Letter to The Prospective Philosophy Student

Dear Prospective Philosophy Student,
Your experience in the philosophy in literature class will most likely vary widely depending on which teacher you have, as well as which group you would end up in, so there's little I could really say to prepare you for it. If you end up with circumstances similar to mine, you will have more than a couple units which aren't typically included in a philosophy in literature class. In a way, philosophy is too vague an idea to have a set curriculum between teachers, but this class is an example of one which uses completely different course material than most other philosophy classes. Almost all of the authors that typically come to mind when one thinks of philosophy are only briefly mentioned if even that. That's not necessarily a bad thing - there is philosophical value in every work, undoubtedly - but if you're expecting Nietzsche or Rousseau, you may be disappointed. At very least, the class wouldn't interfere with any of your philosophical pursuits outside of school significantly, except for perhaps in terms of the opportunity cost. Everything is what you make of it; you can learn a lot from any situation if you're willing.

Thoughts About Earlier Thinking

Taking "earlier thinking" to mean earlier blog entries, I actually have been thinking of using them in some way recently. I think some of the earlier entries which I actually bothered to write well could be used to apply to a creative writing program. They aren't fantastic, so I'm not sure exactly what the outcome would be, but I need a couple writing samples and this blog seems to be a good place to pull them from. I remember some mention of a former philosophy student using her blog posts to get some internship or something like that, so maybe I could do the same. My earlier thinking isn't really very well demonstrated in my earlier blog posts, I think.

Surrounded by Cuckoos, but I was the crazy one

I've never really felt I've been surrounded by cuckoos, or really that anyone is really any more crazy than any other. Everyone functions differently in some way, so to say some certain way is crazier than any other lacks basis in anything very substantive. Craziness is in the eye of the beholder.

There's an artist named David Firth who has created videos which I think are particularly deranged in an intriguing kind of way. For some reason the disturbed nature present in all of his works is oddly calming or pleasant. He's probably most known for the video series Salad Fingers, but that's really just the tip of the iceberg. I first discovered him when I was much younger, and while a few of his videos were somewhat terrifying for me, I didn't want to stop watching. I just recently re-watched a few of the videos in question and had nearly the same reaction.

If my situation is as the title of this blog implies, I suppose I should feel privileged to be the only crazy one among the cuckoos as craziness can be enjoyable.

Together

I have the ACT next week on Thursday, so I'm not going to want to write a blog entry then. I'll take the opportunity to write a little something right now.

Think of this blog entry as a continuation of the "Alone" entry, especially in the goofy nonsense way.

My "Alone" playlist will have to wait; I will now search for the word "together"

There are significantly more songs in the Alone playlist than in the Together playlist. This is obviously indicative of the nature music has taken these days. Music these days is bad because it's fashionable to dislike things these days, especially music! While I'm at it, popular music is bad too!!! Wow, I sure am edgy!

I sometimes find it difficult to be together with others because I'm such a nonconformist rebel and I make fun of all the popular things everyone else likes. Everyone else is on the other side of this issue; underground music exists in the absence of a market for it because I'm the only person that has any taste in music and listens to anything but mainstream garbage!! What an anomaly! Everyone knows that if something has more than a couple fans it can't be good!

I'm done with that now I think.

My together playlist is pretty good. I kinda like the lyrics in the song playing now.

Alone

This blog entry will be total stream of consciousness blather (with a semi-humorous tone).

The Strokes have a song called Alone, Together - pretty similar to this week's and next week's blog entry titles!!! Seems like copyright infringement to me!!!

Being alone means being by oneself; it means being without company. Sometimes it can be fun to be alone if you have fun being alone. Other times, it is useful to be around others.

I know a song that has a lyric "have you ever been alone in a crowded room?" called Dark Blue. I think that song is by Jack's Mannequin, but I can't quite remember. It's a pretty good song, but it is alone in that it's the only Jack's Mannequin song I've really listened to very much. That actually isn't true; I've listened to a few others I think. It's only nearly alone then. I wrote a blog entry that had a little about aloneness earlier this week, but it was a bit more serious than I want to be with this entry, so I'll leave them separate (or alone!!!)

Thinking about the two songs I've mentioned so far in this blog entry, I decided to search my itunes library for the word "alone" and it made a pretty interesting little playlist. I think I'll go listen to those songs now.

Save the Earth, Do this!

We shouldn't do anything to save the Earth; the Earth isn't worth saving. In the grand meaninglessness of life in this universe, there is no purpose to ensuring the survival of any given planet. To assign any objective value to the one we live on is an attempt to impose meaning on a pointless system. Also, to save the Earth as it is assumes that its current state is preferable to one in which it is not saved. Global warming causing mass extinction isn't a bad thing just because it's inconvenient for our species. There is no saving the Earth, just existing on it.

Invisible

Sometimes invisibility does not have to be caused by something or someone being unable to be seen, but rather by the refusal of others to see. Everyone is invisible to the majority of the world, since any given person isn't likely to be known by even their entire city, excluding small towns. Even people with significant fame, people that are known by others all around the world, are invisible because few know them personally. All of this assumes that we could ever really truly know another person's innermost self. In class, Bill Gates was given as an example of a visible person because "if he wants something he could get it" or some other silly reasoning, but that assumption itself makes Bill Gates invisible. We assume we understand Bill Gates because he we see his desires or actions, all while never bothering to question whether those are really his true desires. Maybe Bill Gates is a completely different person than the majority of those that know of him perceive him to be; we would never really know. Everyone is invisible, so it's a somewhat fruitless topic for conversation. Also, it seems really melodramatic to think that everyone should or even could focus on knowing an invisible person. It's really ironic how, in a book pointing out that we don't bother to understand others, the characterization is so poor. Maybe it was intentional.