On The Introduction to Plato's Republic

In the prelude we get a few wonderful lines from Cephalus on how content he is in his old age. He is glad to be done with the passions of youth and can give more money to his sons than he inherited. But he has a great fear of death, this makes him wonder if he has wronged anyone.

He mentions that since he is wealthy he can pay his debts both to other human and the gods. In light of the coming discourse it must be asked "Is he eudaimon or happy?" and if this is so is it because he has been dikaiosune or doing right (or as my translation horribly says "just")? He worries about giving back what one has borrowed, but Socrates brings up that sometimes its not right to give back what was borrowed. This launches the Republic. Somehow this initial problem will turn into the description of the ideal state.

Socrates and Polemarchus debate that dikaiosune is "Giving every man his due" which is quickly linked to "doing good to one's friends and doing harm to ones enemies". From this conversation certain muddled concepts that will remain muddled throughout this section show up or are hinted at. The main mix up is the extent that Techne or skill is mixed or separated from dikaiosune and both from happiness. My main irritation (yet also my main pleasure as this is a dialogue and Plato does try to do justice to both sides) at Plato in this section the way Socrates seems to exploit this to win arguments. I think Plato realizes this and he has other characters call Socrates on it. But I also think Plato knows he wants to go down a certain kind of philosophic road, but gives us hints that other avenues are out there (or I could reading too much into certain lines). Anyway, in this section Socrates seems to separate the just man from people who do harm to their enemies and good to their friends. This could be linked to the fact that this is an ideal just man who would only do just things in the most just way. This ends up making him a warrior in war time and a banker in peace time. Here dikaiosune has been separated from Techne in the general sense. But it could also be said that it could be a narrow kind of Techne, the skill of justice. So there are no just doctors, justice is a vocation all on its own. This ends up making justice not seem useful. After this another argument knocks this conception of justice down again (because Polemarchus still has not been persuaded, for the Greeks is this essential?). This time Socrates goes after who is a friend and who is an enemy. Quickly he pokes a few conceptual holes, but they repair the argument to make it better. But then Socrates challenges this by challenging that the just man harms people. His argument is from Techne and the standards involved in evaluating goodness in Techne. So it appears Techne can be appealed to as a whole to talk about the its narrow part dikaiosune. But the problem is that it involved standards of good even though dikaiosune is about good. But dikaiosune is about doing good. Is virtue as separate from being virtuous?

Now big bad Thrasymachus begins his debate with Socrates. Plato might be having some fun at Thrasymachus' expense, never the less he seems to see that there is something to the position. For Thrasymachus justice is "the advantage of the stronger". I, like many person infulenced by Marxist ideas, have some sympathy for this position. How will Socrates handle this? First he points out that the laws are not always advantagous to the rulers because they make mistakes. Clitophon makes what is to my eyes at least the quick fix to the argument . He says that justice is what the stronger think to be in their advantage. But this is not what Thrasymachus argued. But at least Plato is aware of that road, but he is not taking it. Rather he is concerned with justice as it relates to Techne. Otherwise it is simply justice as the stronger present the concept itself, rather than being realted to the feild of Techne.

Will finish later

Werid Parallels

Okay I'm going to give you two links, both related to the Republicans and their new found spirit of anti-Obama anti-State anti-Democrat idiocy. A growing number advocate violence and their media, Fox-News, fosters this all the while saying "peaceful revolution". But their love of guns and fear of Obama rhetoric, their constant allusions to a certain Jefferson quote, all point to growing radicalism. So how do they react when presented with real radicalism from the left, the true communists (not Obama's center rightism)? Look at the relations between these videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yp-uGs9fYm8&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKyi2qNskJc&feature=player_embedded

Death of a Psychopath

As I walked out the door dragging the dead corpse of my wife, I realized there was a cop across the street. He looked at me and saw what I was doing. Like any good officer of the law, he walked over and told me to put my hands on my head. At a loss at what to do, I put my hands on my feat. This got blood on my shoes. I think he admired my flexibility, as he had lost this ability long ago. His stomach was far too large.

He lost the musculature of his youth in a way that was totally different from other police officers. He normally worked out everyday and ate right because he knew he needed to be in top shape in order catch the bad guys and get promoted to a position of authority so he could boss people around. However one day he looked over at his supervisor and realized something. He saw the dead weight in that man's eyes, hunched over at a desk. The power and ego trips that the supervisor had once revealed in had now lost their effect. The man was bored and he felt no better than a rookie cop going through the practical jokes of the other officers. Realizing that he was headed to the same fate, the officer had decided then and there to stop trying. There was no point to getting ahead, the miserable life of a police officer just continued. So he stopped working out everyday and stopped eating right. And for this reason he marveled at my ability to touch my feet with my blood stained hands.

Then he shot me, just for the heck of it. The miserable life of a police officer just goes on and on. No point in wrestling a homicidal maniac to the ground for nothing. Its a good thing he shot me too, because I did still have the knife in my pocket.

After I died I saw a total blackness in front of me. Then a light. I wondered which of the religion's afterlives would turn out to be the true one. In front of me I saw a man in a three piece suit. I asked if I would be taken to hell for the things I had done. He said "No... there is no 'hell' and there is no 'heaven'. At least I don't think so anyway. I'm Gihfwodothitch, but you can call me Hitch for short. Anyway here's how this works: You just finished your third life before game over. You, or should I say rather, your will, chose to spend this life murdering one wife after another. This was interesting considering you spent your last life helping the poor in India and running for political office in France in the one before that. Anyway you get to review any scenes from your life you want to look back on. After that you will get to pick the location of your next birth as well as your income bracket. Any questions?"

"None"

On The Important

There are very few things in this world that one could call important. Importance is permitted only in silence. It is when something is so relevant to everything that you are forced to pay attention. This is a subjective judgment but that does not make this less valid. Importance may go back to child hood, to the deep battles brewing in the soul. Those moments you do daily are related and connected in a loop that is given wholeness. It is monster that keeps coming back again and again. If your life were flashing before your eyes, the events you saw would be the things that are important. When these things are joined to a something else deeply and forcefully that thing by extension carries new weight.

But not all important things are created equal. Things may end up creating hierarchies of importance. Some things seem trivial when talking about them in a detached and analytic mode, you only appreciate them when you are in tears. And memories of nights of hell vanish until they reappear ever beating down on your back. The more issues you have with something, the more it haunts you. This haunting is what the important is.

Some Ideas on Objects

Harman mentions that Husserl is an object oriented idealist. Objects always are there as objects in consciousness for Husserl. Whatever their outside reality at least they could be called subjectively given. In Lacan's analysis of the Purloined Letter he makes note of the subjective drama going on in the two scenes where the letter is taken. Both the queen and the magistrate know where the letter is but she cannot take it back, she thought it was hidden. Dupin's action of taking back the letter also does this except it was never hidden it was just a different letter when the magistrate's back was turned. He also makes note of how the police looked for the letter everywhere but even though they looked everywhere they missed something in this everywhere because it was not in its place. They as subjects were situated in something. We could say the objects they were revealed subjectively as something but they lied. The subjects work to make the objects lie. In the queen's case the she failed and for Dupin it was a success. The objects are always our power enemies. We lay our hands on them and try to make them something, try to talk about them, but the want to be their ontic selves. This is why materialism is mentioned around speculative realism (my ignorance is showing, this is only my guess).

Onticicity is more than simply the subjective conception of being given to objects. It is not what makes them objects, it is their irreduceablity itself in relation to language and being. When they form an alliance with us they say "alright I will buy into this ontology of yours". And within that ontology their onticity remains as part of that ontology.

Does this make sense though if we regard objects as events though? I may have forgotten that.

New Project

I have a new blog. It analyzes the anime Serial Experiments Lain. You should check it out if you like the anime. By extension you should also watch the anime so you can read the blog.

Analytic Experiments Lain

Memory as Perception

I have a memory of the past, this allows me to understand that time has past. Memory allows me to keep images with me as they pass from present view. Now as a way of coping one could say I deal with my world temporally and that I am a temporal being. But the operation of memory itself needs also to be looked at. I know I see with my eyes because when I cover them I can no longer see (in the context of where seeing means anything). If I plug my hears I can no longer hear. If I damage my frontal lobe, my parietal lobe, and my hippocampus will I no longer remember these activities. And if time on a clock changes I will no longer perceive this change or the duration of stasis. In one sense, I can no longer see reality in terms of time. But this no different from losing an eye. Content was not structured in terms of time, I saw time. Memory brought this aspect home to me. But now that I lack it, there is no time. I might stumble in time like a blind person stumbles in space. Others who see time would pity me, not because I could not fit into their world (though I could not), not because I would be different, but because I would fail in taking an essential feature rightly. Time was a perception as much as anything else. It was not any condition of my experience. As blinking makes one blind, so too a kind of forgetfulness or another mental state or a distraction may make one blind to time, making time as having a similar character to what we call perception. If time is a perception, and the organ we call memory allows us to have it, when does time lie to us like other perceptions sometimes do?

Question To Those Who Know More Than Me: Wittgenstein and Latour

I'm reading Prince of Networks by Graham Harman right now. I'm still very early into it. He says this:

"It also ends the

tear-jerking modern rift between the thinking human subject and the un-

knowable outside world, since for Latour the isolated Kantian human is no

more and no less an actor than are windmills, sunflowers, propane tanks,

and Thailand."

Wittgenstein also seems to do this in a way. He purposes a public world where questions of an isolated human being just gives rise to problems which can be untangled by viewing a human being as inside a form of life. The objects a person uses and the way they interact with him are part of this form of life or language. Viewing everything language encircled whole, where the language games function and rules are followed, things seem to be in their proper place and act as they do without problem (a philosophical problem that is). The description of the Stalingrad encircling movement reminded me of LW's example of people bringing stones (I would consider the stones to be just a much part of the game). Yet I wonder if this is still too reductionistic for Latour, as it does in a way reduce the function of objects to their function in the language. Also LW always seemed to put humans in charge of setting up this game which may give them too much credit for Latour (though I'm not really sure as I may have interpreted him wrong and I may misunderstand Latour) To what extent do Wittgenstein and Latour overlap/ agree?

"Latour’s difference from present-day analytic and continental thought

should now be clear. Whereas Latour places all human, nonhuman, natu-

ral, and artificial objects on the same footing, the analytics and continentals

both still dither over how to bridge, ignore, deny, or explain away a single

gap between humans and world. While graduate students are usually drilled

in a stale dispute between correspondence and coherence theories of truth,

Latour locates truth in neither of these models, but in a series of translations

between actors."

I think my question also has relevance to this passage because LW could be seen as having a coherence theory of truth. I recall him saying that religion and mysticism play different games and are therefore true despite the completely different view of science. Though maybe that is stretching the word "coherence" and LW is beyond both with Latour.

LW could also be said to explain away the gap... but it seems more likely that he rejects any notion of a private space in the mind. Does Latour's series of translations (and by extension the notion of truth) exist in the public space, or is its location somewhere else?

Reading List

This summer I finished Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. I still haven't really come to terms with it in a way, so I think I might need another dose of him. But that will have to wait. Last year was all about Heidegger. This summer was all about Wittgenstein (and some Plato). So I'm going back into phenomenology now with Husserl's Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness and a book about Phenomenology in general. If I get through those this semester what then?Maybe I'll finally actually read a book by Derrida. I read an essay by him that was in Writing and Difference and while not fully understanding it I got the point I thought. So maybe I'll read that one. My school appears to have a lot on Foucault also. But I'd rather get around to going back to reading Parallax View and In Defense of Lost Causes by Zizek. But recently I was reading Countermemory and he mentioned this thing called speculative realism. I did some research and this looks very interesting and very promising. But first Husserl.

Story!

Sorry I have not posted in a long time my followers. All zero of you. Here is a story I did for the INTP forum's writing brawl which didn't happen. Will post again soon when there is something to say. Researching Husserl right now. Note: The spacing is weird in blogger.

The Incorruptible

Maximilien stared up at the sky amid the trees in Arras. The little sunlight remaining illuminated only the edges of the trees. He had returned home soon after the constitution had been finalized. People lauded him and the rest of the Jacobins as the saviors of France, the founding fathers of a new republic. The terror was over. People were beginning to return to their normal lives. Sometimes there were still outbursts of violence but people were going back to work. But despite the adulation and congratulations the people had given him, Maximilien Robespierre still felt that things could have turned out better. In his opinion the terror should have never stopped. He knew that when he returned to Paris there would still be the enemies of the people amid his own colleagues. And he had allowed it.

Walking back down the grassy path he saw Charlotte standing in the doorway. Charlotte threw her arms around her brother. Maximilien lightly returned the embrace; he was in no mood for his over affectionate sister. The Robespierre household was cozy, not a large house, but nicely decorated with a fire going in the corner. His brother Augustine was still in Paris. How he longed to return. What was the future for the committee of public safety now that the constitution was in effect? He knew there were still enemies in Paris. His enemies and, by extension, enemies of the people and The Revolution were running the assembly. They said he was too bloodthirsty, they said he was a dictator. They even had the audacity to claim innocents had died. They only bothered stopping him when he was so close to exposing their corruption and having their heads cut off like they deserved. But then he had to face one question… why was he still alive?

He looked over those events that had lead up to the creation of the new constitution. He thought back to that night in the committee room. He had been looking over cases for the execution of a new batch of alleged counterrevolutionaries. Having supreme confidence in the local tribunal of that city he simply signed the off on the deaths. The men on the tribunal were like him, incorruptible, pure extensions of the people’s will. They could do no wrong as the people could do no wrong, as he could no wrong. The only other man in the room was Couthon. Couthon scooted his wheel chair over to Maximilien’s side of the desk.

“Don’t you think you should be a little more moderate in your use of the death sentence?” Couthon asked

Maximilien looked over at Couthon with surprise “What is this all of a sudden? You don’t trust the tribunals?”

“Listen, the tribunals make their charges at a drop of hat, taking the slightest deviation as proof positive of unpatriotic character. It is your job to make sure innocent people don’t die.”

“None of them are innocent if they gave evidence of their evil hearts.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“You don’t? I expected more from you.”

“This is why the assembly is turning against you. They say you are tyrant.”

“I am not a tyrant. It is the assembly that hides friends of tyrants.”

“If they hear of that, they will kill you.”

“Kill me?”

“Kill us.”

“Why? They should be glad I plan to liberate the assembly.”

“That is the point! You see enemies everywhere. They will fear they are next.”

“True patriots need not fear.”

“Is anyone besides you a true patriot?”

“Of course! There is you, Saint-Just, Hanriot, my brother, and millions of ordinary French citizens.”

“And if one of those citizens were to die in this terror?”

“They don’t.”

“They do. And you need to ease and lighten the terror. The new constitution is coming. After it’s drafted, people will want the terror to stop. When will it end?”

Maximilien remained silent. He remembered what he had once said as a rhetorical flourish to such a question before. It now struck him as all too true. “Never.” As he said this he took off his large glasses and slumped down in his chair.

“Excuse me? Did you just say ‘never’?”

“I’m tired Couthon. I’m so very tired. Maybe you are right. Maybe I’ll let the assembly have their constitution. Maybe lightening the terror is the next stage in The Revolution. I’ll live and France will grow.” He got up and began to go down the stairs “Good night Couthon.”

He kept his word but had Couthon killed for lack of patriotism. His head fell on the 10^th of Thermidor.

As Maximilien reflected up in his study it dawned on him that he had had a moment of total weakness. He had done all the wrong things for the only thing that had meaning for him: The Revolution. Innocents had died, Couthon was one of them, and he had allowed it. And there were still enemies on the assembly; he had allowed them to live. He was as human, as corrupt as the rest of them. He had betrayed the Revolution. He got the revolver out of the drawer. “Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood. For the Fatherland and People of France. God forgive my sins. Amen.”

And he shot himself. Charlotte screamed.

Art?

I've been thinking about Art recently. I think one of the main distinctions that can be made is the pre-reflective and the post reflective methods. The pre-reflective may reveal something about the cultural and biological world of human beings. Post-reflective can also show worlds that may not be obvious, like in modern art for example. It would appear at first modern art has no obvious world that it references to. But is this not the point? Modern art references the picture plane, through this it points to the world of art itself as a work among works.

Heidegger videos

Heidegger song

Heidegger speaks

Dreyfus interviewed

Dream Analysis Part 3: Lacan

Okay for the final analysis I will be working with an interpretation that I am not as experienced with. A Lacanian analysis of my dream. The ordinary interpretation that I have developed so far is that the dream is reminding me of my situation with love. But this is looking at the dream's symbolic content which may be distracting from its real content. What my secret wish was, to make the right choice no matter what regarding love, under the Freudian interpretation is not really important. What is more important is the fact that it used school, tests, teachers, extroverted classmates, and symbols that link to art history and geek culture to fulfill this wish. The dream had to use this because the unconscious ideas needed a way to be articulated in the symbolic order which makes them morally okay. The imagery of school is deemed as fine. All these things are removed from the world of dating and romance. This shows what exactly my unconscious thinks is okay, what can be allowed. School, girls I would never date, geek culture, and anime comics about romance are all fine for me. It betrayed itself most in the comic though and that is why the both the Freudian and Jungian analysis was able to get as far as it did. What exactly is wrong with romance? Well it goes back to my grand conflict with the religion that I am raised with. Under this religion dating is something that people in the market for marriage. Dating would be a sign of my rejection, thus my death on judgement day. This is the dream's real meaning under Lacanian interpretation.

Well that's all, I learned alot. Dreams have more meaning than you may think especially if you remember them. 

Dream Analysis Part 2: Jung

When undertaking a Jungian analysis then the question that must be asked: "What is the unconscious trying to tell me?" I must consider the dream's symbolism. So I'll start with the location: The school-  authority, learning, and social life. Sue and Jen- Humor, weirdness, and extroversion. Doctor- Knowledge, Religion, Buddhism, Christianity, Science, and Old Times. The weird symbol itself- The empire is a repressive regime with cool looking aesthetics, the rebel cause is about freedom however its a rather quaint bunch of heros (rather traditional, American made), the symbol seems ancient as if I've seen it somewhere before, looks somewhat heart shaped. Tests: Hard, bad, failure, risk, work, systems in the political sense. I think the narrative of the cartoons has been explained (I can't remember anymore than that which I've written down) above all I associate it with Heather.

Maybe Doctor is a wise old man archetype? If so, then he is testing us for some reason. Testing me about love? Maybe this dream is simply making clear to me where I stand with love in my mind. I draw the symbol easily with all its associations. Love looks cool, seems dangerous, yet also carries with it a quaint normalcy which I don't like. The extroverts take a different view of it than me, un-understandable to me yet equally right in the eyes of wisdom. So I work well with the idea of love, yet when faced the actual narrative reality, seeing a reproduction of my real situation with others, of it I am powerless. And what Doctor tells further alerts me to this fact.

I think I got somewhere with that. Next and finally Lacan.

Dream Analysis Part 1: Freud

Dream: I walk into a class room at my school. Two girls who will be called Jen and Sue are there talking to the teacher affectionately known to the school as The Doctor. He says the test is not too hard, though there are some tricky problems. One of the questions on this test appears to be an instruction to draw a symbol. The girls say they can't draw the symbol, they draw it in a weird sideways fashion while I draw it well right side up. They symbol has a curve at the top which connects through a line to some other curves. It reminds me of the Star Wars symbol for the Empire. Doctor says both symbols are acceptable. I sit down to take the rest of the test. The test shows an anime cartoon of about a a love triangle between a girl and two guys. The test then ask questions like: What are these character's relationships? I find the test too hard and ask Doctor what exactly the questions are for? He says he won't tell but that some questions on the test are tricky. I feel a breeze coming from outside the door.

So now I must undertake an analysis of this dream. The first interpretation I will do will be Freudian. I know Jen and Sue were in my class last year with Doctor. Doctor's first class was hard, his second was easy. Doctor is a chemistry and physics teacher. The test will not be to hard but it will present some problems. The first challenge is the symbol. Like in the Prince and the Pauper I draw the symbol right, thus meriting something. But Doctor says both are right. Though I associate the symbol with the Star Wars Empire in the dream, upon reflection it appears to look more like the rebel symbol. The love triangle puzzles me and Doctor won't tell me the answer. 

My associations with Sue and Jen need to be talked about. They are friends with this girl I was thinking of asking out (which is a big deal for me). I also know they don't understand whatever Doctor teaches us. Since the manifest dream content seems to point toward the second, the unconscious meaning must be about the first. This becomes clear when I analyze the rest of the dream. Doctor has several associations for me. He is a spiritual and philosophical man. He had been coaching me on my Heidegger paper, but transfered me because he hated Heidegger's language. He would rant about how our generation was disrespectful and lazy sometimes.

The love triangle. Odd. First the story is presented in an Anime format, the only format that I can tolerate love stories in. My understanding of this is frustrated in the dream I think because in the dream I was think of it as an academic activity. How does one test on that? Yet I face the choice right now in my waking life of throwing myself into a love triangle. The girl (whom we will call Heather) who is friends with Jen and Sue is trying to get my friend to go to the dance with her. He does not want to because she already has a boy friend. The boy friend does not want to the dance and does not mind Heather going with my friend. She doesn't seem to like her boyfriend all that much. I face the choice of throwing myself in the middle of all this, telling Heather if my friend doesn't want to go I'll go. So I must take Sue and Jen as Heather or my relationship with Heather and the love triangle as my situation. Both my symbol and Heather's symbols are right in Doctor's eyes. If I pursue a relationship with Heather (the wrong way according to religious guilty superego) it still fine my dream tells me. And if I choose to not, that's even righter. The dream serves as wish fulfillment in both ways. The test serves as a distraction from this, reminding me that one can't calculate a matter such as this rationally and therefore not to deny the heart. Thus I can be right no matter what I do in relation to Heather. The dream fulfills my wish that I make a satisfying choice regarding Heather not denying my feelings yet also not denying the risks I fear with regard to entering a relationship.

I think I may have done something wrong here but I did the best I could. First time analyzing a dream like this. Next analysis: Jung

Dead and Undead

So I was listening to Zizek and Zizek harkens back to a Kantian idea. The difference between a negative and infinite judgement. "You are dead" negation "You are not dead.". "You are undead." affirmation of a non-predicate. This invokes the infinity of the supernatural. I have always regarded vampires as a symbol of the Anti-life no values nihilism. They feed off life (in the Bible blood is the symbol of life and God's holy gift) yet they are never alive, they only drag other people into their realm of Nonsein (not being). But this a problem because they are are there. They have impact on Dasein. This affirmation of a non-predicate (even though in Kant being is not a predicate, but Heidegger deals with him) gives evil its proper due. It is total defamation of the holy because it has infinite affirmation of the Other. Death is not the other. Death is what God brings to the Other because the Other's existence as a non-predicate. Death is the wages sin pays, and the undead is sin + infinity. Human sins are finite, we have a savior who takes them away. Undead is simply wrong without end unless something else that is infinite takes action through death. This shows the privilege given to God, blood, and humanity. It's the heart of the message. And while this morality seems fascistic, it is also a good defining point if we look at it in a non religious point of view. An interpretation of being that infinitely goes and conquers all must be counter acted by another one that does the same thing yet is privileged by virtue of its primordiality. One that embraces rather than cuts off and separates, that is, discloses more and more rather than covers over.

Possible problems: Where would plurality be in this interpretation I seek? I don't know too much about Derrida, yet I already can tell he would have several issues with my ideas here. A disclaimer is that the Christian remarks I have made were for thought experiment purpose alone, if Job teaches anything its that we should not assume too much about supernatural and divine matters beyond what God tells us. Also is there not a totalizing, everybody else has been totally wrong way in this. But that's more of a matter of phrasing, and besides I side with Heidegger at least and I see the wonders of Kantian logic. Need input.

Theory of Labor Value

I read Capital Volume 1 Chapter 1. I'm puzzling over it.

We start with commodities. Commodities have use value and exchange value. Use value comes from desire. Exchange value is the value that a commodity has in the market place. It must always be an equal exchange. What makes them equal and exchangeable? It is because they have value. What is value? Socially necessary labor time. If its on the market, then it is a product of human labor. What else do they have in common? They have use value, but that alone does not make an object something in need of exchange. Air has a use value. If a thing is useless, then the labor counts for nothing. Price lowering can be seen as a way to make the labor count for more, that is, to make it have a use value to people. Price is always affected by labor. Use affects it only in relation to labor.

I think....

Goodbye Dubya!

So I watched George W. Bush's farewell speech. I didn't go into it expecting a sorry. I mean that's simply unrealistic. But I was hoping for him to be more forward, to stop hiding behind "I made tough decisions". I wanted a deep refection and overview of his presidency from his perspective. But he avoided all honesty and instead tried vainly to repair his legacy. But in a way its fitting he left us as he treated us. Without respect for the people but for the ideal of the Nation. The neocon "spread democracy" dogma was on full display. The absolutes of Good and Evil were mentioned. I didn't want a apology, I wanted an Apology in the Socratic way. I wanted explanation, but this dishonest (in the sense that it is unconnected with reality, not that he is actually lying) was what I got. It has been the tone the entire presidency. Dishonest. And yet I have grown so used to thinking of him as president. If it weren't for this man, I would not be a socialist or even care about politics. He has affected us all because he matters, because he was produced by an ideology, because he was there at 9/11, because he has been president for Eight long years. Remember when Clinton was President? Neither do I. Goodbye Dubya. I'll miss you for some reason.

"I hope you leave here and walk out and say, 'What did he say?'"- George W. Bush

Oh and he coined the term "the internets"- awesome.

factory

EDIT:Removed by author

Have You Ever Danced with the Devil in the Pale Moonlight?

I have been writing something recently. I don't quite know what it is. It takes place in a city engulfed in fog. The main character is an ex-fisherman wandering around in a hazy unclear world, unsure of his own motives as well as others. I'm not sure where I should send him next: To the mine or to the factory? The saying "Have you ever danced with the Devil in the pale moonlight?" feels like a good way to describe this story.

On to other matters, I posted something on a political forum. These people are smarter than me, I'm not sure I'll be able to respond. I need time to regroup. I hate not having anything to contribute, yet whenever I open my mouth I sound stupid to all. I question my right to even bother thinking in these instances. Only good opinions are worth expressing. The problem is that everyone needs an opinion and yet nobody is an expert. 

Is it bad that I judge my worth as a person according to wether or not I can make a valid point about anything?

Religiously I am now a Hellenic Pagan. I might talk about that here sometime. Heidegger paper on formal indication is going rough.