Some of my younger years have been spent in a state of poverty, the others in a state of meager income. This has been by no fault of my own; I was born into this class and still being so young have not had the opportunity to squirm free of the destitution. Even now, I live in a woefully poor neighborhood and have my own income needfully subsidized by academic grants and a generous benefactor.

Despite this, I never regard myself as being poor. That is not to say that I behave as if I were well off, but I cannot remember a time in recent years when I have felt poor. It is as if affluence had less to do with resources and more to do with the content of one's character. I know this is untrue, but I am lulled into feeling this way. I have watched carefully the prejudice cement in my psyche.

How, though, can it be helped? I am surrounded by people of scarce resources, yet I am nothing like them~ They scrounge and squander irresponsibly, are solely concerned with the most trivial of things. They have no higher thoughts; they kill over verbal disputes about things that don't even exist! Hardly a single percent among them knows half of what I do about any subject! They're unaffordably gluttonous and must divide what little they have between half a dozen screaming and ignorant children. They don't have the acuity, the scope, the ambition or the time that I do. I look at them, and I look at me, and I cannot fathom how a person of my character could remain for much longer in the same bracket as them. This is why I do not feel as though I were among them. I regard my status as a temporary trick of fate; their status will likely remain with them until they die.

I feel though that my superiority has been undermined by my own recognition of it. This ironic prejudice is deep. I cannot help but feel like a pearl plunged into the muck and filth, but it is not right that I should feel this way. They are no more equipped to remove themselves from this state than I was as a child - or as I am at the moment for that matter. I shouldn't despise them as I do, because I realize, however reluctantly, that personal character has hardly a thing to do with status and security, and I realize with even more reluctance that they are cut from the same cloth as myself.

Dilemmas like these leave me all the more uncertain about the attainability of my long term ambitions. I will be Sisyphus though; I will waste myself away against the task, even if it may be futile. It is the only thing I have.

A classmate inquired about my major. "What is it?" she wanted to know. I responded truthfully, "Biology," as I had for other inquirers. She paused for some seconds and looked puzzled, as if she were trying place the subject into a specific field of work; I'd seen this before. There was always this puzzled pause. She asked me what I intended to do with a degree in biology. Normally I do not address that question or address it in a way not indicative of my true intent, because I do not consider it a legitimate question.

What will I do with it? Could it be that after earning it, I will possess a wealth of astounding knowledge? Is that not a worthy enough mission for these people? Why do I have to plan to "do" anything with it? Must every scrap of knowledge be subject to an immediate monetary application, such as nursing or dentistry, in order to have merit? Doesn't the degree have merit in and of itself?

I could hear the "M" forming on her lips; the next words were going to be "medical school?" Her suspicion being that I had designs on being a doctor or a nurse. To halt any blasphemous pronunciation from her, as I really am quite tired of seeing either of these two professions speculatively superimposed over my goals, I for the first time blurted out an honest and direct answer as to my intent. I intended as much to quiet her as I did to test for a reaction, as I really had no idea how someone might react to my ambitions. I articulated loudly, but allowed for some hesitation as to invite her critique.

I answered, "I want a PhD in Genetics. I want to contribute to research. I want to be a geneticist."

Now this was odd. What was her response? Was it surprise, encouragement, disdain, curiosity, or indifference!? It was none. She responded in utter silence. She abandoned eye contact and did not utter another word on the topic. How ought I to gauge this as a reaction? Did she detect how weary I was of the topic, and did that quiet her? Did she quiet herself just to privately scoff at such an achievement? Was she so surprised by this unusual answer that she was at a loss and withdrew? Perhaps she had no thoughts whatsoever, and would have responded similarly to any answer I gave. Perhaps I am futile and analyze too much.

I finished reading St.Augustine's Confessions some days ago and feel that I've gained some small extra insight into the Christian faith that I did not have before, specifically regarding the human condition as it pertains to sin and dependency upon God. I do wonder if even very many Christians have a similarly clear understanding of these two fundamental notions.

I've compiled a very short essay that extracts the central observations that Augustine makes about humanity in his Confessions, and therein are contained my new found insights. The writing that follows is a minor assignment for a class, and I have removed the citations for neatness. Writing it as served the dual purpose of saving my thoughts here and earning credit for the class.


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Augustine’s view of the human condition is comparable to the states and transitions in his own life. He regards the thirty-three years prior to his baptism as a state that was aligned with his base nature and was laden with misery, confusion and wrong doing, and it was only by his conscious decision to turn to God that he was relieved of that state. Likewise, he believes that man is innately wicked in the eyes of the Christian god, that as such man is inept and miserable in all areas of importance and that it is only by a conscious decision to submit to the will of that god that man may find fulfillment. To Augustine, sin is an indelible characteristic of humanity, which entraps us with a perverse love of things that are otherwise beautiful, and man, who is incapable of purging himself of sin without God, is tormented and ineffectual.

Augustine observes in himself and in others that disobedience to the Christian notion of divine law is inherent in human behavior. Augustine accepts on the basis of testimony that he displayed inclinations toward selfish wrath and vengeance in his infancy, and he observes this as common behavior among infants. Though he doesn’t pretend that such behavior is universal among infants, it is evidence that the sinful tendencies that he observes of himself later in life were present upon his birth. It is as he says of his later years, “So small a boy and so great a sinner." We see in Augustine’s recollective observations not only the presence of sin in infancy and childhood (ages contemporarily regarded as innocent) but the nature of sin as the prevailing feature of human behavior unless intervened upon by an outside agency, whether by the discipline of academic instructors or God. In Augustine’s depiction it seems that if man is left to his own whims and devices, he will inevitably turn to sin, so it can be said that Augustine views humanity as inherently sinful.

It is impossible to consider Augustine’s view of humanity if not in relation to sin, and to that end Augustine’s analysis of the human condition also concludes why humans sin. Augustine observes that men do not commit offenses against God’s law simply for the sake of doing so but will do so out of love for some other thing that they hope to attain, whether that thing is a person, an object, or a status among men. When the object of attraction is not obvious, Augustine deduces that it must be the love of liberty and self sufficiency, such as from God’s law, which prompts one to make the offense. Though the thing that attracts man may indeed be beautiful and possess virtuous qualities, it is a misplacement of one’s love and energy to pursue it above God, for God is what sustains it and possesses every virtue and reward that prompts man’s admiration of it. Augustine expresses this in his own words, “The soul is guilty of fornication when she turns from You and seeks from any other source what she will nowhere find pure and without taint unless she returns to You.” When man hungers for any virtue or quality, he ought to turn to God who possesses what man seeks in overabundance. When he fails to do this, he has misdirected his love, committed an affront to the virtues of God, and denied himself the only thing that could sate his hunger, and a sin has therefore been committed. Humans sin because they perversely misplace their love.

Given Augustine’s belief that all humans are sinners, and given that sinning refers to a departure from the one thing that sustains man and fulfills his longings, it follows that humanity must have a natural tendency toward despair and inability. Man cannot fulfill his needs and cannot achieve his longings except through the remission of sin and that cannot be done, by definition, except by loving God before everything. This establishes humans as inherently dependent upon the higher power of God for their happiness. Augustine echoes this in thanking God for having forced Augustine’s attentions upon God, the one cure for his ailments, “At that time my soul was in misery, and You pricked the soreness of its wound, that leaving all things it might turn to You, who are over all and without whom all would return to nothing, that it might turn to You and be healed." Humans, in Augustine’s view are ineffectual and self-defeating except when they act through a love of God. Theologian Alister McGrath, who holds a Doctor of Divinity degree, observes that “Augustine’s view of human nature is that it is frail, weak, and lost, and needs divine assistance and care if it is to be restored and renewed."

Augustine regards man as a creature marked at birth by sin, a creature that wants to possess the treasures of God without submitting to God, a creature too foolish to know where its love ought to be spent, and a creature that will inevitably ruin itself because of that fact. This perspective on humanity bears similarities with such ancient characters as Oedipus, who was destined upon his birth to commit a great folly. He was warned by the Gods that he would commit this folly, but he considered his own virtues to be sufficient enough in escaping it. In his mind, no submission to divine counsel was necessary. As long as he had his wit he thought he could avoid his fall, but he was too ignorant of his nature to have avoided it, and that ignorance transported him to it all the faster. According to Augustine, humans are as ignorant of their dependency on divine mandate as Oedipus, and that is their undoing.

It strikes me to know that not everyone experiences dreams in the same fashion that I do. For example, identity in my dream-worlds is a very fluid thing. I am not always the person through which I am acting, even if I happen to be sitting across the room from myself, and I often have no identity at all in a dream except as a passive observer. Neither is any particular character the same person from one scene to the next. Occasionally people in my dreams lack any correspondence to their real life counterparts (appearance, personality, voice) but upon awakening I feel that they were a certain person, as if the writer of the dream intended for them to be but lacked the relevant information. Environments are equally as fluid and difficult to pin down.

I'm deeply curious as to what physical exchanges in my brain do I owe these strange characteristics and what differences in our waking lives and our development constitutes the differences in how people dream.

There are only a few exotic questions that have puzzled me since my being acquainted with them. I'm sure I'll come to explore them all in this blog. The one I'll explore here is the problem of self continuity. I came up with the question myself but later found it to be a topic already discussed among scholars from a range of different studies.

Beginning with definitions, we'll bar defining the self as an immaterial, everlasting entity that transcends death or this "mortal coil." Lets instead presume that the self is constituted by the brain and its neural and chemical structures, all memories, precepts, concepts and sensations exist therein. These aspects of a person's mental landscape can be described in terms of a specific arrangement of energy and matter, and therefore so can an "I" be described in those terms. This is as relevant to the body as it is to the consciousness.

This poses a problem, however, to our usual way of thinking about ourselves. Between no two instances is there a continuously sustained arrangement of energy and matter. Take, for example, "myself" as an infant. What arrangement is shared between myself at present and myself twenty-one years ago? Not a single structure in my physiology has remained unchanged between then and now, so what is the basis for continuity between us? It is not in my genome, for if I'd had a twin, my twin would share the same genome but would not be myself. Likewise, any somatic cell taken from my body has a complete copy of my genome but is not said to be "me." It is merely a part of me. So what constitutes the whole, and what constitutes the continuity of the whole between any two instances?

Are those that look at a picture of their younger selves and say "that's me" mistaken?

The puzzles persists on much smaller timescales as well. We needn't look to ourselves in years prior to see the discontinuity; at no two fractions of a second do I retain the same material composition. The composition of each of my cells, each of their constituent parts, and each neurochemical thought process is in constant flux. This means that if the "I" is a specific arrangement of matter and energy, then at each indivisible instant of time, I die and someone else takes my place. Arguably, such divisions of time are arbitrary, and there is only one continuous flow. At that scale, the "I" no longer exists and experience becomes "disembodied" from it. This is how Buddhists regard things, that experience exists without an experiencer, and it is a troubling proposition to my precious egoism.

How could I value myself above all else and act upon that reverence if "I" exist too briefly to even formulate a thought or if "I" exist in no definite terms at all? Should I exist under some kind of collectivistic individualism, by which I value all of the countless persons that comprise me from one second to the next? Why would I do that? What makes the distinction between any two of them different from the distinction between any two random people, myself and a stranger for instance?

I do not know how to resolve this problem to my satisfaction. A different definition of the self may suffice. Perhaps if I were to define the self as a general pattern (compare to a specific arrangement) that changes along a gradient. Perhaps any overlap between two arrangements on the gradient would constitute continuity between two instances, but does such overlap even occur on very small time scales? I will have to think on this for some time.

I have finished reading a comprehensive summary of Buddhism as a philosophy and way of life as presented by Steve Hagen. As such, I feel informed enough to posit a valid opinion of the philosophy as it has been presented to me. That is not to say that I lacked an understanding of it beforehand, but this book has opened me to aspects that have been crucial in forming a more concrete assessment. That said, I will expand upon what it is that I have learned and what it is that I think of the philosophy.

It is important to note that I am referring to it as a philosophy and not as a religion. For simplicity, I will define "religion" as any framework for tradition and belief that, as a symptom of its conception, demands faith as opposed to direct observation or rational deduction, which are more so bases of philosophy.

As it turns out, as is evident by the Buddha's words, Buddhism formed strictly as a philosophy with no religious elements whatsoever. I will conjecture that such elements which are associated with it today probably became so through cultural diffusion with Asia's other major worldviews. I will not discuss them here.

What Buddhism really is is a calculated response to the human condition. It makes observations that are readily apparent and draws conclusions based thereon. this is a particularly admirable aspect of Buddhism, that it intentionally places awareness and observation at the head of its priorities rather than faith or allegiance. Throughout its teachings there are many points of observation worth touching upon, but the "Four Noble Truths" are the thesis of Buddhism and are the observations made by Buddha himself. They are:

1. Life invariably involves suffering.
2. The origin of suffering is attachment.
3. The cessation of suffering is attainable.
4. The Eightfold Path is the means toward that cessation.

The Eightfold Path is an eight-point methodology for understanding, behaving and developing in manners conducive toward the cessation of pain, or Nirvana. The eight points are: Right View, Right Intention, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, Right Meditation. Buddhists have a particular way of defining and justifying each of these. Underlying them all are a wealth of wise observations and stunningly clear conclusions.

It is important to recognize that these points do not serve the function of a moral code in Buddhism. The Buddhists have no definitive moral code. As they would see it, it is not "wrong" of you to not live by these eight tenets any more than it is wrong for a sleeper to not wake up. The Buddha merely presented what he thought was an adequate remedy for the disturbances that he saw in people's lives, and whether or not someone chooses to engaged upon the path is truly a matter of choice and preference.

So what is it that disturbs people's lives? Buddhists will say that it is attachment. They will say that reality is an ever flowing stream in which no area of the flow exists in permanence or in independence from the flow. We are hurt by our attachment to the notion meaningful permanence and by our attachment to independent forms at all. Indeed, what part of a flowing rush of water has an independent form? All aspects of the flow are interconnected and inseparable. The idea is that if we were not attached to permanence and independent forms, but could recognize the continuity between all things and their temporal nature, then we could become one with the flow and nothing about it could any longer trouble us.

The problem, according to Hagen, can be described in more ways than merely attachment. It's similar to the factorization of an equation, where the product of two smaller components provide the equation. The factors of attachment are ignorance and intent. Attachment=(ignorance)(intent). This makes very fluid sense. If not for intent, we would not have the attachment to permanence. If not for ignorance, we could more readily recognize the continuity between all things and the lack of particular and indivisible forms.

Now that the problem can be reduced to the simple terms of ignorance and intent, which truly define everything that Buddhism sets out to solve, I think that I'm ready to give specific opinions on what I like and dislike about Buddhism.

What I can find nothing but praise for in the philosophy is its absolute appreciation for awareness and knowledge. It is founded on the importance of making critical firsthand observations. It is admirable for its recognition that ignorance is rife beyond measure throughout humanity and that it is the source of a great deal of corruption in our condition. While I do not agree with all of the conclusions reached by Buddhists teachers through their search for awareness and knowledge, I do respect the rationale underlying those conclusions. This mirrors an aspect of Buddhism's intellectual integrity in that the philosophy never pretends that knowledge can be handed down from an authoritative source, secret until made as a gift. Hagen is adamant throughout the book that truth is available for everyone to observe and conjecture upon equally. There's an almost Socratic love for truth within Buddhism. I suspect this is why Buddhism has adapted more readily to modern science than other religions. In making their point, Buddhists seem quite comfortable in referencing genetic biology or particle physics, because the mindset allows for such a swift assimilation of new information and new observations into old concepts.

From the outset, Buddhism observes that our wants and desires (intentions) can never truly and surely be satisfied. It observes that this insatiable longing is the source of much grief -- brief glimpses of happiness, yes, but mostly grief. It regards grief as bad, so it sets out to abolish it, and the most direct way to do that is by removing wants and desires (intentions) from our lives as to achieve a kind of complacent harmony, a nirvana -- though that itself must not be the object of intent.

The problem I have with this was from the outset the idea that we should ever expect or want to achieve a state of eternal complacency in which we've no further needs to be fulfilled. I've said before that emotional states are not ends in themselves and should not be pursued as such, so when the Buddhist seeks to remove himself from intention, I ask him "Why?" He says "To put to rest the turmoil and grief," and in my eyes he is committing a folly, because (no differently than a heroin addict) he is pursuing an emotional state rather than a change to the world around him, which should be what we do pursue. The Buddhist may counter "that change to the world around us is irrelevant, for it is a fleeting change made to things not even real in the way we perceive them." To that, I would counter "That differs in no respect from the internal change that you are seeking but instead leaves you complacent and ill equipped for this world." Perhaps this verges on why the Buddhists do not pretend that "waking up," as they call it, is a moral imperative, but merely a matter of personal preference.

All of that said, I do see a great deal of value in the ability to detach one's self from intent. It is not something that I would promote living throughout one's life, but there are individual moments where discipline over one's base desires could save one's life or spare him or her momentary grief that simply has no benefit or functional reason for being there. I value my times of joy and my lofty ambitions. If that means that I suffer on occasion, I am satisfied with that and do not expect to ever find utter fulfillment or a life without grief, but there are moments when it is in line with one's own ambitions and intentions if he or she may simply exercise the ability to let go of attachment. Learning to momentarily let go is something that Buddhism would be of immense helpfulness in.

I'm going to make a bold and potentially offensive claim regarding what I am beginning to suspect is the proper measure of intelligence.

Observe that (1) all the world is a series of physical events, that nothing known to be of our environment does not involve, at its base, simple rearrangements of energy and matter.

Observe that (2) the only way to describe and understand these events in their entirety is through a rigorous and systematic series of logical statements and that these statements describe numeric qualities (distance, time, mass, volume, energy, velocity, quantity, probability, etc.), i.e. mathematics.

Observe that (3) intelligence is a measure of one's capacity to understand and perform in one's environment.

Observe that (4) in order to understand and operate in one's environment on a conscious basis, one needs some integrated capacity to make these logical statements in estimation, and an increased systematization of these statements allows for greater precision and depth of understanding and thus for a greater range of performance.

Given these points, I will assert that the purest measure of intelligence is one's inclination toward mathematical thought and aptitude for performing mathematical calculations.

Someone countered, in opposition to this, that they can survive plainly and happily without the slightest hint of mathematical knowledge and do not need to perform mathematical calculations in order to demonstrate their intelligence. In defending against this refutation, I must stress that math is not just an exercise for those who are fully conscious that they are performing it.

We perform math on a rudimentary, non-rigorous and unsystematic basis every instant of our waking lives, mostly subconsciously and occasionally consciously. It is present in our brains as we calculate distances, assess proportion, seek out symmetry, recognize patterns, intuit probability, and perform simple counting exercises. These are all integral parts of our ability to comprehend and interact with our world and is hence the primary component of our intelligence. I would go further to assert that an even deeper and even more systematic comprehension and utilization of mathematical principles is indicative of yet higher degrees of intelligence.

It is such a ruinous and painful circumstance to have all of my ambitions, values, and one of my center most pillars of self-esteem hinge on a grade that I cannot seem to make in a class that is unconquerable for me.

I failed a math quiz yesterday; it is not the first. Each time it happens, I cannot help but feel my life's passions slipping further away.

I can hardly feign the self-esteem to hold my head up. I am embarrassed to my core. My chest aches, and my fists clench in spontaneous bouts of rageful frustration.

I am being defeated, and what is my life worth if I cannot muster the competence to fulfill my own objectives?

How much more of my own ineptitude will I be able to sustain before I renounce my values and give up? What will become of me if I do?

I can't live that way. I will not go through another five years of nihilism and self loathing. I'd end myself before that, my pride intact.

2/22/10 UPDATE: I have projected my grade over the rest of the semester and shown that moderate adjustments in my approach to the class should allow me to recover from this academic slump. This is the second time that I have attempted the class and I reason that several more attempts would be in order before my goals seemed implausible. The prospect, however, of having my goals delayed further, when they already promise to be so delayed, frightened me. I panicked before fully assessing the danger that my goals were in. That fact shames me to some extent.

I must rediscover an outlook that would alleviate my anxiety over such stressful occasions. I had such an outlook before. I don't know whats become of it.

"The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic"
-Joseph Stalin

One-hundred-and-sixty-thousand bodies are irrevocably broken every single day, and I am not phased by it, but let die one misfit classmate, who I didn't particularly care for in the first place, and I am suddenly shocked and crippled over the fear of my own mortality and by sentiments of sympathy that I cannot articulate. How can I or we be so unphased by the tragedies of the great many and yet be debilitated with mourning over a single man, simply because we knew his name and can recollect his face and voice? How is that fair? How is that rational? It must be a primal emotional response.

The impact it has had upon me is that of a severe reminder. It's easy to be lulled into thinking of death as patient pursuer, as something lurking in the far distance that, with the right tools and knowledge, might be chased back, temporarily if not indefinitely. Yet happenings like these are frightening because they remind of the frailty of the human body and of how simple, brief or trivial a folly might rend it.

Death needn't wait patiently for me over some distant hill, allotting me the time to gather my weapons against it. It might come for me suddenly and decisively in the night. It might be a lapse in judgment on the interstate, or a careless crossing of the street, or a stray lump of lead shot at me without regard, or a meaningless verbal confrontation, or a prick of the finger, or a wisp of something in the air, an abrupt malfunction in any critical organ. After instances like this, all I see around me are opportunities to die.

That young man and his friend didn't die of old age or because of gradual accumulations of health related defects. They died abruptly and without warning because they stopped to lend aid to a motorist and were struck down by another vehicle. He was alive and well one moment and dead the next. Death didn't wait for him. How do I know how long it will wait for me?

I am so afraid.

When I speak of sports in the general sense, think of football, basketball, golf, baseball, soccer and things of the like where the primary objective is to reposition the ball to some arbitrary point, thereby demonstrating finesse or cardiovascular intensive athleticism.

I dislike most sports. They are non-immersive, non-practical, repetitive and structured around arbitrary objectives and rules. They lack purpose, and the religious devotion of sports fans to any given team is, in my eyes, one of the most ludicrous forms of fanaticism to ever stalk the surface of the Earth.

I've been criticized before for the fact that I am a fan of games (preferably for Windows), which are plainly related in premise to traditional sports and maybe called a species of sports in themselves. I contest that the attraction of video games is less in the pointless demonstration of superior hand-eye coordination, and more so in the matter of immersion. If such electronic games are a sport, then they are distinct in that they appeal to the player's imagination in a way that a basketball court simply cannot. No matter how steeped I am in the action of a tennis match, it will likely never transport my intellect to a place where my feet are not. No matter what, I will remember that I am in a court, ridiculously dressed and, silly me, striking a tiny yellow ball over a net. I will also note that electronic games combine seamlessly to the arts of literature and film. This is a dimension that the NFL could never possess.

One of my chief complaints about these traditional sports is their arbitrary nature. In golf, for example, there is no point to the constituent parts of the sport outside of the context of the sport itself. At no point outside of the game of golf would someone be called upon to drive a tiny ball across an open field with an iron club, nor tap it into a tiny hole. Those mechanics are only there as a demonstration of finesse; they have no other purpose. The demonstration itself has no use, so I deem the sport pointless. Why would I want to tap this ball into a hole with a club? Can anyone explain to me the motivation behind this? There isn't one. The goal is arbitrary and has no relevancy or reference to anything outside of itself. This brings me to my next thought.

Most people who are vaguely familiar with me are surprised to learn that I fence and quite enjoy the sport. They have a difficult time reconciling previous knowledge about me having contempt for most sports with the idea of me training and competing in one. When the fact comes up, I have to explain why I can savor every moment of a fencing match, but utterly cringe at the idea of chasing a ball across a field.

The difference between fencing and, say, soccer is plain. The goal of fencing, as well as the rules that govern one's pursuit of that goal, is not arbitrary. It has purpose and relevancy to things beyond the competition. Fencing is not a mere show of athleticism; it is a simulation of actual combat, as its origins dictate. It is the art of handling the body and blade in such a way as to inflict harm without sustaining harm. That is a meaningful purpose that appeals to real-world motivations that are as personal as the urge to feed and drink. Moving a ball into a net with my feet offers no such motivation.

However, there is more to the enjoyment that I derive from fencing. I enjoy the simulation of violence itself. Everything that it means to feel human is so much more potent under the illusion of combat. There is the fear of pain and death; it sits, at every breath, only an instant away. A brief folly and it's upon you, and you feel that. There are the seconds of predatory fury, of relief, of confidence, of doubt, of vengeance lust, and somewhere at the core of it all is a primal hunger for malicious subversion, for the infliction of contemptuous pain upon the other in the knowledge that it is either you or he, and it's all interwoven with the intricacies of blade and foot work.

I suppose that's all I really wanted to do for now, reflect upon why I enjoy the sport and why it seems distinct from others.

Why are some family members so insistent upon acquainting themselves with me? What is the purpose of establishing good relations and familiarity with me? Their convictions are not mine. Their goals do not intermingle with mine. There is no common ground to be discussed. We are not bound by custom, finances or history. There's nothing worthwhile to be exchanged between us.

The entirety of our relation merely consists of a handful of meetings or a genetic similarity only slightly higher than is normal. Why does that warrant further relation? They have no defensible reason to value me, or I them; we are distant and opposed.

Why can't well enough simply be left alone? Why can't I be rid of people who feel as though my time is owed to them or that they have unrestricted access to me? I want nothing but to live my own life and fulfill my own goals. I do not want this.

It seems to me that there is a problem in how some people view and pursue their emotional states. Most people will conduct their entire lives pursuing a particular emotional response, such as happiness or pride. They will marry, they marry ill-advisedly, they will manage their careers, they will read books and attend lectures on the pursuit of happiness, they will steal, they will kill, they will abuse drugs; they will do whatever is necessary to attain a few blissful moments when glandular tissue in their brains is secreting a pleasurable chemical. Whatever means they choose, their goal is to make those cells secrete happiness.

What's wrong with this is that people pursue things like happiness and love as if they were the ends to some means. Happiness is not an end to any means; it is a means to some end. It is a functional tool, like a compass, and to no one is following a compass an end to some means; we follow compasses to arrive at some goal.

So what are the goals of happiness and similar emotions? What are these internal compasses trying to lead us toward? Should we really be following them? Emotions are evolutionary adaptations. They were not developed specifically for your benefit or best interests. They developed because the creatures and communities of creatures who had something similar to them were more likely to endure and reproduce.

That in mind, they can be a reliable guide, but they can also be a treacherous one, because evolution does not always have my best interest at heart. It is also a very slowly developing mechanism, and we are a very quickly developing species, so much of the emotional information imbued in us at birth is better suited to the necessities of ages long since gone. They're misguided, confused, self-defeating, and inapplicable to modern society. Many of the things that they drive us toward are of no benefit to us whatsoever, either because we live in a different circumstance or because they were never meant to benefit us at all, but to benefit our offspring. So emotions have some limited relevancy to us still, but we should take their advice with a large spoon of salt.

In any case, they are functional, as tools, and a tool is only ever a means to an end. A wrench is a valueless and queer novelty if there is nothing to tighten. When we are driven to some end by our emotions, we must examine that end and make a conscious and informed decision on whether or not that end is worth pursuing and is in alignment with our values, because this compass doesn't always point north.

As for the people who aim to cheat their biology with substance abuse by tricking their brain into drowning itself in pleasurable neural-chemicals, they are missing the point of the emotional response entirely; they are misusing the tool, and as such, they suffer for it.

Emotions are our tools, our slaves; we must never be theirs.

I often describe myself as a misanthrope, an individual cell of the societal body, violently independent from the whole. I am hostile to the ideologies of my neighbors. I do not appropriate much of my time to their petty and over dramatized social games. I have no regard for their useless sentiments and ill conceived ideals. Alliances of convenience have me posted in the trenches of their culture wars. My enemy in such is alien to me, and I can in many cases claim to abhor everything that he stands for. With a slip of the tongue, I may call him villainous and evil. He is the great Satan to me and I to him.

This separation is not unique to me. Human civilization has defined itself since its conception by the ways it can find to divide itself. Even putting aside the obvious divisions between large scale factions in religion and philosophy, each individual one of us is an island unto his or her self, separated if not by ideals then by experience, interpretation, imagination, communication; the very air between each of us has us divided. We will never know the same cosmos as our neighbor. That is why we fight each other.

We spend the entirety of our lives listening to no one else's thoughts but our own. That is what it means to be lonely. The naive realists don't see it as such. They live for an instant, spend that instant locked in an empty chamber; they hear a voice and feel they have company, but the voice is their own, a rough translation of sounds reverberating from beyond the walls; they mutter the sounds back to themselves, applying their own internally conceived context to it. They think there's someone there to talk to, but they're only speaking to themselves.

So is it foolish of me to suspect, even hope, that despite all of these dividing elements there is a common thread that runs through us all? Are we not all fragile creatures, born of the same stuff and aware of our tininess, our own helplessness, our own isolation, our own impermanence? Can't a humanist atheist look into the eyes of a devout Christian and with all the sincerity in the world say to her, "I understand."

Can't we derive some comfort from knowing, that no matter our frailty, no matter our isolation, we are all in this miserable mess? Can't we relate on at least that much?

We are all mortal, and it hurts, but at least we're not alone in that. I wonder how many see this as I do.



All we wonder,
No-one ever denies,
If once given life we must die.

So bow down with me,
Where summer fades into fall,
And leave your hatchets of hate.
Bow down with me,
And sing the saddest of all,
The song we all serenade.

I would define art as any representative manipulation of a medium so as to intentionally stimulate an audience's emotions, intellect, impressions of aesthetic, or imagination. It's a very broad definition, but it's what I think is necessary in order to encompass the incredibly wide breadth of genres described as art. It includes illustration, painting, sculpture, music, photography, prose, poetry, theatrical performance and more things that I could possibly think to list.

Poetry is very dear to me, for it is the only art that I excel at. It seems pretentious to call one's self a poet, but I've reached a level of aptitude for the art that it would be a travesty to deny myself that prestigious title.

I am verbose, extravagant and intricate in my prose, because I adore language, and there is no more complicated, majestic, or brilliant usage of language than in poetry. Poetry is the pinnacle of language; it is the most that language could ever be. In more definite terms, it is the art of communicating the most information and feeling in the smallest space.

If I am pretentious for calling myself a poet then I am obscene for declaring that of all the tens of thousands of beginner poets on the internet, hardly ten percent of them are worth reading. That's not to denounce their writing as futile; they simply do not yet understand the mechanics of poetry, and it is only through very much bad writing and very much tedious reading will they begin to.

What I begin by telling a beginner is that there are very many "poetic techniques" that are available to them, that these are the essence of poetry, that without disciplined usage of any of them, their writing is indistinguishable from prose. Though it's true that some of the best poems don't rhyme, it's the simplest thing, I think, for a beginner to start at. It offers a gentle introduction to the music of language, to the forms of poetry, and those forms offer a beginner routes to branch into practicing meter, imagery, and other poetic techniques.

I don't think that someone can claim to be a poet until they've acclimated themselves to the music of language, to the types of rhymes, to alliterated verses, to onomatopoetic reflections of imagery in the sound of syllables, to the harshness of some words and the softness of others, to the rising and falling of pitch, to the metrical rhythms and to how those rhythms convey a mood and atmosphere. And of course, what would a poet be if they were not clever enough to devise the themes, ideas, imagery, symbolism and meanings that gave poetry purpose as an art?

My own poet development has reflected by stages an increasing awareness of the above elements. I started writing six and a half years ago. Since then I've written hundreds of poems and utilized every format. I have read poetry from Shakespeare, Poe, Frost, Goethe, Chaucer, Nietzsche, Dickinson, Thomas, Hughes, Twain, and countless writers like me. I've modeled the poetry in music, and I've studied literature on how to perform the art. I would have abandoned the art early on, for continual failure in it, if not for the occasional gem that shown through from beneath the muck. It was when an English teacher asked to read one of my poems at a school assembly, and when that poem was met with a standing, applauding audience that I resolved to continue and refine my practice of the art.

I am not without imperfection though. I go extended periods without writing at all. Despite that I can produce, from time to time, gems that are so beautiful that I can scarcely believe that I wrote them, it is still very hard to do. I may spend six to ten hours working on a single sonnet. That's an average of spending four to six minutes anguishing over each word. Every syllable is a stubborn puzzle. It's such a trial that I often wonder if even the "bad" poets wouldn't be able to produce works better than mine if they'd only spend as much time on them.

Anyway, there it is. When I am published and lay claim to a small but venerable following, I may look back on such rants as these and chuckle at my development.

On my way home, I was approached at a bus stop by a man who took note of the fact that I was reading the last few pages of an Ayn Rand novel. His immediate intent was to identify my political and moral alignment with Rand’s philosophy as well as to ascertain my familiarity with her. I can’t be certain of his motive, but he was satisfied enough with my outlook as to carry a conversation with me.

He was in his forties, very articulate, finely dressed and kempt. I suspected some kind of ailment or substance abuse, as he seemed to produce beads of sweat despite the blistering cold and was suspiciously jittery. He discussed with me his recent purchase of property in the neighborhood and revealed himself an entrepreneur in several projects, a certified pilot (for which he produced a license of some kind), a teacher, and a libertarian. He spoke of travels, of plans, of odd tid-bits about flying and about the city’s zoning laws. He spoke about ethics, about academics, about libertarianism, and about healthy living.

We boarded the same bus and the exchange continued. I do not believe that I can adequately convey the depth or variety of knowledge that he demonstrated as we proceeded down the bus route. The startling fact is that I was so caught off guard by him that I forewent my stop and stayed on the bus, listening to him for an entire circuit and a half of the bus route. It must have been two to three hours.

For that entire time, he spoke incessantly; he did not pause or hesitate once, and I contributed no more than twenty words and much nodding. It was not a discussion, it was a unilateral dumping of knowledge and ideas; he could hardly speak fast enough to alleviate the buildup of thoughts and subjects as they rapidly occurred to him. I did nothing but listen. I suspect that if I hadn’t chosen to leave when I did, he would have continued for several more circuits. I only left because I was beginning to suspect ulterior motives for his carrying this exchange. Such was not expressed in any discernible fashion, but the possibility of such had come into my mind.

The fact that I stayed so long revealed something about me, because it’s strikingly uncommon for me to socialize with people. My “friends” are all intellectually, emotionally and physically distant from me, and I normally categorically refuse to socialize with or entertain the company of other people, so this behavior was unlike me. People have approached me at bus stops and at school before, and I dismiss their company rudely. What was different about this man was that he immediately convinced me that I was his intellectual inferior, or at least on par with him. That’s what captivated me, because I so very often, and in such an arrogant, stubborn and latent fashion, see the people around me as being beneath me. It captivates me, however briefly, when I find an intelligent individual with such a profoundly deep and intricate internal structure. Perhaps I yearn for that kind of company without being wholly aware of it.

There is a hidden longing in me for a connection with someone. It’s a dangerous impulse. I suspect it will take years to stifle and kill it completely, but I will succeed at that.

Looking at America, I have a difficult time discerning the intended purpose of the judicial system, namely the courts that deal specifically with prosecuting criminal activity and imposing penalties. I might presume the purpose is to “bring about the rule of righteousness in the land … so that the strong shall not harm the weak,” or some snobbery of that sort, whatever that means. My question is how? Is it by instilling fear of retribution? Is the retribution itself, as many grieving victims would profess, the entire point of it? Is it merely by separating the bad lot from the good lot?

Try as I may, I can’t find a morally consistent argument for the status and practices of America’s justice system. It seems that if they’re not trying to correct a wrong with another wrong, then they’re merely acting out of a sadistic disregard for the innate value of the people they punish and subject to violence, psychological torture and death.

They simply don’t seem to be doing anything particularly helpful or in alignment with their own goals. If their objective is to instill fear of retribution, then they’re doing an abysmal job at it; America's prison system's ability to attract people back, or draw them there in the first place, is evidence enough of that. If their goal is to issue damage for damage, then their goal is morally corrupt and self defeating. A moral imperative does not invert simply for moving to the other side of a courtroom. If human life and dignity were of innate value to the courts, then they wouldn’t be so eager to put an end to them. If their goal was to attain compensation for damages to society, I could understand that. Fines and compensatory debt have moral justification in that someone is returning what they have taken, but there are no labor camps and no output to society from prisons; they’re not factories, they’re cages. If the goal of prisons is simply to remove the negative element from mainstream society, then one must question why criminals are not simply relocated, but are stripped of all rights and dignity and are subject to execution, and they themselves are no longer guaranteed safety. There is a retributional element here, but I can’t find the justification for it.

I am advocating the notion that there should be only three general actions that a legal system should impose upon criminals. They are fines, rehabilitation, or segregation if the first two are unviable for specific individuals. Currently, the fines are not acted upon to their fullest potential, rehabilitation is nearly a nonfactor, and segregation is issued in such excess as to approach stupidity, involves more elements than it needs to, and is corrupted with a host of superfluous and unjustifiable penalties.

It seems to me that this country’s judicial system has changed little since the time of its inception, and rather than adapt new systems to an ever changing society and value structure, it’s still applying the frameworks applied in the middle ages.

For the last year and a half I have become progressively more and more conscious and aware of the things I consume. It makes sense that I should be. I want to be in absolute control of what I am, and molecule for molecule, we are what we digest, so I should aim to have full control over what I digest. Granted, most of the chemical structures that we take into our bodies will be there for only a short while, but it is a commitment that is extended with each meal. A dietary regimen is like a tattoo, the consequences of which, for better or worse, you'll have to live with for years. So why are people so careless about what they ingest; they should plan and conduct the act of eating as carefully and thoughtfully as they do any of their life altering undertakings

From my diet, I have eliminated red meats, acidic soft drinks, starches, sucrose, white breads, and white rice.

I have limited my intake of cholesterol, aspartame, fructose, carbohydrates in general, saturated fats, and calories to within a range of 1,200-1,400 daily.

I have substantially increased my consumption of fiber, proteins, multi-vitamins, water, fresh vegetables and antioxidant rich fruits.

In the future, I hope to begin taking dietary supplements to aid in filling the cracks of my nutrition, whereas up until now I have only taken them to alter my mood and daily rhythms. I would also like to begin to drink alkalized water and to start consuming oils and nuts rich in omega-3. With any luck, I can find an appealing source of vegetable protein.

In conducting my affairs, I incessantly pose questions to justify my course of action. "What exactly am I doing?" "Why am I doing this?" "Do the projected benefits of this outweigh the potential costs?" "How does this relate to the scheme of my worldview?" In recent months, I've found myself forcing like questions onto the matter of friendship. What is friendship? Are the people around me friends? Why am I engaging in this social bondage to them? What is the benefit? Is this incongruent with my morality?

To complicate the matter, no person or encyclopedic source can provide me with clear and definite criteria for friendship. I myself have no definitive criteria; the people around me who call themselves my friends and vice versa are permitted the position only out of a habitual convenience. They have been there for so long and so devoutly that I've simply lacked the motivation and rhetoric to discharge them, yet I am faced with a growing uneasiness with my inability to justify their rank in my life in practical or principle terms. I have a gnawing suspicion that they do not belong there.

I might suppose, for simplicity, that friendship is merely a mutually elevated regard between two or more people based on some personal inclination. Practices and policies often attributed to friendship such as openness and emotional support flow from this elevated regard. This leaves me with the question of justifying my own partaking in this social practice. Is there a reason for me to regard these people exceptionally? Is it because they themselves are of exceptional merit? Is it because they are exceptionally important to my affairs?

As in any interaction, there is ideally the demand for beneficial exchange. I am expected to give something that they desire in exchange for something that I desire. Friendship doesn't normally seem to follow this framework, however, because things are seemingly expected to be given free of return. This is categorically unacceptable by me. How can I be demanded to sacrifice my effort and resources without any benefit in return? Am I a sacrifice upon the altar of "friendship," merely a transitional means to their ends? It would seem so, as they unspokenly expect me to give unto them what they need without my explicit want for a return, and returns are something that I do not acquire from them. Their company does me little benefit; their resources are irrelevant to my needs; I have all of the emotional support I need in myself; they offer feelings of social adequacy and acceptance, but I've never needed these things before, and cannot glean what use they are to me now. It would seem that I gain nothing substantial from them.

There is perhaps another justification of friendship. Perhaps in their characters there are virtues and values that I hold in high regard, and because of that, I may desire to see them be made to prosper. If I value certain principles and see those principles reflected in the lives and philosophies of like minded people, then they themselves must hold elevated value to me, and it would be a tribute to the framework of my own principles to see them blessed with my company and loyalty. Is there any such reflection of myself in my friends today? There is not. None of my perspectives or values are akin to theirs. In most of my friends, there is never any agreement between our experiences, perspectives or morality.

Having reflected on this, I conclude that there is no justification for me to continue this social bondage with any of them.

Today was the first day of spring classes. I dislike the logistics of preparing for a new semester, ensuring transportation, securing funds, procuring books and materials, planning ahead for difficult classes, performing initial classwork, integrating my priorities into a new daily schedule, meanwhile my attentions are also diverted toward acquiring employment and troubleshooting an unstable BIOS and an uncooperative printer. I find it all very taxing, the abundance of imperative tasks that have no clear order or method by which to be performed.

Yet, I enjoy the strain in an almost masochistic way. It's like a muscle that is being strained in exercise. It's miserably unpleasant; the very intent is to cause damage up to the point of failure. The drive arises from knowing that the strain is the only way to obtain a new strength.

My classes are of a much greater cultural focus this semester. I hope that my time out of science classrooms does not leave my biochemistry rusty. I shall have to double my recreational reading of biology and chemistry related texts as to avoid this.

Over the last year, I have been following the rapidly growing and astoundingly optimistic transhumanist movement. I’ve been reading Grossman, Kurzweil, de Grey. It’s a broad ideology, and its principles are what I believe attracted me to become a biology student. It pivots on the idea that science and technology can be applied to radically enhance the longevity and quality of human life, such as to the point of reversing the aging process and extending the boundaries of human performance with genetic and nanotech augmentation.

Progress relevant to these goals accelerates at a rate that I don’t think a layman can appreciate. The quantifiable efficiency of genetic decoding has increased exponentially since 1990, and is now doing so at a yearly rate. New models and applications for nanites are in the process of development . Critical knowledge regarding the aspects of cancer, aging, gene therapy, nutrition and various diseases are becoming understood at a level never imagined. Rapamycin was unveiled six months ago as the first drug to significantly increase the lifespan of mice, and it’s already approved by the FDA for suppressing the rejection of transplanted organs. “If” is not a relevant question regarding the coming revolutions in genetics, biotechnology and medicine; the only questions left are “how” and “when.”

There will be designer genetics. There will be profiling for diseases at birth. There will be cures for all of them. There will be a merging of nanotechnology with biology, augmentation to memory and cognition, enhancements to bodily functions. An end to viral infections will happen. The fundamental cause of all cancers will be cured.

Many of our boundaries will be erased, and in my pursuit of biological sciences, I aim to be a part of that. It must have been Nietzsche who put that fire in me. His reoccurring theme of self-creation has impassioned me, and set me on a quest to recreate myself in my own image, to become what I will myself to become. It is why I am so mindful of my diet, of every acid or sugar that I ingest. It is why I exercise daily. It is why I take a handful of supplements and vitamins daily. It’s all so that I may bring my body into alignment with what I want it to be.

The most beautiful notion is that we needn’t be confined behind the bars of circumstance, that we may shrug off millions of years of the past, be unphased by the eons, break the shackles of our biology, and become reflections of our own will, as are omnipotent gods. The notions soothe the fear of existential loneliness, of biological weakness, of mortality, replaces them with vigor, as a crisp air in the lungs. My attraction to transhumanism and the life sciences is a manifestation of my own “will to power,” and I am entranced by the coming of a time when the line between what we are and what we want to become is blurred to the point of transparency, where our biology is no longer dictated by countless generations and an obedience to them, but by conscious decisions. I want very much to live the art of self-creation, even if in a pathetically small way. I am humbled by it, desperate for it, as a mortal groveling before the cosmos, begging for his own godhood. Maybe Mephistopheles will pay me a visit.

Given time, nature always caters to the will of man, for we know her secrets, and they are our currency.

It's difficult, being born so late in the history of civilization. There are so many books that precede me, and new ones today are published in massive quantity, and I'm under such a constrained time frame with which to experience all these packets of knowledge and culture. I've gone through seventy-five in the last three years, and yet the titles in my 'to read' list have not seemed to lessen once.

I read on philosophy, religion, science, history, and fiction that is either classical or directly relevant to modern society. Some of the authors are obscure, and I feel ashamed to say that I've deprived myself of some of the greater legends of literature. I look forward to reading Milton and Newton sometime this year.

I imagine that selecting a favorite book or piece of writing maybe difficult for most regular readers, but not for me. I have read plays, religious satire, philosophical commentary and I’ve read from poets and scientists, but nothing for me has been as profoundly deep and enjoyable and covered the same breadth of literary aristry as Goethe’s Faust. It is my favorite piece of writing by far, so much so that I fully intend to read alternately translated versions of it.

I very much see myself as Faust, an academic weary of age and tired of Earth, hungry for things and secrets that are forbidden, and eager to wager whatever is necessary for a chance at attaining them. Then there is Mephistopheles, whose antagonistic role is almost forgotten due to his charm and wit. There is a strength and lure about his character that you can almost become drunk on just imagining, and I see him in my character as well.

There is more to Goethe’s Faust than the characters though. The play is a profound commentary on the nature of the human experience, on love, lust, religion, politics, and it is delivered in a surreal and intricate manner. In the poetry of Goethe’s words, or rather those of the translator who opted to maintain his poetic devices, there is a music that carries the themes. It’s all done with more detail and hidden instances of profound wisdom, historical, biblical, and literary allusion than I think I’ve ever seen In a single piece of writing before. I maybe overstepping my bounds in saying this, but I think, even though Goethe frequently paid tribute to his English counterpart, that Goethe was in fact no less the master than Shakespeare.

In any case, it has been my favorite thing to read, and I’m sure I shall write about it again, to include my feelings on the others I’ve read.

Mo-ral-i-ty , n. A system of ideas of right and wrong conduct.

I find my definition of it more useful and of equivalent meaning: “a framework of principles by which it is determined how one should act.”

I am profoundly morally minded, and who should not be? If it is the means by which one determines how one should act, it follows that everyone should be concerned about it in determining their actions, but it is clear that not everyone is.

I can detect in the people around me two different views on morality. There are those who believe that it is universal and objective for being dictated to man by characters of authority. Others believe that morality is baseless and subjective, that it has no reason for being outside of cultural opinion and hence is profoundly able to be disregarded.

My perspective on morality is of a different kind. Morality is not arbitrarily dictated, such as by higher powers, nor is it formed exclusively by willful and personal views. Properly exercised morality is not an end to which man must live up to, nor is it something that man may disregard and still thrive; it is a means to the ends of man, a tool to achieve his goals and a guidance for what those goals must be.

The thing that truly makes morality authoritative is logic, or rather, a consistency between premise and reliably inferred conclusion, to include the validity of the premise. I have been told that there is no logic in morality. If that were the case, since morality is a means to determine how one should act, the implication would be that there are no logical actions, or at least not actions that can be realized through logic. This is of course not the case. If we arbitrarily accept a goal, logical inference is perfectly suited for determining a route by which to meet that goal, if it can be met; hence it is by logic that we can determine how we ought to act towards an end.

It is the apparent flexibility of the end that makes morality relevant to each individual and their own interests. That does not mean that morality can be fitted towards any end, which logical inference will then loyally carry it to. The ends that we are appealing to are things that we value. In order, however, for our morality to not collapse under its own weight, the things that we place value in and work towards must not contradict each other or undermine our own rationale for valuing them. If one analyzes the rationale behind many of our decisions, it becomes apparent that there are self-evident values that, by definition, must be present in any decision making individual. When all is accounted for, there is an empowering flexibility to morality and what one’s principle values may be, but the logic underlying the distribution of values leaves some ends indefensible by rationale.

I conclude thus that there is a moral foundation applicable to everyone, that morality has aspects that are both universal and personal.

I read yesterday, during one of my adventures into the wilds of the web, the second or third discrediting commentary on my web-wide screen name, Vain Apocalypse. It seems that some people have taken it to be trite or childishly melodramatic. The people who make these remarks are apparently of the opinion that proper screen names should be restricted to clumsy attempts at humor or allusion or be entirely irrelevant or undecipherable. I thought I might elaborate here on the relevancy and meaning in my screen name and perhaps as well as my real name.

It is an ambiguous abbreviation for my worldview. The words each have two separate denotations. As taken from the online Cambridge dictionary, to be vain is either to be exceedingly “interested in your own appearance or achievements,” that is, be marked by self absorbedness, or to be “unsuccessful or useless; of no value.” The word apocalypse in modern usage denotes an “event resulting in great destruction and change.” Its Greek etymology, however, denotes a revelation of things once veiled.

The screen name Vain Apocalypse calls together themes on egocentrism, futility, destruction and things revealed. The denotations of the word “Vain” are the most important, as they call together things that are directly opposed, prideful self reverence in the presence of nihilistic futility. It is the mergence of subjective internal values with the cold, objectively valueless external world. Readers of philosophy will recognize the duality, as it appears very often, and the struggle between them is the cornerstone in Albert Camus’ absurdism. Apocalypse is straighter forward in its relevancy. It merely expresses a destruction of orders that are old and a revelation of things that are new.

Vain Apocalypse communicates that I am an egoist, an absurdist, a despiser of the old and the stagnant and a believer that new things must always be discovered. That’s not so trite and melodramatic, is it?

Regarding my real name, I know not the accuracy of their sources, but sites that list the etymological origin of names and match them with meanings are all fairly in agreement. Perhaps they derive the meaning of the names from the nature of characters who originally possessed them, or perhaps it is vice versa.

“James,” Hebrew of course, represents the supplanter, which means the one who takes the place of something. Supplantation is central to my worldview; the decrepit, the unfit, the weak and the wrong must be replaced by the new and the strong. Progress is preferable to stagnation, always. “Earl” is of Irish origin and denotes nobility. I may be stretching it a bit, but I think that nobility is a fine representation for an elevated value in one’s self, that is, egoism. “Adams” obviously is from the Judeo-Christian creation story’s character Adam, who was made of mud, earthen stuff, so it’s fitting that the name, everywhere I look, is said to represent something “of the Earth.” “Earthly” is something that I very much am, being a naturalist and hence having little concern for things dealing in the antonym of earthly; of divine or spiritual stuff, I most certainly am not.

James Earl Adams III I take to refer to an egoist who is of the natural world, not the supernatural, and who values the ejection of the outdated.

My name is James Earl Adams III.


I will begin by saying that this blog is not intended to benefit the public in any way. It is not intended to be advertorial, informative, entertaining or servicing to my social circle or any reader unknown. My purpose for writing here is to catalogue my thoughts on specific topics and to formulate and organize my opinions and values as for reflection or future reference. I am writing for myself.

I have nothing to gain from attracting readers and do not anticipate that I will have any beyond myself, but I will not begrudge them if they do appear. If I am writing solely to appease myself, it may be wondered why I have elected to make this blog accessible to the public or why I have submitted it to the internet at all. Justifying such, I cite a want for the long term security of what I write, a dislike for censorship, and willingness towards experimentation.

On the upkeep of this blog, I will promise nothing unambiguous. Postings will not be made at regular intervals or within certain spans of time. The blog itself as well as its accessibility to the public, I will disclaim, may be discontinued at any time, for any reason, without explanation.

The content will be expressed in no specific order and will consist of my contemplation and commentary on topics or events of interest to me as they appear to me. That is a vague direction to embark upon, but my partaking in this activity is merely a trial.