dreams

dreams somehow giving me the idea that i need to worry about books i didnt read two quarters ago, that they will somehow affect my current state of affairs when in fact it is all said and done. i have said it before and will say it again: i create stress for myself habitually. I dont understand why. It's like the rain here, always coming and going, all the while getting me down on myself. Sometimes I just wish I could put my body on autopilot and just sit in a corner somewhere and read all the books in the world that interest me. Enough of this tangent positive sine positive cosine secant bullshit. Enough of this gobbelty gook that occupies my thoughts.

Although to be honestly, at the moment all is really quite well, the above was merely a meditation on past thoughts and events if anything at all.

this post

is blank

I was driving along a road, staring out the back window, when suddenly...

I was flying, really high, not in the traditional wings spread, belly down, head first sort of way, but rather as if I were paragliding: with my ass first, my feet tucked in front of me, my arms were hanging on to an invisible bar...yet...I could control my direction. As I continued to fall, I begun to have doubts of how and where I would land. Everything is moving so quickly, my surroundings were a green brown and golden blur of what seemed to be some valley in the Santa Cruz/Monterey area, I saw a tree to the bottom right...and then...

My friend was flying right next to me, he started speaking in my ear, rapidly, urgently, yet all he was telling me is how his band broke up. There was such an air of importance and desperation in his tone, and the next thing I knew I had landed, facing backwards, sliding on my ass/back (ass soon as gravity pulls me down on to my back..) I slid, slid, slid for maybe 100 feet, not enduring any pain, just sliding, until I finally came to a halt. I rolled over to face a long line of spectators, some not paying any attention, others pointing and chuckling.

Thats about the time I woke up, and my head felt really heavy.

[end]

Disloyalty

Disclaimer: Before reading this, I would just like to clarify that I do not condone adultry/cheating/disloyalty/sleepin around/whatever you wanna call it in ANY way, this is just a philosophical discussion on the aforementioned subject which my mind had with itself one night, about 19 days ago.

today I have discovered a conflict in thinking, it follows as such:

A man cheats on his wife, is caught, his wife kills herself, he feels
like shit.

A man cheats on his wife and is not caught. He does not feel bad.

A man cheats on his wife, is not caught and regardless, feels bad
about the occurrance.

The first instance indicates that when one is found out for cheating,
his wife is emotionally damaged, because her ego tells her that others
who find out about this will damage her social standing in these
regards:

1) she is uninformed and out of the loop with her own life
2) she is not good enough in bed if she can't deterr her husband from
cheating.
3) she is the fool for making a mistake in trusting him

Lets say he is caught, The woman tells her friends, they tell their
friends, word gets out. Her ego suffers at her own hands, it seems
although the general public might have found out in another way in the
future, and she would suffer from the first insecurity with social
standings mentioned above.

Now, the man feels bad because
Most people now think the man is a fuckhead for what he has done to
his wife. But the important question is...
WHAT EXACTLY HAS HE DONE?!? If he were to get away with it, who would
have been hurt by this? Nobody would have cared if they didn't know.
He would likely have enjoyed the sexual encounter, therefore, even
from a utilitarian stance this is completely ok. The negative hedons
*happiness units do not occur if the sex is good and no one finds out.
*Keep in mind when we speak of utility here we are ignoring the idea
of the girl he cheated with's mindset of the experience; this is
unimportant and her mindset does not concern this argument.

Now another man knows this man. He happens to have cheated on his wife
five years ago. Let's say before his friend, out initial unfaithful
man (Rick) cheated, our second undaithful man (Tommy) had never heard
of anyone getting caught and chastised for cheating.

After this instance, however, he will feel bad, because his ego is now
at risk. People might somehow findout, his wife might find out, he
will become a fuckhead to society and may never get laid again, or at
least not for a while. But initially, if no one were eve to have been
caught, to his knowledge, the action of cheating has no negative
conscience.

Therefore, to suggest that the act of cheating without being caught is
unethical is a circular argument. Although, at this point, unless
you're stupid, you have seen the negative cobsequinces of cheating in
the past, which invalidates any excuse to not feel bad about cheating.

To avoid being caught for cheating requires being extremely sneaky and
secrative.

To be unconscious of any thoughts of cheating being wrong requires
extremely excessive sheltering, stupidity , or some balanced amount of
both.

Let's face it, if you're sheltered you don't understand society, thus
you have no way of knowing what sneaky is in society.

If you're stupid you simply can't be sneaky because being stupid
implies you have little knowledge of anything, including sneakiness.
The only possibility of not getting caught is sheer luck.

Therefore, your chances of getting off guilt (ego damage) free for
cheating are slim.

Now given all that, is cheating really worth it?

Artificial Stress

Last night, I had many bizarre dreams. One of which was somewhat of a combination of my current college and my past high school. Many occurrences took place in this dream, but I distinctly remember the one I am about to share, for I dreampt it right before waking up.

I was nearly done with finals, I just had one more to go, and for some reason, I was really stressing out about it. Then I remembered, there was no reason to stress, it was just my english final, with mr stenberg (I took english with Mr. Stenberg as a junior in high school). IT was then that I had realized, of course, I hadn't gone to mr stenberg's class all quarter, of course, (because it doesnt exist where I go to school...duh). Nonetheless, I go to the final, and sit down with some friends. Stenberg looks the same as he always has, but for some strange reason he has a thick east european accent; he can't pronounce anything the way I remember him being able to in the past.

As I enter the room, he is harping at us about how nobody came to his review sessions, let alone, his classes. I look at one chalkboard, and see a huge list words under a category titled "Illiteral", In addition to these words, there are many complex puzzles and diagrams, all of which I had little to no understanding. On the other board, there were many words under the category of "irrational" which I did not understand either. I thought to myself: "well, here goes, I'm really going to fail this one"
and I began kicking myself for not attending class. Stenberg said "im sure you are all very scared for this final, well, I taught 42 empty classes, so...so am I!"

that is where the dream ended.

Looking back on the dream, I see it as a message to myself. A message telilng me that I stress myself out over the smallest, most unnecessary things. In this case, I am on spring break, and have nothing to stress over, so my mind created this dream, and I woke up stressed as hell!

It is very clear to me now that the feeling of stress is entirely separate from a huge workload, a struggling relationship, or anything like that. Stress has its own entity, and I believe it can be avoided in nearly every circumstance. As we see in my dream, my reasoning for stress was completely fallacious, my dream was a shitty situation, but for that stress to carry over to real life when I awoke, was complete nonsense. And somehow, I think it is no coincidence that the words on the chalkboards were "illiteral" and "irrational," for they were a description of my thoughts at the time.

So uhh, there you have it.

[end]

huh

Well, theres a blank text box looking back at me. The cursor flashes, urging me to write. Lets see, for the last day or three, I lived life freely, ideally. Sixty seven you're close to heaven your crew still reppin but im like losing my train of thought here god dai thought up a whole lecture for the last twenty or soe iinutes when we played stupid whateveritscalled god dan i cant remember the name for the life of me. wow. wow. wow. shit. i am so sleepy at present I just closed my eyes so while i write this my head is likely somewhere else in dreamland. tell me that ainta trip


END?!??@?

Brain in a Vat

Throughout the past week, lectures, articales, descartes, and films have all tried to bring to light to me that for all I know, I may very well not be anything more than a brain in a vat. There is no us to deny this because there is no way for us to hold the knowedge that we are not in fact, a brain in a vat. This is extremely frustrating, with all this talk of dystopias (see 1984, brave new world), it makes SENSE that I would be some sort of experiment, does it not? Today I read a paper with a possible objection to this argument which presents us with the harsh condition that we have no means of proving we are not brains in vats. Meaning that, our insensitivity to the idea of being brains in vats because "CLEARLY, I AM REAL, I SEE MY HANDS! IM REAL!", that insensitivity does not imply independence, meaning, in proving that we are not brains in vats, there is not necessarily a need for independence of our proof that we are not such, from our past experience, as reasoning.

Sure, thats really dense and you probably dont know (and trust me, you probably dont want to know) what I am talking about. (Although I have recently thought that the more uncomfortable a thought makes me, the more necessary it becomes for me to think about it, within reason, of course, as Leo Tolstoy can attest*).

But what really troubles me about all this--this "not knowing if im not this, or not that" thing is that---

by that same reasoning, I could broaden that perspective even more to say

How do I know i am not dreaming? How do I know that every concept I have ever learned even exists in reality? How does ANYONE know what reality is? What is reality? What is a brain? What is a vat?

What if there is a whole species of aliens who have some crazy complex way of dreaming that brings others temporarily into existence for merely the purpose of their dream---these people are real, have feelings, etc, but exist only because of an aliens dream?

How can one argue that wihtout appealing to past experience?

What I am getting from any of this is that it does not really matter in the end, because as David Hume concluded, (with his problem of induction---read it, im certainly not gonna try and explain it...) by nature, we will eventually just think "OH WELL" and go back to our daily lives.

Or commit suicide....

Anyways its time to get back to my reading...


^^WOW DID YOU SEE THAT?! I JUST EXEMPLIFIED MYSELF!


Well, Hope you get my point. If you do, Please let me know.







* Tolstoy thought too much about the meaning of life and became very depressed, even suicidal. He concluded that to think about those questions was a setup for depression, as well as a dead end. Maybe he's just lazy and negative...but who am I to judge?!

[end]