Hose Doing Words

So as much as I know people don’t read this much, I’ve decided to do it again. I remember when I did my first post; I was so bored at work and just wanted to vent depth into the Internet to escape from this emotionally superficial – and therefore repressive – environment. This became a common habit; I would get into work and scribble down a list of questions that I thought were unanswerable and thought about those questions. And I wrote. This was very relieving, firstly because it killed a lot of time in a seemingly quick way, and secondly because it helped me reach some answers. I didn’t do many posts in the end, maybe five or six, but when I answered what I came to think the meaning of life was in the first instance, I considered that maybe this was a thing I should just do regularly anyway. But alas, I stopped because work did. It didn’t take me long, however, after getting a Mac at the end of 2019, to pick it up at 4am, open Word, and spew some shit on the screen (not literally).

This is making me think now about where I could take this, now that I can type from the comfort of my bedroom. A part of me wants to move my poetry here, or write more obscure pieces of creative writing or something, but either way, there’s something nice, even doing this now, about channelling my brain through the keys. It also has just helped me realise that I’ve been spelling ‘abscure’ wrong my whole life.

I think I’ll start thinking less about what I’m posting and just do it. No one really looks at it and it’s a good way to document my thoughts, and even this is just a way of me clarifying that to myself now, mostly because I have nothing better to be doing at what is now half 4 in the morning. So yeah, there’s that.

Why I Was a Nihilist

To be real, I am someone who inherently takes life quite seriously. And I don’t mean life in itself, I mean life in all it’s aspects; my achievements, how I conduct everyday tasks, my routine and even simple pleasures. My parents tell me that as a baby, before I could articulate coherent thought or language, I wouldn’t laugh and seemingly wouldn’t externalise any expression, but would rather stare at things. I’m wasn’t devoid of emotion, but probably more curious and introspective, engaging with my surroundings in such an inquisitive way that I would block things out (not that babies know what’s really going down anyway). I think this early behaviour is still telling of how I am now; definitely curious, definitely introspective, and definitely serious. I always want to be the best I can be in a way that hinders the prospect of that. I distract myself with my own perfectionism, and I think the roots lay in that early behaviour – I guess I don’t want to miss a trick, and I know how much that we can learn so I don’t want to feel like I’m missing any of that, whether that’s the efficiency of how I brush my teeth, or how best to feel a sense of achievement in life. I’m always striving for much more than I can actually reach in a mental capacity, and I also probably think that there’s a lot more that’s there than there is. To kill this tangent; if I am inherently so concerned with what I am doing and how I’m doing it, why – when I was 17 (two years ago) – was I completely convinced by the philosophy that life is inherently pointless?

Nihilism, much like any philosophical compass, is fascinating – mostly in how it affects us psychologically. If we sway to nihilism, and purely believe this and conduct our lives wholly around this philosophy, then we feel no obligation in life. We could, in theory, kill all our relatives and feel no consequence. In fact, a pure nihilist would not suffer the consequences that society inflicts when you murder, because, well, what’s the point? A pure nihilist doesn’t commit to any thought or action; he/she simply exists because that is the circumstance. And this is exactly why I was drawn to nihilism. I despised the idea of commitment at this time because I feared failure and I didn’t trust myself to commit. Nihilism was a concept that I stumbled across that allowed me to justify the sense that I had of an inability to commit to my life. I was depressed and typically so; laying in bed all day, sleeping too much or too little, becoming increasingly malnourished, shrinking my social network.  All of these actions matched the behaviours of a depressed person, but also that of a nihilist, and I would much rather romanticise the idea that I am sacrificing my opportunity to follow a philosophical idea, rather than because of my own weak will and mental instability. ‘There’s no point’, is much easier than ‘I have to fight now’. And in a way, I think I became so weak willed as a sort of backlash from the traits I was just describing; to take things way too seriously. I was too tired of trying too hard, so I stopped trying at all.

Funny thing is, this naturally only worsened my situation. Depression, especially in it’s more severe states, has this inherent sense of comfort that only some would understand, and nihilism catalysed that massively. Much like my thoughts on philosophical ideas now, I thought nihilism – and therefore my depression – was acceptable, natural and unquestionable. I was truly convinced that I couldn’t help it, because depression does that. Most depressed people think ‘what’s the point?’ anyway, but now I could do it in a rational sense as well as an irrational one. My depressed state of mind became all encompassing and scarily complex. And the worst thing about nihilism is that it’s so hard to disprove, in fact, this is the nature of philosophy; there are no definitive answers (look at ‘Philosophy: What’s the Point?’). You can’t say that nihilism is definitely true as much as you can’t say that it’s definitely not true, but of course my mind was focused on the latter. As far as I was concerned, life was pointless because you couldn’t prove otherwise; there was no God descending from the heavens to relieve me of my pain and give me answers, and there was no material proof that there is any existential experience following our lives on Earth. So why live at all? Why commit to die inevitably and leave behind our progress?

And the answer is, of course, to enjoy it. But I wasn’t. But if we don’t enjoy it, then the answer is to seek that enjoyment. Purpose is self-invented; the things we enjoy most, such as time with our loved ones, or steps in a positive career progression, to name a couple, don’t have their place in even the most thought out of philosophical texts. This is partially untrue in that even the Bible refers to loved ones and has standing examples of situations with people that are spending time with the people they love, but they’re not our loved ones. The Bible doesn’t know our experience, we do, so we best know how to conduct ourselves within it. Sometimes we become lost, we confuse our priorities and don’t conduct ourselves in a way that makes us happy. But that is all part of our purpose; to discover and make sense of this experience. As conscious thinkers, this is what we do. This is as close to a purpose as we can get. And even without that really being ‘purpose’, we still have our thoughts and feelings. We have life. So let’s make the most of it.

Philosophical ideas that we’re convinced by aren’t there to be proven, they’re there to be interpreted and understood by us. Our philosophies are our inner truths – we can know what we believe to believe what we know. So if life is inherently pointless to anyone, then chances are their life isn’t too great. For years I’ve hated on religion and condescended it, in some of these posts even. But nihilism is far worse. Religion is deriving a sense of purpose and drive, albeit from a relatively small-minded place some of the time, but isn’t that more of a dispositional factor rather than an inherent trait of religion? This is another tangent that’s found itself in my attempt to conclude, but I will conclude now. Purpose is good and we should find it. We should find it because we create it, that’s why we want it all the time. I’m young an I know that I know so little but this I do know. And coming full circle, can you tell I take life seriously yet?

Understanding Our Personalities

Understanding Our Personalities

A personality is astoundingly complex. Imagine a mixture of elements that form temperament, elements that we often know as ‘characteristics’, such as emotion/rationality, extrovert/introverted behaviours and creativity/logicality, each with their own scale that determines an element of our character. Each individual has a mixture of these elements to form a personality, meaning that the structure of a personality falls under a sort of multi-dimensional spectrum. Whilst this is hard to comprehend and measure against the power of our individuality, apparently there is an underlying structure regarding this that we can use to conjure what are known as ‘archetypes’ for our personalities. We all have such singular history, our own experience of our lives are entirely solitary; even if two people existed through the same occurrences, they would receive these happenings differently and therefore undergo a different experience. So how can there be such defined structure to our characteristics? And more importantly, how do we come to develop these characteristics?

My immediate understanding is that it’s logical for there to be a structure to our characteristics, because all of nature operates in a logical way. The universe acts as if it has purpose; it operates almost rationally with logical connections and formulaic occurrence. In a sense human decision is the most complex existential action, we can consciously think, step outside of the box and comprehend these natural occurrences; we can decide for ourselves. This will mask the idea that human nature is fully fathomable, but it’s actually untrue. Our personalities are culmination not just of our own human decision, but the action by other humans that occurs around us, formulating this environmental development. This makes for a complex process, but that’s where all the complexity lies, in the process rather than the present reality. Characteristic development when analysed in its most specific progression is unfathomable, but we can easily psychologically analyse to grasp a sense of someone’s personality. As I said, nature is logical, and there are a limited number of elements that contribute to our behaviour. We can mix a number of specific measurements of these elements to find an archetype. For example, I’m an INTJ, or ‘Turbulent Logician’, I tend to think rationally rather than emotionally, have confidence in my ideas, am open-minded, overly analytical, judgemental, struggle maintaining human relationships. I also share traits with the ISTP personality, however. These archetypes very much apply a perfect logic to one of the most chaotic natures; it’s a guide to understanding who we are. I found it somehow comforting that there’s an underlying structure to all of our traits, I feel like I own my space in this world.

So, specifically what forms our personalities? In short it’s a consequence of all of our thoughts, actions, and that of those around us. But what specifically? Its way too complex to logically explain and provide order to the explanation, and here’s why. I believe strong influences to our development are behavioural patterns. Typically, the more we do something, the more we will do it. This leads us to the question: why do we do what we do? We are influenced by our personal judgement, for example our moral compass, or rational thought. But we develop ideas of things such as moral sense, or logical judgement, from those around us and happenings around us. So we essentially develop our own sense of judgement from others’ sense of judgement, by judging the results of their judgement, and vice versa. The way we are is very much reflected in the way we perceive others and are influenced by others, which you can call ‘environmental factors’. This determines how we behave, and more so how we choose to behave. I think this at least scratches the surface in terms of environmental developments, and I’m not a psychologist so I can’t really theorise that vastly. Maybe I should read into it more, or just stop speculating about things on a blog that I truly have no idea about. At least with philosophy no one else has an idea either.

Obviously I can’t ignore genetic influence. We do have predetermined characteristics in that we share genetic traits. This very much applies to my personal life; as a twin I can really observe these patterns, what traits we share from each parent and sometimes consequently share with each other, and other traits we have developed from our behavioural development that is very much influenced by each other. As twins we were always one unit during our early development, because we were treated that way. For example, when placed in social situations as a ‘unit’, I was generally the extrovert of us two, occasionally speaking on behalf of us both, and this has affected our development. Since and even to this day, I’m now unstable in social situations as an introvert striving to be an extrovert, being sometimes too open and not knowing where to draw the line with people I’ve just met. My brother, however, reserves too many of his thoughts during conversations within social environments and is far more hesitant to contribute. He’s also more sensitive to social environments; more wary of the people he’s socialising with and will more easily find a social environment severe. He’s not necessarily uncomfortable because of this, he’s actually more comfortable observing a conversation and I feel like this tendency has given him more empathy than me or the average person because it’s a tendency to observe people and their character. I am however much less judgemental of a person I’ve just met and divert my focus to keeping that social ball rolling, making my logical judgements later on when I’m not with them, meaning my judgements are less fresh and accurate but I’m more likely to get on with a bigger variety of people (more socially versatile, I guess). But this isn’t necessarily a good thing, my brother definitely likes having his inner circle, being surrounded by people he trusts and respects, whereas my tendency to be socially overly active leads me to make connections with people I don’t genuinely care about and so I struggle to maintain these connections. All of these are very sweeping statements and of course depends on the situation, but this is generally the truth. Our genetic traits definitely influenced these early developments, because at that point we have nothing else. But I found this an interesting question that I conjured in my mind: are genetic traits predetermined traits or a matter of developing in a similar way? That I don’t know, but I’d love to ask a psychologist.

I guess my best understanding is that our personalities are defined by our experiences. Our experiences form a culmination of judgements, observations, choices, reactions and many more that determine our external behaviours and internal mentality. In this sense we are very much in control of our personalities, we exist to control ourselves and our lives, so we can condition our lives to influence our personalities. I don’t know if a conscious effort to change our personalities is actually effective, because it is conscious, personalities tend to develop subconsciously by nature. Early developments also have lasting effect and tend to determine our unchangeable traits; we can change ourselves but we can’t press the reset button. Ultimately, our lives are who we are and who we are is our lives. Our existence all encompasses ourselves.

CLIMATE CHANGE

Climate Change

The bird of prey wails in the wisp. It cries with such life as I cry for its own. It scans for its hunt in the sky soaring, hoping, and tomorrow it will look at itself and wonder why. Till the air facades the stars, we smell the smoke in satisfaction, inside of our sad little dream of self destruction - the future is black for us. The truth’s not the truth when it’s screaming, so copy me, copy me. An emission of remission granted, completed, in an incomplete world. Account for this as a cosmic failure and pray for our creation. The expense of false salvation – and failure to listen, we bargain for tomorrow. The sun will rise and the dust will hit the sand with the force of civilisation, the implosion. We are never forever now. An invasion of ill competence will devise a meaning, a warning for us all. With some ultimate possession – a spell of our ignorance with the spirit of panic, we are the victim. On our crisis day our skin is burning with our judgement, and we’re given death with none. A piece of molten rock in the headlights, beads of sweat from the Earth bleed like moral sense. This is a warning.

Philosophy: What's The Point?

Philosophy: What’s The Point?

The meaning of philosophy to all of us is subjective, but from an objective standpoint, what is the actual point in it? If we look at what philosophy is, regardless of the fun we have throwing our opinions about, it’s still essentially empty speculation about things that exist. Not only is the definition of this area of speculation pretty vague, but these speculations always seem to reach no conclusive answers. To any rational approach, there can be a typical ‘what if’ response, being that philosophy is littered with clashing improvable theories throughout history. And that’s the fuel to the fire; philosophy studies our existence, and our existence is so ancient, that so are many of these theories. There’s an omnipresent clash in philosophical study, and a mysterious nature to our existence, that disallows conclusive answers. So considering this, what is the point?

Objectively it’s hard to challenge this, but seeing as I love philosophy I’m going to give it a go. My first challenge is this: is the point of an argument to reach a conclusive answer? The academic/objective standpoint seeks a simple question to answer approach, supported with evidence, but this is not the nature of philosophy. Philosophical theories are built on argument, built on opposing ideas and bouncing opinions, and philosophy is not the only area of study to operate with this nature. History, politics, English literature, music, arts all require our personal interpretations to formulate an argument. You could then argue that these fields lack their ultimate purpose, but I disagree. This process of analysing sources and our own knowledge to formulate opinions and structure arguments is enjoyable to us. Even not on an intellectual level, us as humans by nature enjoy discussion because we value our own opinions. But this academic study without conclusive answer acts as an intellectual challenge that we not only enjoy due to this, but we can never actually dry it

out. The theoretical mobility is endless, so our intellectual feeding is endless. And our intellect, our curiosity, is a fundamental human need that needs to be satisfied, much like our sexual needs or our need to eat. We need to know, and what’s more important to reach a sense of knowing about (for our nature) than the entire existence we find ourselves in?

An objective perception isn’t necessarily how we should value things. Intrinsic point is in itself a specific label for a reason; we don’t understand ‘objective point’ immediately as a ‘point’ entirely. So we can find the value of philosophy in our own enjoyment, self development or understanding. If we didn’t discuss our political issues, decision making would be impossible. Politics is largely philosophical – it considers morality amongst other things. But we have to have a sense of direction, a sense of what we believe if we can’t know, otherwise what would be the point in anything?

As a side note, I guess we can conclude that we ultimately can’t satisfy philosophical questions, which in itself is a philosophical conclusion. Welcome to the paradox of philosophy. Carrying on…

I think when we think of philosophy as pointless, it’s because as we’ve said, there’s no answers. Academically this seems very true, at least historical interpretations are based or pre-existing facts, much like the interpretation of English literature is based on certainly existing texts. Philosophical argument is a lot emptier; it finds itself speculating about what we actually know etc. Understanding philosophy alongside these other more solid subject matters doesn’t satisfy proper understanding of philosophy, however. Fields like music and art have established theories that make our understanding, whereas the established theories of philosophy guide our understanding. Philosophical understanding is personal; many philosophers have argued that these theories stem from our characteristics, mentality and personality, much like a depressed person will sway to nihilist views, whilst other contrasting individuals would disagree for their own personal reasons. After all, our understanding of our existence links directly to our own lives, or is much the same thing, so surely our personalities cause our philosophical understanding? This is why I love philosophy, it’s a journey of self discovery and understanding – how I understand my own life and everything that is happening around me. It makes us more aware of how our person conducts itself with issues such as morals, ethics, behaviour, human nature and the self, all of which amongst many other things are very important to how we live our lives. And this could definitely be argued as an objective value of philosophy, if we even need one.

And going deeper, this leads me to think: is philosophical truth even a positive thing? The idea of us having these conclusive answers to what is right and wrong, or how human beings operate, or what consciousness is.  If philosophical understanding is founded on perceptions that are personal, wouldn’t one ultimate answer to any philosophical questions disregard – or slander millions upon millions of (not just personal thoughts, but) personalities? Our own sense of knowing is too important to us, to the point where (philosophically) actually knowing is something we’d be uncomfortable with anyway. So is philosophy even about finding true answers at all? Evidently it’s more about finding answers that are true to us. So… the only thing philosophy needs for objective value is human beings? How about that?