ignored or repressed.”.....
Optimization makes for perfect corporate employees. I would think, as well, that it makes for the sort of “bright,” rational, and illusion-free personality type so desired by rationalist crusaders like Richard Dawkins. Indeed, one of the effects of optimization is that it leads almost immediately to the rejection of any prior religious beliefs: their delusive, compensatory quality simply becomes too obvious, and is no longer required....
The narrator of “Wild Minds,” however, is a reactionary and an ironist; he chooses not to be optimized, and he fervently embraces the illusions and consolations of religion. He clings to Catholicism’s sense of guilt, repentance, and possible redemption. “The thought,” he says, “that a silicon-dosed biochip could make me accept [the murder he committed] as an unfortunate accident of neurochemistry and nothing more, turns my stomach.” He clings to his sense of guilt precisely because he knows that after optimization he would no longer feel this way; that doing what turns his stomach would insure that it would no longer turn his stomach. He accepts that “being human” is no longer “essential”; yet he “cling[s] to the human condition anyway, out of nostalgia perhaps but also, possibly, because it contains something of genuine value.”
Ecce Homo
Chapters titled Why I Am So Wise, Why I Am So Clever. Mostly dismissed as evidence he was already crazy.
The secret history of philosophers, the psychology of their great names, was revealed to me. How much truth can a certain mind endure; how much truth can it dare? -these questions became for me ever more and more the actual test of values. Error (the belief in the ideal) is not blindness; error is cowardice... Every conquest, every step forward in knowledge, is the outcome of courage, of hardness towards one's self, of cleanliness towards one's self.
I mostly agree. Not entirely sure of his usage of the word 'ideal'. I wonder how relevant this is to him going insane the very next year.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche#Mental_breakdown_and_death_.281889.E2.80.931900.29
The knight of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies, but also to hate his friends.
The truth seeker must love the truth more than friendships. But from the intro by Ludovici:
...and the fact that he endured such long years of solitude, which to him, the sensitive artist to whom friends were everything, must have been a terrible hardship...
And what a misanthrope he was. How he hated Germany. But then look what Germany then went and did later...
It also seems to me that the rudest word, the rudest letter, is more goodnatured, more straightforward, than silence.
Hate is better than indifference and of course bothering to try to communicate ought to be better than silence.
To the sick man resentment ought to be more strictly forbidden than anything else --it is his special danger: unfortunately, however, it is also his most natural propensity. This was fully grasped by that profound physiologist Buddha. His "religion," which it would be better to call a system of hygience, in order to avoid confounding it with a creed so wretched as Christianity, depended for its effect upon the triumph over resentment: to make the soul free therefrom was considered the first step towards recovery. "Not through hostility is hostility put to flight; through friendship does hostility end": this stands at the beginning of Buddha's teaching--this is not a precept of morality, but of physiology. Resentment born of weakness is not more deleterious to anybody than it is to the weak man himself--conversely, in the case of that man whose nature is fundamentally a rich one, resentment is a superfluous feeling, a feeling to remain master of which is almost a proof of riches. Those of my readers who know the earnestness with which my philosophy wages war against the feelings of revenge and rancour... will understand why I wish to focus attention upon my own personal attitude and the certainty of my practical instincts precisely in this matter.
Resentment, revenge... just other words for anger.
The loathing of mankind, of the rabble, was always my greatest danger...
Can one really blame him knowing what his people later did?
I am gifted with a sense of cleanliness the keenness of which is phenomenal; so much so, that I can ascertain physiologically--that is to say, smell--the proximity, nay, the inmost core, the "entrails" of every human soul... This sensitiveness of mine is furnished with psychological antennae, wherewith I feel and grasp every secret: the quality of concealed filth lying at the base of many a human character which may be the inevitable outcome of base blood, and which education may have veneered, is revealed to me at the first glance.
The sort of thing I might think here and there but would avoid saying. Well mostly try to avoid anyway.
What is it that I have never forgiven Wagner? The fact that he condescended to the Germans--that he became a German Imperialist... Wherever Germany spreads, she ruins culture.
....
Another form of prudence and self-defence consists in trying to react as seldom as possible, and to keep one's self aloof from those circumstances and conditions wherein one would be condemned, as it were, to suspend one's "liberty" and one's initiative, and become a mere reacting medium. As an example of this I point to the intercourse with books. The scholoar who, in sooth, does little else than handle books--with the philogist of average attainments their number may amount to two hundred a day--ultimately forgets entirely and completely the capacity of thinking for himself. When he has not a book between his fingers he cannot think. When he thinks, he responds to a stimulus (a thought he has read),--finally all he does is to react. The scholoar exhausts his whole strength in saying either "yes" or "no" to matter which has already been thought out, or in criticising it--he is no longer capable of thought on his own account... In him the instinct of self defence has decayed, otherwise he would defend himself against books. The scholar is a decadent. With my own eyes I have seen gifted, richly endowed, and free-spirited natures already "read to ruins" at thirty, and mere was vestas that have to be rubbed before they can give off any sparks--or "thoughts." To set to early in the morning, at the break of day, in all the fulness and dawn of one's strength, and to read a book--this I call positively vicious!
Yes. (Ironically) Well partially yes. The thing is to manage to keep thinking critically while reading them... Not be overwhelmed... This ends up meaning a lot less reading. A paragraph and then think about it for ten minutes, etc. And then you can't back up your criticisms with as much reading as the person who ate it all up.
The secret history of philosophers, the psychology of their great names, was revealed to me. How much truth can a certain mind endure; how much truth can it dare? -these questions became for me ever more and more the actual test of values. Error (the belief in the ideal) is not blindness; error is cowardice... Every conquest, every step forward in knowledge, is the outcome of courage, of hardness towards one's self, of cleanliness towards one's self.
I mostly agree. Not entirely sure of his usage of the word 'ideal'. I wonder how relevant this is to him going insane the very next year.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche#Mental_breakdown_and_death_.281889.E2.80.931900.29
The knight of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies, but also to hate his friends.
The truth seeker must love the truth more than friendships. But from the intro by Ludovici:
...and the fact that he endured such long years of solitude, which to him, the sensitive artist to whom friends were everything, must have been a terrible hardship...
And what a misanthrope he was. How he hated Germany. But then look what Germany then went and did later...
It also seems to me that the rudest word, the rudest letter, is more goodnatured, more straightforward, than silence.
Hate is better than indifference and of course bothering to try to communicate ought to be better than silence.
To the sick man resentment ought to be more strictly forbidden than anything else --it is his special danger: unfortunately, however, it is also his most natural propensity. This was fully grasped by that profound physiologist Buddha. His "religion," which it would be better to call a system of hygience, in order to avoid confounding it with a creed so wretched as Christianity, depended for its effect upon the triumph over resentment: to make the soul free therefrom was considered the first step towards recovery. "Not through hostility is hostility put to flight; through friendship does hostility end": this stands at the beginning of Buddha's teaching--this is not a precept of morality, but of physiology. Resentment born of weakness is not more deleterious to anybody than it is to the weak man himself--conversely, in the case of that man whose nature is fundamentally a rich one, resentment is a superfluous feeling, a feeling to remain master of which is almost a proof of riches. Those of my readers who know the earnestness with which my philosophy wages war against the feelings of revenge and rancour... will understand why I wish to focus attention upon my own personal attitude and the certainty of my practical instincts precisely in this matter.
Resentment, revenge... just other words for anger.
The loathing of mankind, of the rabble, was always my greatest danger...
Can one really blame him knowing what his people later did?
I am gifted with a sense of cleanliness the keenness of which is phenomenal; so much so, that I can ascertain physiologically--that is to say, smell--the proximity, nay, the inmost core, the "entrails" of every human soul... This sensitiveness of mine is furnished with psychological antennae, wherewith I feel and grasp every secret: the quality of concealed filth lying at the base of many a human character which may be the inevitable outcome of base blood, and which education may have veneered, is revealed to me at the first glance.
The sort of thing I might think here and there but would avoid saying. Well mostly try to avoid anyway.
What is it that I have never forgiven Wagner? The fact that he condescended to the Germans--that he became a German Imperialist... Wherever Germany spreads, she ruins culture.
....
Another form of prudence and self-defence consists in trying to react as seldom as possible, and to keep one's self aloof from those circumstances and conditions wherein one would be condemned, as it were, to suspend one's "liberty" and one's initiative, and become a mere reacting medium. As an example of this I point to the intercourse with books. The scholoar who, in sooth, does little else than handle books--with the philogist of average attainments their number may amount to two hundred a day--ultimately forgets entirely and completely the capacity of thinking for himself. When he has not a book between his fingers he cannot think. When he thinks, he responds to a stimulus (a thought he has read),--finally all he does is to react. The scholoar exhausts his whole strength in saying either "yes" or "no" to matter which has already been thought out, or in criticising it--he is no longer capable of thought on his own account... In him the instinct of self defence has decayed, otherwise he would defend himself against books. The scholar is a decadent. With my own eyes I have seen gifted, richly endowed, and free-spirited natures already "read to ruins" at thirty, and mere was vestas that have to be rubbed before they can give off any sparks--or "thoughts." To set to early in the morning, at the break of day, in all the fulness and dawn of one's strength, and to read a book--this I call positively vicious!
Yes. (Ironically) Well partially yes. The thing is to manage to keep thinking critically while reading them... Not be overwhelmed... This ends up meaning a lot less reading. A paragraph and then think about it for ten minutes, etc. And then you can't back up your criticisms with as much reading as the person who ate it all up.
Monday, January 5, 2009
Protohuman tribe with alpha male social arrangement, from the POV of a younger male. Expressing number of important points with regards to sex, assimilation, and war/violence. Would need to be like White Fang or something in that direction. The rugged individualist, but unfortunately the goal isn't remotely to champion what the main character is about. So how to pull it off? Have him commit suicide like in Martin Eder? Neither is it to laugh at him. No room for humor at all... Soothing is more important than interesting... What other way forward? A protohuman wouldn't be very intelligent anyway thus wouldn't be as interesting or at least would be difficult to make him interesting. Gormenghast was boring at first as the characters (except Steerpike) weren't very intelligent/interesting. Barely limped along with gothic setting. This would not have an interesting setting. A bare bones one.
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