Having a blog is harder than having a journal. With a journal you can just give it up and throw it in a drawer never to be seen again. Or feed it to the woodstove. But with this blog every time I decide that's it, this is stupid, never again, someone I never expected to even know me is like, yeah dude, totally read your blog. So here I am. Today has not been kind to my temper. And writing angry is like asking a politician to be straightforward. Completely useless. Let's see what happens.
First, Piaget writes like an AI with programming faults, and his reasoning is like that of a zombie that's had its brain cannibalized. Second, reliability is inseparable from decency in my mind. Which is unfortunate, because I know there are decent people who are unreliable out there, but I can't seem to distinguish them from the rest. I mean, if you make a commitment, you have to do everything and anything you can to honor it, or else what does your commitment and your word mean? Nothing. Sometimes you can't do anything, and that's when you must compensate, or at least admit your failure, and give those who depend on you a chance to rectify it, or help you fight the circumstances under which it can occur.
The reasoning behind the title for this post is my recent obsession with the road and my pining for it. I feel like I truly have a nomadic spirit. I get unhappy if I am in one place for more than a year. I thought, after 10 years of moving almost every year, that I wanted stability, roots. But I want that base the way a Navy fighter jet needs its carrier. The carrier is necessary and much beloved, but the fighter's very purpose and essence lies away from it. There is a thrill to being on the move, and a challenge to every new environment, that makes stability look tame and indolent. But maybe I just think that not only because that is all I have ever really known, but also because I have never really belonged in any place. The closest I have come is obviously Lebanon, and Clark is getting up there, but the connection has always been about the people. And you get to meet such strange people when you travel. Strange is good. Even if it's bad. I feel it builds my identity and strengthens it.
Those who profess individualism and worship it for the most part delude themselves. The sedentary are so vulnerable to the norms and habits and values and routines and lives of those around them. It makes me laugh, how ironic it is that the success of the civilized world is based on a way of life that robs its people of diversity and openness and dynamism. And it makes me wonder, what kind of lifestyle would be most enriching? I am biased in thinking my base-expedition life is, but can one demonstrate this, and theoretically provide the bases of why this should be? Isn't it amazing that an Arab philosopher and historian, Ibn Khaldun, over 600 years ago predicted that sedentary civilizations would prosper and crash in cycles, while more mobile populations would have the societal strength to take advantage of it? And we see today, it is always the populations on the move that really drive fundamental societal change and the progress of civilization. Immigrants are responsible for establishing every country in the world. Newcomers are responsible for the greatest changes in power and national identities, and in the greatest achievements of peoples. The greatest nation on earth is that which is for all intents and purposes a nation of immigrants. So it makes me laugh when some bitterly speak of immigration and of curbing it. I would love to see it happen. Any nation stupid enough to do so will decay and fall into ruin. Just as economic protectionism does not work in the capitalist system, so societal isolation does not work for any known mechanism of cultural formation.
There is so much I could talk about here... Cultural formation in itself is fascinating, and it intrigues me that as far as I know all cultures arise in the same way, and every civilization begins and develops with the same mechanisms. I could talk more about people's xenophobia and its origins. I want to write about 'civilization' and what we mean by that, and about 'identity' and what we mean by THAT. These issues haunt my mind and my life. You don't have to be a traveller to know and experience this dilemma. All you have to do is open your mind up a little bit. Get those mirror neurons working. Use your empathy, for it is a powerful tool of understanding, not only of others, but of yourself. And what is the purpose of self-awareness and intelligence, if we do not use them to understand ourselves; as individuals, as members of a culture, of a society, of civilization, of a species, of life, of reality? What progress have we made along those lines? Why are we preoccupied by petty tangents and materialistic concerns, or even by faith, that ultimate destroyer of reason?
'Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of Mankind is Man.' A. Pope
And you should want to know, to feel, the pain and the ignorance of every doubt, of every question, of every agonizing injustice and paralyzing insignificance. You should want the fear, the senselessness, and the purposelessness of it. Touch the thought and hearts of humanity, and endure their ugliness and divine beauty alike, for each in its own measure completes you.
On a separate but related note, this quote just popped into my head. I might do something with it for my next post... Like I need any more to talk about...
'Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children. ' - Gibran
First, Piaget writes like an AI with programming faults, and his reasoning is like that of a zombie that's had its brain cannibalized. Second, reliability is inseparable from decency in my mind. Which is unfortunate, because I know there are decent people who are unreliable out there, but I can't seem to distinguish them from the rest. I mean, if you make a commitment, you have to do everything and anything you can to honor it, or else what does your commitment and your word mean? Nothing. Sometimes you can't do anything, and that's when you must compensate, or at least admit your failure, and give those who depend on you a chance to rectify it, or help you fight the circumstances under which it can occur.
The reasoning behind the title for this post is my recent obsession with the road and my pining for it. I feel like I truly have a nomadic spirit. I get unhappy if I am in one place for more than a year. I thought, after 10 years of moving almost every year, that I wanted stability, roots. But I want that base the way a Navy fighter jet needs its carrier. The carrier is necessary and much beloved, but the fighter's very purpose and essence lies away from it. There is a thrill to being on the move, and a challenge to every new environment, that makes stability look tame and indolent. But maybe I just think that not only because that is all I have ever really known, but also because I have never really belonged in any place. The closest I have come is obviously Lebanon, and Clark is getting up there, but the connection has always been about the people. And you get to meet such strange people when you travel. Strange is good. Even if it's bad. I feel it builds my identity and strengthens it.
Those who profess individualism and worship it for the most part delude themselves. The sedentary are so vulnerable to the norms and habits and values and routines and lives of those around them. It makes me laugh, how ironic it is that the success of the civilized world is based on a way of life that robs its people of diversity and openness and dynamism. And it makes me wonder, what kind of lifestyle would be most enriching? I am biased in thinking my base-expedition life is, but can one demonstrate this, and theoretically provide the bases of why this should be? Isn't it amazing that an Arab philosopher and historian, Ibn Khaldun, over 600 years ago predicted that sedentary civilizations would prosper and crash in cycles, while more mobile populations would have the societal strength to take advantage of it? And we see today, it is always the populations on the move that really drive fundamental societal change and the progress of civilization. Immigrants are responsible for establishing every country in the world. Newcomers are responsible for the greatest changes in power and national identities, and in the greatest achievements of peoples. The greatest nation on earth is that which is for all intents and purposes a nation of immigrants. So it makes me laugh when some bitterly speak of immigration and of curbing it. I would love to see it happen. Any nation stupid enough to do so will decay and fall into ruin. Just as economic protectionism does not work in the capitalist system, so societal isolation does not work for any known mechanism of cultural formation.
There is so much I could talk about here... Cultural formation in itself is fascinating, and it intrigues me that as far as I know all cultures arise in the same way, and every civilization begins and develops with the same mechanisms. I could talk more about people's xenophobia and its origins. I want to write about 'civilization' and what we mean by that, and about 'identity' and what we mean by THAT. These issues haunt my mind and my life. You don't have to be a traveller to know and experience this dilemma. All you have to do is open your mind up a little bit. Get those mirror neurons working. Use your empathy, for it is a powerful tool of understanding, not only of others, but of yourself. And what is the purpose of self-awareness and intelligence, if we do not use them to understand ourselves; as individuals, as members of a culture, of a society, of civilization, of a species, of life, of reality? What progress have we made along those lines? Why are we preoccupied by petty tangents and materialistic concerns, or even by faith, that ultimate destroyer of reason?
'Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of Mankind is Man.' A. Pope
And you should want to know, to feel, the pain and the ignorance of every doubt, of every question, of every agonizing injustice and paralyzing insignificance. You should want the fear, the senselessness, and the purposelessness of it. Touch the thought and hearts of humanity, and endure their ugliness and divine beauty alike, for each in its own measure completes you.
On a separate but related note, this quote just popped into my head. I might do something with it for my next post... Like I need any more to talk about...
'Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children. ' - Gibran
Aah, we ARE too alike. I'm a vagabond, too, so much so that I have to split myself in thirds, create new identities and put them in a book about wandering. I've never known what 'home' is--sometimes it may be the people, but they're all too often disappointing. The road is home, the sky, the act of motion. Somewhere on top of the sky or as a dot on the zenith, I might just someday find myself. I'll blend into the background and keep a small bubble of self-awareness. No one will miss it when it's gone.
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