Thank you for reading my

 I was thinking about all the projects I'd started and never continued and remembered I started a blog or two.  There are two right here (this one and the other) but I believe there are still others.  I may never be able to find them, not knowing what account they are under.  But I found these and noticed I had posted last in 2022 and 2023 will soon be coming to an end.  

I started reading it from the starting post and made it though around 10 posts before getting tired.  I decided I should post something for the occasion, but what should it be?  

I asked but had no answer.  It should be THIS of course, but then I realized that this project had a significant aspect that I'd barely remarked on.  (Or maybe I remarked on it a lot--I would have to reread to make sure) and that is the fact that no one has commented on it.  That's a euphemism for no one is reading it.  I was discussing this with my wife today and I said, it's much easier to write knowing no one will read it.  She was a bit surprised.  I gave her the link to this so now she will read (some of) it.  I look forward to that.  That is new.  Back when I started, I never told anyone.  But I've changed and told one person.

And I want to thank that one person.  Thank you for reading my blog!  And if you are a different person, let me thank you as well.

I thought, therefore I was.

 I thought a great deal, or so I thought, when I wrote that last post.  I found it hard to reread now--hard enough that I just skimmed parts.  Were it not mine, I'd not even have done that. I'm posting this to make amends for being so unreadable.  I'll be brief so you can be sure to finish reading.  And thank you for that.

I think, therefore I am.

All I remember of what I wanted to post is the title but I'm hoping the rest will come to me. It had to do with how we have a sense of who we are and it's largely background. The wisdom of the East is that the mind can't be perceived because it's what does the perceiving. (E.g the koan "can a mirror reflect itself?") But we have internal models for who we think we are and who we think others are. They include concepts of thinking and imagery and memory and emotions and the role of physiology. Lately it has been customary to not make a big distinction between our minds and our bodies. It's like the mind/body problem has gotten solved by making the mind just one of many bodily functions like a sense of smell.

I guess the rest didn't come to me because this post has remained a draft for two and a half years.  It's not coming to me now either.  But I'll persist nevertheless.  A smell is in part an experience.  It is a mental event which connects to the physical world by the circumstances of its arising.  We still distinguish the experiential part from the circumstances.  But, if you think about it, all events in the world in which we participate have this same duality.  We both exist, and we undergo awarenesses in the process. The anti-Cartesians would like us to not think about it this way.  They would like awareness  and existence to be the same thing.  For them, thinking and am-ing are one rather than the first being the cause or the proof of the second. They assert that they are the same thing and it is our muddled thinking which interferes with this being obvious.  Or maybe it's our muddled language which allows us to talk about the two as different. Maybe they are also claiming not to be subject to this muddle.  And who am I to say they are? 

There are many philosophical problems which can be disposed of in this manner.  If we could only avoid being bewitched by language these mysteries would never arise.  It's a profound argument and at the same time there's something wrong with it.  Maybe I shouldn't be arguing with Wittgenstein but hey, it's my blog! 

The profound part is that the map, being different from the territory, can have contradictions, but reality, since it exists, cannot.  Philosophical problems then become problems in the map, not the territory.  But at the same time, language is important.  I couldn't be writing all this without it.  You couldn't be reading it either.  It is what we use to express ourselves and to understand reality.  We can't really step outside it to prune away the bewitching parts.  What unbewitched criteria could we use to to do so?  Once our medium of understanding is found suspect, understanding itself becomes suspect.  What we mean by understanding then becomes downgraded to just another aspect of the language game.  We can talk about how we use the word "understand" but understanding itself means something in addition to that which we can't really express except as another part of the game.  As Gödel points out in a similar situation, our understanding must be incomplete or inconsistent.  The mind/body problem is thus replaced with an even bigger problem about which we cannot speak but must pass over in silence.

This has remained a draft for a long time.  Perhaps everything is really a draft and nothing is ever really complete.  Or, equivalently, everything is always complete at a given moment.  This paragraph began over 2 years later than the one above it.  I now think differently about all this stuff.  I am less concerned with language.  I'm a convert to a new way since I read (much of) Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning by Eugene T. Gendlin.  I now "know" that experiencing is a much bigger factor in who we are than was apparent because words are so attractive and beguiling.  The time spent doing lots of experiencing gets lost like a dream when we awaken because the world of language pulls us in as if there's no where else to go.  It has a crispness that makes it seem more real but it is just a still photo that omits nearly everything.  I am and every once in a while I think (in words/concepts) with no 'therefore' about it.  I don't even feel like using words at the moment so I will publish this mess of a draft.  It's not like anyone else reads it. 

Back to the future.

In my previous post (two and a half years ago) I declared that I'm not ready to go back and read my earlier posts.  I know that because I did exactly that--I went back and read the previous post and a few previous to that one.  This is evidence of reading readiness. 

In that penultimate post (I write as if this one is completed as it will be by the time you read this) I also speculated that some of the posts were interesting and indeed I found those I just read to be so.  This surprises me because, were I to have guessed, I'd have thought otherwise.  I see myself as having difficulty expressing myself and most often surrendering to that difficulty.  Instead, it appears I put in the effort to say what was on my mind and succeeded.

But you did guess, you'd object.  In that post you said "I imagine many of the posts are even a little interesting."  That is what I guessed two and a half years ago and I'm saying what I would have guessed now.  I remember the feeling of rereading past writing and feeling the strain and clumsiness that went into their creation.  Now that I think about it, its a characteristic of the prose of my father--an aggressive over composition which feels defensive.  I fear being my father's son. 

I'm going to read some more of the old posts now.

The End of Blogtober

As the month drew to an end, I stopped daily posting without feeling much conflict about it. I was distracted by other important things to do (son visiting from out of town, paid work, etc.) and I often just forgot. There's something about long stretches of unallocated time that allows one to ruminate about it and feel guilty and the lack of those empty hours meant I didn't feel the tension I'd reported in other posts. You might think this level of irresponsibility indicates a failed project, but that's not how I feel about. Twenty-seven posts is good enough for me, with two others awaiting completion. and I imagine many of the posts are even a little interesting.

I imagine, because I'm not ready to go back and read them yet. I don't know when that will be the case, nor do I know when I will know when.

I might even post again tomorrow, the last day of the month, but don't count on it. What more do I have to say?

Acknowledgments

I was just starting a book and noticed myself skipping over the acknowledgments. This is the section (usually in the begining) in which the author thanks others who contributed to the work in some way (sometimes by merely being encouraging) and I wondered if and when people would read this section. I am asking, more specifically, about people other than those being thanked or people researching the life of the author or researching how to write an acknowledgment of their own or any reason other than to be present at the actual thanking.

I assume that the author has (most often) already thanked these people in real life and is mentioning their help in the book itself in order to be public about it. It is a ceremony, akin to a wedding, in which a relationship is announced to the world officially. Reading acknowledgments would be like being a wedding guest, though without having to be invited or to buy a gift, but only to the actual vows and not to the after party.

I'm not the sort of person to attend the wedding of strangers so my behavior may be understandable. I also skipped the copyright page, because I am not a lawyer. and the note about the typeface, because I am not a fontophile. I'm just looking for actual content and I assume many other readers are like me. I do read the credits of movies sometimes, wondering who played some character or sung some song, for example, both not part of the movie content. There can be some thanking in movie credits as well, though I can't at the moment remember an example.

I'm also not the kind of person who watches award shows, another occasion where thanking is an important activity. Also, I suppose that winning an award is sort of like being thanked. When Bob Dylan received the Nobel Prize, he was subsequently called "rude" for not acknowledging the receipt publicly, like not saying "You're welcome" to their thank you. Or is it like saying "I love you" and not getting an "I love you too" in return?

I understand that award shows are quite popular and by not being a fan, I may be disqualifying myself as a discussant of the phenomenon. I'm not sure I have anything more to say about acknowledgments than I already have. I'm going to return to my book now, thank you.

Love thy enemy

My alter ego claims to be just like you, but this isn't enough for me to trust you. Is it that I don't trust myself? Is it that I secretly believe in my own uniqueness?

If the latter, the secret is now out, but it's a secret guarded by an 'if.' I both believe in and doubt my uniqueness. Uniqueness is never to be trusted because it is wholly other. That means it is alien, and even if the aliens come in peace, by the end of the movie, they always betray us. It would be a boring movie otherwise. I suppose it would work if we betray them instead. Our excuse would be lack of trust, because any other reason would make us the bad guys.

Is there an unbridgeable distance between us? If our differences are superficial, it means there is not.

But maybe the betrayal scenario is as follows. Because you are just like me, you share my doubts and distrust. And because you are like me, you will use your lack of trust, as I would, as an excuse to betray me, thus I must preemptively strike. And because you are like me, I figure you plan to preemptively strike so I must hurry.

If you are just like me, must I thank you for reading my blog? Why wouldn't you read the blog of someone just like you? But, since I would like to be thanked, I must conclude you would as well, and so I thank you.