There is a period in my writing when I obsessively fixated on philosophy of mind, the origin of ethics, and the Catholic Church. I'm not the first person to do this, but it is unusual. It's also not particularly fashionable in this day and age, but, here you go. Here's something from July of 2012:
Writing well is better. Iterate to do this. Maybe.
Implicitly, I think we assume that our desires are more real than the
world around us. That is, we have higher confidence that we want what we want
and know what that is than we have confidence that there’s a cogent world that we really
understand around us.
I don’t think this is warranted.
There’s no reason to assign such high confidence to our wants and
cravings. We see the world go by in our senses; it’s real; it’s happening. This
moment, this, is happening. I know that. But my mind is a hodgepodge of
stitched-together elements and aspects, and I don’t think I can really trust
myself to know what I want, especially when there’s so much I don’t know.
It’s truly remarkable how much my writing and my ponderings on this
reveal about me. There are all these heuristics and algorithms and well-worn
paths of thought, emotion, and mood that seem hidden until I just get things
still enough that I can hear my own mind and remember what other minds are
like.
I assume much less of my knowledge than most people do. When I hear
someone talking, even if I have no idea if what they’re saying will be of any
value to me or be important, I almost always listen in, since I’m convinced
they might show me something I don’t know that I’d really like to see.
I’ve been thinking about LCD Soundsystem’s “I Can Change” a lot today,
mostly after 3-ish. I’m not really sure why. Something just speaks to me in the
bouncy tuney melodies there. “Love in your eyes, love in your ey-es.” So
lovely. I’m quite sure I know what he’s talking about.
From day to day my perception of the world changes tremendously. I know the world doesn’t really change; it's an artifact of where my mind meets reality. Not real. But everything’s so beautiful and wonderful and
alive on a good day, just like the housewife said. It’s like all the hang-ups and bugs in the
system that keep us from purring along the way we’re intended to just wash away,
and all that’s left is a flowing, shimmering river of rightness. Why shouldn’t
the world be right? It’s happening. It’s really happening, and if it’s broken
then what in the world does it mean to be well?
We can imagine a more convenient, a better, world than the one we live
in. One with all the good parts and the beauty but where nobody fights or
coerces each other, and where the crust never knocks cities down when it moves
under our feet. We don’t live there, and it seems a shame. But isn’t the world still
lovely as it is? I hear the idea that that notion is an illusion, and I
understand it well enough. I can see where it comes from, but it just bounces
off my inner loop of understanding and falls at my feet. That there is an
inherent goodness in the world – I believe it. The world is good. I believe
that.
I want to be Catholic. I know that because I can feel it in the way my
emotional responses to the people around me are flavored. Learning that LeahLibresco is converting fills me with a joy and excitement that are only partly
because of the novelty and surprise of her conversion. It shouldn’t have
happened, but inwardly it felt so wonderful that it did. What a delight, Leah,
to see you jump. Seeing a Christian in my life lose faith leaves me with nothing
but a vague melancholy. “Oh, so you’re leaving, too. Bummer.” I don’t fully
understand why I desire this so strongly.
There are reasons why I want to do this, right? I believe so. The
rational, conscious reasons have to do with insight and morality and finding a
system of ethics that’s consistent and doesn’t crash all the damn time. The
picture of a universe where the relationship between people, truth, and beauty,
is a fully-coupled and fully-interacting system is something I wouldn’t have
thought of on my own and seems to be a better picture of reality than one
without this understanding.
I think I just don’t trust myself. I should work on that.
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