Alone in the Cold Philosophy

Day 51 “It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinions; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.“ - Ralph Waldo Emerson, in Self-Reliance I am writing this as I fly back home, having left Finland over twenty four hours ago. My period of solitude by myself has ended. I find that in one sense I look forward to it, to talking to people again and to the experience of other people again, to the news I have missed and the camaraderie I have not had – but I also find that I am, a bare few hours after having left my solitude, tired of bothering. At one and the same time, I find that I want and don't want, that when I was alone I looked forward to being with people again, but now that I am with people – surrounded by people, talking to people, that I miss being alone already. I suppose that this is not unexpectedly surprising, and something I have experi...

Day 50 “I need solitude for my writing; not 'like a hermit' – that wouldn't be enough – but like a dead man” -Franz Kafka I am writing this on my last last day alone in Finland. In a few hours I will take a train south, and then fly back home. I have almost entirely been in solitude here, spending my time either pacing in my apartment, or walking by the lake. I have not talked to anyone in person for almost two months, and had no conversations at all except for a few phonecalls from home to make sure I was still alive. I intended something like this when I came to Finland, though I did have some vague visions of meeting new friends or learning a new language – I achieved none of those. This is due to my own inclinations and failings, and to my choices not to talk to anybody. I could have walked around more outside, attended some of the football games I saw, visited the library, or gone to some of the concerts that had posters all around town. I did none of that. Rath...

Day 49 The first thing that comes to mind when advising someone about reading a book is, somewhat obviously, to read carefully. The writer may be wrong in all sorts of ways and you don't want to get caught up in the flow so much so that you don't questions them, or that you too quickly accept their arguments. At the same time, you don't want to read so fast and with so much prejudice that you misunderstand what the author has to say, or that you immediately dismiss all that the author has to say as delusional and worthless opinions not worth actually engaging with. Remember that, while the ideas and words that you read may be said by the devil, the structure and logic might be flawed, and the ideas themselves may be fuzzy and vague, that the picture painted by the book was something that somebody thought. I've found that most philosophy consists of things like arguments, facts, and conclusions all placed together in a net of relations. Books paint pictures of world, a...

Day 48 Are we able to figure out anything more about reality now than we did before? I'm not so sure that we can. We still know that the world exists, as well as everything in it, and that there are possible things out in reality beyond the circles of the world. I call them possible things, but really we don't know what they are – a thing is a gem, which is a part of the world, so that a thing which is not part of the world is not a gem – but all we know is what is in the world, which is a bunch of gems. Gems are certainly complex, being made up of shards, connecting to each other, and appearing to have various forms either in the world where everything is connected to everything else, or else in points of view, where they appear to involve and invoke certain connections and forces which are part and parcel of a logical field, one of many possible logical fields within the logical field of the world, which allows for multi-sided objects – gems. So we have an understanding ...

Day 47 If I want, I will fight If I want, I will learn, If I want, I will live And I want, And I will - Jamethial* A chivalrous knight is a sort of artificial person, one who is meek to the nth and fierce to the nth, that combines two opposing personas in a non-destructive logical field, forging a way through life, and with a method of existing in the world, which is more do to free willed choice, than natural fortune. To create a Knight requires taking what is already existent in the world, the natural forces of the human being, and somehow combining them to turn a gem of something possible in the world into a gem of something actual in the world. This gem coincides with a person, so that a knight-gem is also a facet of a person-gem, or that a knight can be a person and a person can also be a knight. Knights, as persons, can have aspects to them which are un-knightly, but this is because persons can fail to be perfect knights. Knights can also fail to be persons, can req...

Day 46 The great man is he who doesn't lose his childs-heart. - Mencius What is it to be a great man, a great person? There are those we refer to as great in a historical sense, like Alexander, Peter, and Napoleon – men who led armies, who forged nations, who made history, and who are remembered today. There are those we think of as great because they're work had a tremendous effect on our world today, people like Luis Pasteur, Albert Einstein, and Aristotle. There are people we think of as great with a moniker, a great Inventor like Nikola Tesla, a great Businessman like Steve Jobs, or a great President like George Washington. There are also people we think of as great not because of what they did for the world, but because of what they do in life. People like the mothers who raised us, the teachers who taught us, the friends who helped us, and the stranger who was kind to us. We think back on them and feel that they are a great sort of person, one whom we can admire. ...