Monthly Archives: May 2024

On Coffee

Jurgen Habermas, famed critical theorist and German sociologist once said that the Enlightenment may not have happened without coffee…and Voltaire is rumored to have had dozens of cups himself per day…

2 billion consumed per day today…

On Overtime

Money is nice, but having time to relax and do nothing is nice.

What a perennial trade-off: either having money and little time in which to spend it or having plenty of time and less money to spend during that time.

But as I age, I can’t help but want to stow more money away…as much as possible…

(Although I love art and music…just only so many hours in the day)

On House Shows

Some days, you go somewhere and realize that you’re bringing up the average age of the group pretty significantly…and that’s a sign that mayyybbbee it’s not the place for you to be…

On One’s Purpose

What is purpose? What is it to have a purpose, to find one’s purpose? To lose one’s purpose, or to gain it again?

I think these questions are perennial for human beings: part of being human (as Heidegger talks about) is having a sense of our purpose in the world as it relates to the physical and social world of which we are a part.

Purpose is funny though: it is sort of tangible but also sort of not. Being a rocket scientist requires access to scientific technology and books and classes and etc but is not limited to those things (they are like tools in a way).

Where does purpose come from though, an individual’s purpose? I think this question is pretty elusive but also very basic and ready-to-hand. I think we all have some sense of our purpose day-to-day. Being someone into music, being a sister or a brother, an artist, engineer, philosopher, farmer. But the discovering of one’s purpose can be a challenge.

In our world, we are inundanted with nearly-infinite possible purposes: on tv, on youtube, online, etc. We see all kinds of people doing all sorts of things, and it is easy to lose ourselves in the stream of the social.

Being by and with one self can help us find our specific purpose, I think. Having time alone and with our thoughts, feelings, impulses, desires. Learning who we are, investigating ourselves, learning what drives us and what is worth giving ourselves, our energy and our time to.

Purpose is also funny in that we can find, then forget it, then find it again. Then lose it. Or it changes. I have been a substitute teacher, thought about teaching for a bit but then realized that the profession would not give me all I wanted in a profession. Now, with Social Work, I enjoy the work but I find myself coming up against its limits, seeing things I would like to do or want to do but unable to do given what I am required to do as a Social Worker. This is what is so interesting about living in and being a part of the world, as Heidegger explores: living and existing is a process, not an endpoint or goal.

Learning who we are is about trying things, seeing what works and what doesn’t and exploring what our existence means in the larger social and physical world. I remember being frustrated by people who seemed to have a perfect understanding of how they wanted to be when I was younger. Many of them turned out to be just as unsure as me but less honest with themselves about that (although some of them also turned out to do very well in whatever profession they chose). Fortunately, life is both short and long, and we have time to take up again what purpose we feel we may not have already realized: there is so much time left still.

Another comment on purpose that relates to my oft-quoted favorite philosopher Hannah Arendt. In her work, she specifies one area of human activity as fabricating: it is the building of things that will outlive us: like a song, a building, a law, some kind of edifice. In some sense, a purpose is about creating a thing will outlive us, an impression we want to have on the world that will be there even when we are not, building something we will leave behind…

Then again, maybe it is nice to just to relax too, and enjoy the day as it passes…

Neo Rauch, Platz

(The painting has no discernible relation to the topic, but I just like it)

Male Inequality

Videos like this are pretty eye-opening. Men lag behind women in several critical educational attainment areas, from primary school up to college. Part of it has to do with the female brain developing sooner than the male brain on average, and so men do less well sooner in school, and then, once they fall behind, the disadvantage tends to compound over time. There is a 15% gap in college degree attainment between men and women now (men being behind).

Not to mention, men die sooner, six years on average, have higher homelessness rates and more. Moreover, industrial jobs that used to employ mostly men have been moved overseas in the US at high rates and there hasn’t been the same investment in educational/training programs focused on these areas.

As well, health related and teaching related jobs strongly tend female, even though men and boys can benefit greatly from positive male role models in these areas.

Fatherlessness and children born out of wedlock also deprive boys of important role models, making them less likely to do well in school and later on in life.

Moreover, and this is the concluding point: encouraging men to develop their purpose and find their purpose is important, and currently our society is failing men in this way.

Lots of popularly-overlooked information that is important to consider when thinking about inequality.

On Freud, Influence, Society

People underestimate the significance of Freud, both the extent to which his work influenced society and some of his ideas which continue to apply today.

Firstly, words like “conscious” and “unconscious” which are now everyday words became popular in and through his work, as did some of his work on dreams. Moreover, his emphasis on upbringing and childhood remains with us in psychology.

We can criticize him all we want now, but that does not minimize his impact.

Moreover, Freud, with his Id-Ego-Superego system gave us a framework for understanding our desires as they relate to society. On this view, the Id is our desire, uncontrolled, and the superego is society’s rules and structures. In a sense, the ego is what mediates between the two, making decisions and taking actions that helps us fill some of our desires while still keeping us a part of society by observing and respecting its rules. Without both, we cannot survive, because we either lose a sense of ourselves or a place in society.

But the battle to mediate desire and society’s rules is ongoing and forever a part of being human. And I think he does not get enough credit for this, for helping us understand this, for helping us understand that we are forever mediating between what we want and what we should do, which I am doing here.

Salvador Dali, The Temptation of St. Anthony

A Little Pride

I am sure my grand audience is tired of the umpteenth update about my car’s power steering leak (although this won’t be the last), but the power steering leak appears to be gone altogether.

Onto the next project…

Not Cool Enough But…

I am not cool enough for shows anymore (my hairline is too receded, and I think far too much about retirement savings and grad school) and you’d be hard-pressed to find me anywhere, but sometimes…

Also, this is just about the friendliest guard dog ever

Fix One Problem, Make Another…Sort of…

Fixing anything sometimes involves unintended effects that themselves become problems later on (like some law of history).

With my car and its stubborn power steering leak, replacing one hose sometimes means stripping a bolt which then needs to be replaced (one thing after another as infinitum).

Stripped bolt

But the important thing is to focus on the forward progress, not on the challenge of the struggle, and little by little, you will get there…

And the leak seems almost gone!

No leak!
Little to no leak!