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ravenUrrgh. I have lurgy and am thoroughly incapable of doing anything beyond lurking and making "urrrgh" noises. I watched Bob the Builder dubbed into Hindi. It was not edifying. It is frightening, exactly how much I resemble this icon at the moment.
I posted a meme a couple of days ago in which you all told me things I should blog about, which I don't.
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apotropaios asked: Actually, I don't think I know much about your opinions on art. Who's your favourite artist? Do you have a favourite painting?
To be honest, I don't have many particular opinions about art. I'm not a total Phillistine, but it's never been something I've thought about much; I guess visual arts don't work very well for me, because my head is stuck firmly in the written word. That said, I do have a favourite painting. It's a cliche, but I really, really love Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, mainly because I can see, even in the static image, the narrative of it. It's so very still and clear, and the loneliness of it is palpable. Unfortunately, the only print of it I could find is cropped - it only shows the people, rather than the empty street, which to my mind is the key aspect of the painting - but it's on my wall regardless.
When I was in New York last year, I had one free day - the day on whichgamesiplay left me alone with a Platonic hangover - and once my head had gone some way to clearing, I went, on a whim, to MOMA. (We'd been to the Met the day before, and spent a gleeful afternoon looking for, and failing to find, Washington crossing the Delaware.) And I really, really loved it. The exhibits are sometimes traditional, but sometimes delightful quirky modern things that I wouldn't expect to see in a gallery but look so very right there. One of the exhibitions at the time I was there was a history of the typeface Helvetica, and it was improbably engrossing. My favourite part of it was a subway sign - the 42nd Street/Times Square one, I think - which is an immaculately designed object. The typeface is Helvetica, it's clear, it's simple; if you adhere to a philosophy of aesthetics that emphasises form following function, it's a beautiful object. And I'm a great believer in recognising beautiful things all around, which is another reason why I liked MOMA so much; the museum itself, as well as lot of its contents, seem to endorse this philosophy.
slasheuse asked: I want to know about your only-child-ness! Do you mind? Was it deliberate on your parents' parts? As an only child myself I like to know what others think.
I don't know exactly if I was meant to be an only child, but as I think I've said before, my arrival into this world wasn't exactly uneventful. (In brief: about ten weeks ahead of time; in intensive care for quite a while; have reached adulthood myopic, flat-footed, with former atrial septal defect, and by some extraordinary miracle, not brain-damaged. ) So even if I wasn't going to be an only child to begin with, it seemed a done deal after all of that; I don't think my parents wanted to go through it again.
I think I resented it until I was about five or six - there's an age, I think, where you come across a lot of other only children, and less and less as said children grow older - because it seemed like a vital experience I was missing out on. But there was a point shortly after that when I suddenly decided I loved it and I've pretty much stuck to that opinion ever since. If I hadn't been the only one, I think my parents would have had to actually, you know, become parents; but because there was only me, they could just sort of ignore the whole parent-thing. Which sounds awful, but really isn't meant to be at all - it meant that they took me everywhere, they treated me like an inexplicably small adult, they just sort of assumed I'd be able to cope with anything. When I was still quite young, some kerfuffling about conferences and school dates meant they were in Chicago and I had to join them a couple of days later. I remember people being horrified that I'd been flying long-haul on my own before I was nine, but I loved it. Without the only-child thing, I don't think I could have had such a gloriously eccentric upbringing.
There's the whole privilege thing, too. I liked - and like - books and travelling, and so do my parents, so in those two respects, at least, I've been very much indulged. As an adult, though, there are things that worry me a little. My parents are my only family within thousands of miles - if anything ever happened, heaven forbid, I would be entirely alone in a country where I've lived for twenty years. As I've said before, I'll jump off that bridge when I come to it. I'm no longer in a position to understand people sympathising with me for being an only one; from my perspective, I'd have missed out on a lot if I hadn't been.
clubhopper15 wrote: Something mundane and less intellectual..like your list of hottest celebrities :P
She says, as though I post interestingly and intellectually all the rest of the time. I will merely smile enigmatically and point you at the wonder that is Paul Gross and the very different wonder that is Katee Sackhoff.
Andgamesiplay asked: I'd actually like to hear MORE about your love of philosphy, because hearing people talk about the abstract intellectual things they love makes me happy. Like, who's your favorite philosopher? Who was the first one you ever read, and was it immediately clear to you that you wanted to Do Philosophy when you got the chance? Do you ever get those annoying questions from practical people about what you're going to "do with" philosophy, or what "use" it is? How do you respond? That kind of thing.
This is a dangerous question, because I really can go on forever on this point. Um. Philosophy, when it's done right, makes me happy in ways that no other academic subject does. I mean, I like politics. But then the political scientists say something like, "Democracy! Democracy is really great!", and then my natural impulse is to say, "well, why is it great?", and then just like that you've taken a left turn into political philosophy. And I like science, but then the scientists say, "X will lead to Y because it always has", and then you ask, "why does the future resemble the past?", and they say "because it always has", and you say, "what? why?" My own everyday way of thinking is naturally second-order - I tend to ask these sorts of questions even when I'm not explicitly doing philosophy - so it's a very good mental fit.
But I've never really approached it from a textual standpoint. I'm not really one for going over philosophers with a fine toothcomb - I'd rather do philosophy of mind, of language, of aesthetics, etc., than philosophy of, say, Kant or Locke or Aristotle, because I prefer the broad areas to the individual philosophers. (And I love that for any academic subject X, there is usually a discipline entitled "Philosophy of X", and I am almost guaranteed to find it interesting.) So, inasmuch as I have a favourite philosopher, it's Socrates. Yes, he didn't write anything down, and that's not important in this case; I don't think the substance of his thought is as important as the fact he walked around Athens and said, "why?" a lot. The Socratic method is how I have been taught philosophy - all hail the Oxford tutorial system, etc. - and I love that, I love that I am part of thousands of years of asking these questions, because they are that important, they are so important that people have died for them and they're still being asked.
When I was ten, I read Sophie's World, which is about a fifteen-year-old girl who comes home one day to find two notes in the mailbox: who are you? and where does the world come from? She eventually comes to meet her own philosophy teacher, who's given to saying the the world is like a magic trick, a rabbit being pulled out of a hat:
In the case of the rabbit, we know that the magician as tricked us. What we would like to know is just how he did it. But when it comes to the world it's somewhat different. We know that the world is not all sleight of hand and deception because here we are in it, we are part of it. Actually, we are the white rabbit being pulled out of the hat. The only difference between us and the white rabbit is that the rabbit does not realize it is taking part in a magic trick. Unlike us. We feel we are part of something mysterious and we would like to know how it all works.
P.S. As far as the white rabbit is concerned, it might be better to compare it with the whole universe. We who live here are microscopic insects existing deep down in the rabbit's fur. But philosophers are always trying to climb up the fine hairs of the fur in order to stare right into the magician's eyes.
And that was that for me, I think. The extraordinary epiphany that the things I thought about were, in fact, a real subject I wasn't being taught at school, was enough to get me here. (Don't get me started on the why-philosophy-should-be-taught-in-schools rant.) I've been extraordinarily lucky in that respect. My degree is three quarters philosophy - six of my eight papers are in it - but I will graduate with a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, the same degree title as someone who's done an eminently useful degree in mostly economics. Of course philosophy's useless. It's useless in the same way that the night sky is useless. It's still enormous and there, and I love it.
Okay, enough! Another attempt at work now, I think.
I posted a meme a couple of days ago in which you all told me things I should blog about, which I don't.
apotropaios asked: Actually, I don't think I know much about your opinions on art. Who's your favourite artist? Do you have a favourite painting?To be honest, I don't have many particular opinions about art. I'm not a total Phillistine, but it's never been something I've thought about much; I guess visual arts don't work very well for me, because my head is stuck firmly in the written word. That said, I do have a favourite painting. It's a cliche, but I really, really love Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, mainly because I can see, even in the static image, the narrative of it. It's so very still and clear, and the loneliness of it is palpable. Unfortunately, the only print of it I could find is cropped - it only shows the people, rather than the empty street, which to my mind is the key aspect of the painting - but it's on my wall regardless.
When I was in New York last year, I had one free day - the day on which
gamesiplay left me alone with a Platonic hangover - and once my head had gone some way to clearing, I went, on a whim, to MOMA. (We'd been to the Met the day before, and spent a gleeful afternoon looking for, and failing to find, Washington crossing the Delaware.) And I really, really loved it. The exhibits are sometimes traditional, but sometimes delightful quirky modern things that I wouldn't expect to see in a gallery but look so very right there. One of the exhibitions at the time I was there was a history of the typeface Helvetica, and it was improbably engrossing. My favourite part of it was a subway sign - the 42nd Street/Times Square one, I think - which is an immaculately designed object. The typeface is Helvetica, it's clear, it's simple; if you adhere to a philosophy of aesthetics that emphasises form following function, it's a beautiful object. And I'm a great believer in recognising beautiful things all around, which is another reason why I liked MOMA so much; the museum itself, as well as lot of its contents, seem to endorse this philosophy.slasheuse asked: I want to know about your only-child-ness! Do you mind? Was it deliberate on your parents' parts? As an only child myself I like to know what others think.I don't know exactly if I was meant to be an only child, but as I think I've said before, my arrival into this world wasn't exactly uneventful. (In brief: about ten weeks ahead of time; in intensive care for quite a while; have reached adulthood myopic, flat-footed, with former atrial septal defect, and by some extraordinary miracle, not brain-damaged. ) So even if I wasn't going to be an only child to begin with, it seemed a done deal after all of that; I don't think my parents wanted to go through it again.
I think I resented it until I was about five or six - there's an age, I think, where you come across a lot of other only children, and less and less as said children grow older - because it seemed like a vital experience I was missing out on. But there was a point shortly after that when I suddenly decided I loved it and I've pretty much stuck to that opinion ever since. If I hadn't been the only one, I think my parents would have had to actually, you know, become parents; but because there was only me, they could just sort of ignore the whole parent-thing. Which sounds awful, but really isn't meant to be at all - it meant that they took me everywhere, they treated me like an inexplicably small adult, they just sort of assumed I'd be able to cope with anything. When I was still quite young, some kerfuffling about conferences and school dates meant they were in Chicago and I had to join them a couple of days later. I remember people being horrified that I'd been flying long-haul on my own before I was nine, but I loved it. Without the only-child thing, I don't think I could have had such a gloriously eccentric upbringing.
There's the whole privilege thing, too. I liked - and like - books and travelling, and so do my parents, so in those two respects, at least, I've been very much indulged. As an adult, though, there are things that worry me a little. My parents are my only family within thousands of miles - if anything ever happened, heaven forbid, I would be entirely alone in a country where I've lived for twenty years. As I've said before, I'll jump off that bridge when I come to it. I'm no longer in a position to understand people sympathising with me for being an only one; from my perspective, I'd have missed out on a lot if I hadn't been.
clubhopper15 wrote: Something mundane and less intellectual..like your list of hottest celebrities :PShe says, as though I post interestingly and intellectually all the rest of the time. I will merely smile enigmatically and point you at the wonder that is Paul Gross and the very different wonder that is Katee Sackhoff.
And
gamesiplay asked: I'd actually like to hear MORE about your love of philosphy, because hearing people talk about the abstract intellectual things they love makes me happy. Like, who's your favorite philosopher? Who was the first one you ever read, and was it immediately clear to you that you wanted to Do Philosophy when you got the chance? Do you ever get those annoying questions from practical people about what you're going to "do with" philosophy, or what "use" it is? How do you respond? That kind of thing.This is a dangerous question, because I really can go on forever on this point. Um. Philosophy, when it's done right, makes me happy in ways that no other academic subject does. I mean, I like politics. But then the political scientists say something like, "Democracy! Democracy is really great!", and then my natural impulse is to say, "well, why is it great?", and then just like that you've taken a left turn into political philosophy. And I like science, but then the scientists say, "X will lead to Y because it always has", and then you ask, "why does the future resemble the past?", and they say "because it always has", and you say, "what? why?" My own everyday way of thinking is naturally second-order - I tend to ask these sorts of questions even when I'm not explicitly doing philosophy - so it's a very good mental fit.
But I've never really approached it from a textual standpoint. I'm not really one for going over philosophers with a fine toothcomb - I'd rather do philosophy of mind, of language, of aesthetics, etc., than philosophy of, say, Kant or Locke or Aristotle, because I prefer the broad areas to the individual philosophers. (And I love that for any academic subject X, there is usually a discipline entitled "Philosophy of X", and I am almost guaranteed to find it interesting.) So, inasmuch as I have a favourite philosopher, it's Socrates. Yes, he didn't write anything down, and that's not important in this case; I don't think the substance of his thought is as important as the fact he walked around Athens and said, "why?" a lot. The Socratic method is how I have been taught philosophy - all hail the Oxford tutorial system, etc. - and I love that, I love that I am part of thousands of years of asking these questions, because they are that important, they are so important that people have died for them and they're still being asked.
When I was ten, I read Sophie's World, which is about a fifteen-year-old girl who comes home one day to find two notes in the mailbox: who are you? and where does the world come from? She eventually comes to meet her own philosophy teacher, who's given to saying the the world is like a magic trick, a rabbit being pulled out of a hat:
In the case of the rabbit, we know that the magician as tricked us. What we would like to know is just how he did it. But when it comes to the world it's somewhat different. We know that the world is not all sleight of hand and deception because here we are in it, we are part of it. Actually, we are the white rabbit being pulled out of the hat. The only difference between us and the white rabbit is that the rabbit does not realize it is taking part in a magic trick. Unlike us. We feel we are part of something mysterious and we would like to know how it all works.
P.S. As far as the white rabbit is concerned, it might be better to compare it with the whole universe. We who live here are microscopic insects existing deep down in the rabbit's fur. But philosophers are always trying to climb up the fine hairs of the fur in order to stare right into the magician's eyes.
And that was that for me, I think. The extraordinary epiphany that the things I thought about were, in fact, a real subject I wasn't being taught at school, was enough to get me here. (Don't get me started on the why-philosophy-should-be-taught-in-schools rant.) I've been extraordinarily lucky in that respect. My degree is three quarters philosophy - six of my eight papers are in it - but I will graduate with a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, the same degree title as someone who's done an eminently useful degree in mostly economics. Of course philosophy's useless. It's useless in the same way that the night sky is useless. It's still enormous and there, and I love it.
Okay, enough! Another attempt at work now, I think.
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no subject
on 2008-03-17 08:40 pm (UTC)That's one of the better explanations of why I love this mad subject to pieces that I've read in a while, thank you!
no subject
on 2008-03-17 09:38 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2008-03-17 09:42 pm (UTC)Also, by the way, I find it interesting you discovered philosophy so early - I know Sophie's World offered that epiphany for a lot of people, but I didn't really discover the subject until I was actually studying it at school when I was 16. I can only imagine how frustrated I would have been if I'd known more about it before I got to discuss it in lessons.
no subject
on 2008-03-17 09:50 pm (UTC)I'm interested that you got to study it in school at all! I did, indeed, get very frustrated - I used to do A-level Biology and get very upset about teleological characterisations of inorganic processes, because of course the questions I wanted to ask - "How can life exist for the purpose of reproduction without consciousness?" - weren't scientific at all, they were philosophical.
I worry, in retrospect, what would have happened if I'd never read Sophie's World; it never got mentioned when I was at school, and it's presumably possible that I could have hit university-age without having my epiphany.
no subject
on 2008-03-17 09:54 pm (UTC)Yeah, I did Ethics and Philosophy of Religion in my A-Level RS syllabus, something which is becoming more and more available to students, plus you've got a minority that do straight philosophy as an exam now, which is pretty cool. Numbers seem to be shooting up for kids applying for philosophy degrees now, and this is presumably because more of them are exposed to it - and yeah, that kind of makes me worry about the people who should have been studying this and just never realised.
no subject
on 2008-03-17 10:02 pm (UTC)Expressiveness in music! Is that Nietzsche's notion of the Dionysian, or the stuff about significant form and emotivism?
Yeah, I did Ethics and Philosophy of Religion in my A-Level RS syllabus
Does it bother you that it's that way round? That it's modules on philosophy within an A-level in RS, rather than modules on RS in an A-level in philosophy?
no subject
on 2008-03-17 10:07 pm (UTC)It's more to do with emotivism, at least how my lecturer presents it, but she doesn't seem to have ready anything published pre-1980, and whilst I'm enjoying the modernity I do need to delve back in time a little at this juncture.
And well, it didn't bother me personally, because I'm a bit religion geek and would have taken the course anyway, but I certainly wish that wasn't the way most people got introduced to the subject, because for those who never carry it further they're left with the impression that all philosophers do is talk about the ontological argument for God and maybe foray into linguistic philosophy. Which is a bit sad, really.
no subject
on 2008-03-17 09:29 pm (UTC)Teehee.
There's the whole privilege thing, too. I liked - and like - books and travelling, and so do my parents, so in those two respects, at least, I've been very much indulged.
I am turning more and more to this opinion. That actually, children take up lots of time, and space, and money, and I might prefer to spend it having my own life, rather than focusing on them. ... I am undecided, however. But it's looking like a more attractive option, each time I think of it.
Anyway, this was very interesting. (Guh. Katee Sackoff. I love Rekha Sharma (http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Rekha_Sharma) and Mary McDonnell (http://tvmedia.ign.com/tv/image/article/795/795076/battlestar-galactica-20070607054620859.jpg) raaaather a lot. Oh, delicious people.)
no subject
on 2008-03-17 09:41 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2008-03-18 12:48 am (UTC)Hee! I'm the same way with history, actually, and I'm sure it drives other people bonkers when I always start trying to put everything into its historical context. (But, that said, I also rather love learning about and discussing the philosophy of history as a subject and profession, so there you have it.)
no subject
on 2008-03-18 02:33 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2008-03-18 06:50 pm (UTC)But yes, it does make me a little bit gleeful and smirky when I can consider everything falling into my discipline. So there, science! So there, politics! Ahem.
no subject
on 2008-03-19 12:36 am (UTC)no subject
on 2008-03-19 12:54 am (UTC)no subject
on 2008-03-19 12:58 am (UTC)2. If I hadn't been the only one, I think my parents would have had to actually, you know, become parents; but because there was only me, they could just sort of ignore the whole parent-thing.
This makes a lot of sense, and I kind of envy that experience. I was an only child until I was five and a half, but I don't really remember much of it and it's being a sibling that's most shaped my life. (I don't know how much I believe about the "science" of birth order, but I'm definitely a stereotypical oldest child.) I was actually having a conversation with one of my housemates today about being an oldest child, specifically about how our parents were hyper-parental with us and then calmed down with the subsequent children, became more lax. Whereas most only children I know have parents like yours--parents who don't need to act like parents, who are more like companions. It's odd, because for a brief time--for those first 5.5 years or whatever--the oldest child and the only child are no different. I suppose for parents who plan to have more children, the first one is the training ground, and they go overboard; while for parents who only want the one, there's nothing else to practice for?
3. Paul Gross + Katee Sackhoff = YES, HOMG. *dissolves into puddle*
4. I loooove your philosophy answer ("It's useless in the same way that the night sky is useless"). And, I didn't know that you got to do so much philosophy, percentage-wise, for your degree! That's a nice arrangement.
I agree that philosophy ought to be taught to students before university, especially because philosophy in university is generally an elective (in American universities; in British ones I guess you don't have electives at all?), and so you can go your entire academic career without ever getting a basic formal foundation in the subject. In high school I did a year and a half of philosophy/religion (they were lumped together, which I loved because in my personal library the Bible's always sat on the same shelf as, y'know, Edith Hamilton's Mythology and Plato's dialogues), but that's very much not the norm.
5. I apologize for ALWAYS leaving overly long comments on your entries.
no subject
on 2008-03-19 05:04 am (UTC)2. Ah, see, now I'm always very interested in the family dynamics of families with siblings. Another thing I've noticed is that families with siblings identify as a bloc - they're a family. Whereas, with three, it's my parents, a couple, plus me, and our lives have stayed a little more separate than they might have been otherwise. I think. I may be wrong, but it's something I occasionally get a sense of.
3. AHA YES. :P
4. In British universities - nope. Medics have electives and no one else gets to! As for my degree, well, it's a bit of a cheat. You're allowed to go bipartite and drop one of the three after first year, and indeed, most people do. But you're encouraged to split half-and-half between whichever two you do by the fact you have to take two core papers and an option in both. I win, though, because one of the politics core is also a philosophy paper - nope, no idea how that works either - so I can get away with a six-two split. And I still get a degree in PPE. I love Oxford, sometimes.
Philosophy of religion is a bit of a bugbear for me, because I really wish philosophy wasn't subordinated to religious studies in the National Curriculum - which I escaped, because I went to an eccentric independent school, but they still didn't teach me any philosophy! And it's my favourite subject and so many people don't know what it is. It bothers me.
5. And don't you dare stop. :) I love them.
no subject
on 2008-03-19 05:23 am (UTC)*nods* This has been my experience with siblings (both me with mine and my mother with hers). I mean, we do our separate things and we have separate relationships with each other--which is occasionally awkward--but I've usually thought of us as a unit, especially when we were all younger and just The Kids. I'm not sure I'd know what to do with myself if it were just me and my parents!
Philosophy of religion is a bit of a bugbear for me, because I really wish philosophy wasn't subordinated to religious studies in the National Curriculum
Ahhh. That is DEEPLY irritating. We didn't do philosophy as a part of religion; we did philosophy and religion as complementary--or really, if anything, with religion subordinated to philosophy, as a subfield. So that was why I liked it, because for me that seems like the natural order. Philosophy is about conceptualizing the world, and religion is just one method.