Havent posted in quite some time. just making sure it all still works. I’ve been thinking about writing again soon. Might see a change of direction, maybe more of the same.
I am not going to write the three planned posts. Instead I’ll shorten each into a sentence and post that instead. Maybe i’ll keep this blog up, perhaps i’m losing interest.
First: Arby’s wassurprisingly dirty and our service was terrible, which would be more understandable had the place been busy, but it was not.
Second: The Dethklok show was a pretty good time and I enjoyed the music; that being said, Metal is not my scene, and my first metal show was probably my last.
FInally: I played a game of beer pong with some coworkers that led me to mediate on the arbitrary nature of social convention in general and reminded me that common sense only justifies the actions of the incurious.
I hope you have enjoyed these briefs. I have been enjoying my time in the real world and seriously neglecting this blog.
So despite what seems to be a complete lack of concern for keeping this blog updated, I actually have three new posts in the pipe. Is this the makings of a comeback? Time will tell. For now though I’ll go ahead and use this post to briefly describe the next three.
First, I feel compelled to report on a recent experience at a local Arbys, after which Charles and I realized we should never visit another. As a former dining services professional, I just have to say something about such a poorly run establishment. Later though.
The second post concerns my first ever metal concert.I went to see Dethklok for my birthday. I had a great time, and the experience, I think, is worth narrating at length. Again, later.
Finally I have a post inspired by a game of beer pong. After discussing whether or not to play the game under NBA jam rules, I was thinking a bit about social convention in general. So again, more on that later.
I’d rather not go 10 days without a post before dropping four on the same day, but that’s the way it’s gonna be. So it goes
So it’s been a minute. Whatever, I’ll have to get used to the new pace. Too much else going on for me to sit around blogging all the time, not to mention I got real hung up on some of my ideas from June.
The fun part about this blog is that I don’t just write anything down to see my own thoughts in print. What I’m writing about is pretty reflective of my mental state, but ideas I work out here also have an impact on that state. All posts are thus outputs of my particular state, and inputs into future states. So, when, for instance, the topics start turnin towards the folly of action and/or advance planning, or of the futility of flattening a compex idea into the confines of a few words, expect to see less posting.
Now there’s something to post about though. I pushed through the tough section of GEB and made it to a wonderful chapter called ant fugue, wherein the author compares the workings of the mind to the organization of an ant colony. Hoffstadter has given me some new terms to get comfortable with, but I think that once I do I’ll be able to get alot more traction from my thinking about Objects.
In this most recent chapter there has been alot of talk about where meaning can be stored, the importance of varying levels of analysis and organization. It’s almost been enough to make me feel I should hurry to grad school. Then I remember that I can read just as well for myself as for credit. Anyway I’m excited to get back to the book on such a cold day.
I had a conversation with a friend of mine yesterday. As usual with this particular friend of mine, our chat provoked a blog post. One of the prominent themes of my college experience has been that my level of knowledge about the workings of our human institutions has increased equivalently with my lack of faith in the centralization of government.
It’s mostly a question of institutional response to situations of novelty and uncertainty. I have come to believe that, in the same way a planned economy cannot regulate the distribution of a societies resources as effectively as a market, a central government can never respond to novelty as well as a distributed decisionmaking network.
My work on self organization has lead me to believe that we never needed a leviathan to impose social order, rather, order emerges natural from the regular interaction of individuals.
So I was explaining this to my friend, remarking that anarchy, a system of no leaders, would be a much more orderly society than is usually predicted.
She objected, inquiring what would prevent someone from simply taking a leadership role and subjugating the others. My immediate response was that in an anarchy that person would be told to fuck off. At that moment I realized that anarchy isn’t a society without leaders, it’s one without followers.
If every individual in a society can be competent and confident in their own decisions, the need for central government is eliminated. As technology reduces the barriers to direct connection between individuals, it is increasingly possible to form self regulating communities to perform functions once requiring rigid, unresponsive governmental systems. These communities can, and, in my opinion, will become the norm. Especially in this current environment of budget cuts, waste, cronyism, and public distrust.
Anyway I’m excited.
So here it is Wednesday. I am in the store unusually early. I had to cover a friend. First result is that my lunch plans for the day have been slightly interrupted, second result is I will be out and about two hours earlier today. It’s a mixed bag. So today I’ve just been sitting here marvelling that it’s nearly October. The flow of time seems to have really picked up.
I recieved a call from my Sister the other day, informing me that the family was worried. No one had heard from me in weeks apparently. It’s true, I hadn’t called home as usual on a sunday because I had just been home. Imagine my surprise when Tina informed me that I left Stillwater, not five, but fifteen days ago. I really and truly had not realized so much time had passed.
Disclosure: this post has been completed in two parts. Part 1 was written during the last week of September, seemingly on a Wednesday . I was about to start writing about liquid time, but I realized I had no way to explain it, so I saved the post to a draft hoping it would come to me later. Part 2 is what I came up with.
Basically, liquid time is a phenomenon whereby I recognize no natural sequence to the events I remember, forcing me to think back and reconstruct stories in order to place my memories in some sort of narrative order. It seemed to me that my memories used to come with some sort of tag telling my brain how distant the memory is from my present experience. Anymore however, tags aren’t so specific. Events yesterday read like events four years distant.
The result is something like time travel. I’m never entirely sure what’s goin on in the story, or how long it’s been since various actions were performed. So I find myself being informed by my sister that I haven’t called home in weeks and it surprises me genuinely.
I know I haven’t posted in some time, so I doubt I still have any regular readers. However, if you happen to be reading, I wonder what you think of liquid time? Does anyone else experience this? Comments please
So I’m posting from the mobile again, but at least I’m posting something. I’ve been very successful at making improving my instrumental skills a more central part of my day to day experience. However, I haven’t quite kept up the blogging and other Internet related activities, or my ongoing research on self-similarity, self-reference and self-replication in complex dynamic systems. Hopefully I can reintroduce and reinforce those habits without disrupting the new ones I like.
I have also been interested to see the effects of my efforts at evading a dillema I faced this summer. I haven’t been successful at purposefully adjusting my value structure. I just can’t choose what to want and what not to want. I have, on the other hand, been surprisingly successful at keeping my priorities in line with environmental opportunity, rather than internal compulsion. I ordinarily wouldn’t expect it possible to maintain a disconnect between value and priority, but somehow I’m making it work for the time being. Of course I know, value, priority, and opportunity all need to get in the same line soon.
Hope I haven’t been to cryptic. It’s much more difficult to explain myself when I’ve been away for a while. I can’t remember if I’m using common themes or inventing terms as I go. Oh well. Only way to shake this rust is to keep posting.
At the moment I am taking a break from working at the shop. The three hours I am taking right now will be the first hours in 120 in which I am not present in the store and it is open. I need the break.
Basically, I am blogging at the moment to give myself something to do while three songs finish playing on iTunes, after which I will be jumping on the old bicycle and heading back to it.
Today I am in a fantastic mood. I have been alluding to a problem I had wherein I did not follow my own advice and got into a disconnect between my expectations in a situation and the reality of that situation. Problem resolved.
I think it was not so much that I had not been following my own advice as that by thinking I wasn’t doing it, I wasn’t. Now I am.
Life is very simple when you understand that it is necessarily constructed of a series of objects, real or imaginary, concrete or abstract, and of all shapes and sizes, to which you assign values. Values result in planning, and planning and circumstance generate behavior.
Any pattern of behavior can be achieved if you understand that values that structure it. It is really remarkable how much of a difference in your life can result from seemingly minor changes in your priorities.
More on this later, but the song is ending, and I have to return to work.
Although the university administration has done its best to put a damper on the festivities, welcome week is on in east lansing. With welcome week comes the pop-a-balloon sale at Katz, which I enjoy thoroughly. Everyone should come by. We’ll be open late.
Also, this is my first welcome week in five years that my work schedule allows me to really participate in this festival of a week. I’m excited
