Comparing Greek and German Philosophy

So, I was chatting with my very good friend Aaron Thomeer, and we came to the obvious conclusion that this is not an economic crisis. It isn’t an economic crisis because we still have the cheapest food in the world. This isn’t an economic crisis because most people have computers, tvs, take vacations, etc. If this was a crisis, we wouldn’t have any of these things. So, are we saying that if people are going to have to wait for another few weeks before they can affored that PS3, it’s a crisis? This is truly ridiculous. With crises like these, who needs a stable economy? You should all give a good thinking on how many luxury things you truly buy, I think you’ll be surprised that you have a very comfortable standard of living.

And no, I haven’t forgotton from my last post that I have no idea how I’ve reached all the conclusions I’ve reached, I’m still working on it.

It only seems appropriate that I’m having this epistemological crisis because I don’t know what I know and I don’t know why I believe what I believe. This was brought to my attention by an old teacher with whom I still communicate, Dr. Murphy. We were talking about me being a libertarian. Really, if I’m so gun ho about people having individual rights, I kind of have to know where these rights come from. I think my subconscious has been mulling this over for the longest time. If you read any founding documents of the United States, they don’t particularly say God gave us our rights, but they say “Providence” and other things you wouldn’t normally capitalize. So: my mission, as someone who doesn’t know a lot about God or Providence or whatever gives us those rights, is to figure it out. I remember Dr. Mikhalevsky telling our class about this all too briefly. She said that the fact that the universe operates under  logos, it is intelligible and gosh darn it, after that, I forget how it gives us natural rights. But I’ll work on it, I promise, promise, promise.

In other news, someone stole my basil plant that was outside our dorm. I wasn’t really upset, but I would have been less disappointed if it had just fallen over and broken in some freak accident, for obvious reasons. In other, other news, I am currently reading The Graves of Academe by Richard Mitchell talking about the floundering learning of people and the successive successes of the bureaucracy-run, idiot-making laws and government.

The Value of Philosophy

I wasn’t expecting much from “The 11th Hour.” I generally don’t like “green” movies. This movie, unlike so many others that I’ve seen, was not chastising the world for the choices it’s made, but offered the reasons we have gone wrong, how we’ve gone wrong, and how we can fix it. It doesn’t matter whether you think global warming is real. It isn’t about global warming, we are cutting down trees and putting up shopping malls. I like how they phrased it in the movie that our consumerist based economy was just the thing that filled a void for our real experiences. And it’s true. We work to gain money, we want money so we can buy neat stuff, we buy neat stuff because we think we want it or need it. I think this is my biggest problem with humanity. For all the amazing astounding advancements we’ve made, we are regressing. I mean, really, do we all need Blackberries and 40 inch plasma HD whatchamacallits? The answer is no. I think that a lot of the problems the world faces, or at least America, is caused by television. It is a very powerful way to communicate ideas and try to think of someone you know who doesn’t have one. Starting with its invention, kids were plopped down in front of it. Everyone was. I don’t disregard that it is a very valuable way of communicating and that people who have it on all the time get the news first. But is it really necessary? Does it leave anything to the imagination? Radio, books, and actually socially playing with other children is such a greater exercise of that muscle (imagination, that is). My real point on going off on TVs (which I’ll do more completely some other time) is that TVs introduce children (and adults for that matter) to both the lies and truths it has to offer. Few people have the discretion to decide what they should believe and what is just nonsense, that too is a muscle that needs exercise if it ever does any heavy lifting. Still, I digress. The 11th Hour was right on target with everything I’ve been feeling about the world lately so I would definitely put it on your netflix queue. Kind of depressing, but hey, when you’re thinking, there’s always this weird mix of depression and satisfaction that you’re actually doing it.