Month: February 2008

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

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No. XXXIII:

Then to the rolling Heav’n itself I cried,

Asking, “What Lamp had Destiny to guide

   Her little Children stumbling in the Dark?”

And- “A blind understanding!” Heav’n replied.

No. XXXIV:

Then to this earthen Bowl did I adjourn

My Lip the secret Well of Life to learn:

    And Lip to Lip it murmur’d- “While you live,

Drink! -for once dead you never shall return.”

No. XXXVI:

For in the Market-place, one Dusk of Day,

I watch’d the Potter thumping his wet Clay:

     And with its all obliterated Tongue

It murmur’d- “Gently, Brother, gently, pray!”

and so much more….

Matador

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What do you see inside the bull?  The thousand pound beast that thunders out into the ring to meet you?  I’m sure his hide is bristly.  The stiff hairs lay cool and flat.  To an amateur, the bull’s message is always confused as assertive aggression.  It is your job to know the real difference between the two, and identify the fear.  The whole of life in the ring is based on fear.

So you tell him that you’re not afraid.  There is not but one successful school in this.  It is no art, but a quality of the heart known as courage.  Your actions don’t even matter.  One holds the sword with the intention of cutting, one enters the ring for the intention of killing.

You must be so thoroughly rid of every bit of fear in your heart that you begin to convince the bull, for nothing is more frightful to nature than the creature that courageously faces fear to the ground.  Seeing that you are not afraid arouses the bull’s own fears.

Staring down the demon’s dark eyes in its long, flat skull, you are not alone.  You have an entire audience around you.  A group that naturally excites fear in your adversary.

You are a matador, and at the moment of greatest risk to your life you plunge the sword deep into the beast’s neck.

The Surreal Life

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“When you’re in a surreal space, surreal things will happen – it’s what you get when you take a chance and stop listening to “how things are and should be.” ”  –Ryan Clark Holiday

How things are and should be is what I most struggle with.  It is what I meant here, about living in cognitive dissonance.  It is at the heart of my struggle – that to be successful, one does not have to go to school and put up with any of this.  To look around and see everyone else so complacent with being here, satisfied that they made the right step and are doing the right thing – it makes my stomach turn.

If I really wanted to alleviate the problem I would drop out and join John on S/V Cacafuego in New Zealand.  But I am not.  It has taken the unfluence of a few, including Ryan Holiday, that make me stay.  As he put it there still has to be those who go back into the cave, bearing their philosopher’s burden to tell others about the truth.

I will stick around, for a while, but I will make it my own.  I am already doing that, through independent study and research.  At the very least, school has helped me to understand a few important things about the professional world:

1. To be recognized, to get into the offices where things happen, I have to be valuable.  My social skills will only take me so far in that endeavor – they will help tremendously but when the introduction stops there needs to be some substance.  I have to have some tricks (knowledge) up my sleeve.  Social pandering becomes sucking dick if I need something when I have nothing to offer.

2. Making myself valuable involves delving down those rabbit holes.  My understanding of what graduate school means is pantamount to this – one’s thesis is that specific topic of interest they had after undergrad.  I am doing my own research in two specific fields, one to make myself valuable as a professional, and another to accomplish a goal so dear to my soul.

3. Just trying, even a little bit, already puts one way above the rest.  Putting in a little effort often yields above average results.  What would putting in a lot of effort result in?

I have always hated the phrase “school teaches you how to learn.”  I still do.  I did fine learning on my own until I got here.  What school has helped is in increasing my endurance.  I used to skirt around many topics, without grinding on one for too long.  By being forced to continue with something for a semester, I now have better intellectual endurance for a topic.  One lesson that will persist, I am sure.

I am here, I will do well, but on my own terms.

We Are Our Experiences

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“Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper void of all characters, without any ideas: How comes it to be furnished?…To this I answer, in one word, from EXPERIENCE.” -John Locke

I have struggled with the phrase “we are our experiences” for a long time.  Every person that ever said it had already distinguished themselves as pathetic before they uttered it.  It felt like a convenient scapegoat, accepting that they are just a result of their upbringing and environment.  It is a cheap phrase dressed in profundity.  But I have to give it some merit.

My main argument against it was that we have a choice.  At this moment you can choose to treat this person differently, you can acknowledge that there is another way, you can choose to act in the way you know is right, regardless of whether or not it coincides with your past experience.

Then I become trapped.  Where does our sense of right come from?  Buju Banton screams in a song “Circumstances made me what I am/Was I born a violent man?”  I thought freedom was the choice, but I am discovering that denying my experience in the face of the moment is inhibiting.  To accept that my experience is a deep part of who I am and up to this point is the best base I have for guidance and the directing of future behavior allows me to move much more fluidly.

Despite its apparent validity, I still think the phrase is cheap cheese and can burn.

Predicting the future

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This was 2002:

“The entertainment industry could learn from the experience of computer companies such as IBM that had to reorient their business models away from centralized mainframes and proprietary systems.”

http://www.news.com/2010-1071-963113.html

I am going to begin posting on decentralization.  It is my research focus for the semester.