Space Time Relativity

My title is far more ambitious than my idea. While I'm rushing through, trying to scrape a grade for my future's sake, I'm beginning to realize just how odd time is.

Three months ago, I had all the time in the world for this. I could make it up the next week. And the next, and the next hour, and Oh, there it is. My life down the toilet due entirely to my procrastination.

As I sit here trying to salvage my future, each second feels like a miniature fleeting eternity. It's as if every stroke of the backspace takes another year off of my life. I'm sure Kant would have something to say about my time perception.

Insomnia also has an odd effect on time. I had a pretty rough bout with it for about a year and a half. I would realize halfway through the day that I was sitting in a class, but didn't know how I had gotten there. I could be eating my food and not actually know how I got my fork. I could assume, but I couldn't remember it. Time just sort of passed over me. I don't know how many of you have seen Fight Club (great film), but the whole autopilot sequence is very real.

So if lack of rest can change your time perception, then how real is time actually? Can we accurately measure time, or is a second merely a sequential system. At any given point, someone's one second could feel like another's two. Does that mean the one is living longer than the other?

Time is weird.

Ask Not For Who The Idea Calls

It should be fairly evident at this point that I am trying to comment my way to an A. That being said, it has provided me some insight that I might not have found, had I been responsible--which might be the blog equivalent of the lottery, or at least a carnival game.

Simply, our class blogs have gotten way better through the course of the semester. 

Some observations (I'm going to use generalizations here, but they aren't meant to pigeon-hole):

• January and early February as well as mid to late April have the most posts. It seems the idea of getting ahead and making up ground are more prevalent than discipline and consistency (which is no accusation, I assure you)
• Early blogs tend to meander. Most of us seemed to be blogging for the grade, and our lack of ideas showed.
• When given a prompt, we make a short answer exam. Particularly with the speeches of the Symposium, there are more bullet points used than nearly anywhere else. We also restate the question and give a brief answer.
• Talli's (sorry, I can't spell your nickname) blogs come through in her voice more than most. Seriously, read them and try not to hear her. Maybe it's the vivid language. At any rate, it struck me.
• Later blogs have more opinions and points to make. Connor really made the jump with his blog about marijuana. Most early blogs did not have such gusto behind them. 

In summation, the blogs seemed to work. Even though my own blog is quite "Lacking," in general, thoughts definitely developed well through the blogs. 

Do What He Says, Not What He Does

I love reading Plato. I laugh. I chuckle. I get frustrated. I sit and stare. Occasionally, I nap.

I find Plato so profound and inspiring. I love reading his works so much that I seem to subconsciously try to replicate it. That's a booboo. Plato wrote in such a way that ten lines of his can inspire ten pages and more from each of dozens (and quite probably hundreds) of authors. I aspire to be like that. But is that right of me?

Philosophy has some responsibility to adapt with the society in which it is practised. Ours just doesn't seem to want to dig for wisdom. It wants proofs and explicit statements. Professional philosophy is very estranged from popular society. It is deemed dry, bland, and confusing. The best efforts to make an argument flow logically are thwarted by the need to over explain each term to defend from arguments. And why does it need to?

Are arguments really used to advance the discipline, or to thwart another argument in some grand rat race to be right? I really hope it is the former. I'm not convinced though. So back to Plato: how do we enthral people like he did? How do we write to inspire one-hundred fold the ideas we create?

I do not pretend to know the answer. I do, however, know that there needs to be a reckoning between clarity and form: argumentation and pursuit of wisdom