I really enjoyed working on the A Cat Named Schrödinger series on epistemology, and I hope it will continue. However, lately I’ve been interested in how those epistemological commitments explored are expressed and developed as applied to our daily lives. I’ll be calling this new series ‘Holism’, as in developing the ideals to be holistic, or wholly coherent in their application.
This entire blogging project has been more about archiving the development of my thinking in a semi-academic way, taking seriously thought and reasons and history. I am still very much open to it changing. However, after having some time to read and write and work on these ideas, I only have some flimsy understanding of how to apply them in the “real world” (whatever that means). It has, and will continue to be, a drafting process for something larger. Books, papers, theses, etc. so please bear with me. As the reader, I hope you feel a compulsion to not let me get away with anything. I like to consider this entire experience as a kind of directed reading with Aaron, and I’d like to develop it to be even more interesting in that regard.
In the next few days I’ll start out with a discussion of property in general, and intellectual property in particular. I hope you can find something to take away from it. In the meantime, let’s talk a bit more about Holism. For one, I’m not sure of this term, and before we even begin, I just want you to know that I don’t really understand the historical context that this term has. Any -ism’s that are attached to it might not be at all what I’m trying to get at.
A lot of my time goes in to the study of language theory, philosophy and social/political thought. I spend so much of my energy on these things for finding specific reasons and justifications for how to live better and have better ideas for how to operate on the level of public policy.
To stay holistic, I am committed to certain ideals politically such as universal health care, labour tendencies to support unions, or a personal contribution of vegetarianism. I find that all of these actions are coherent and necessary to stay consistent with the foundational claims I’m making about human beings, aligning and understanding of person-hood with a prescriptive outline of how we ought to be living.
This is admittedly a huge project, but in keeping with the epistemic commitments that I’ve begun (and will continue) to outline (please see the A Cat Named Schrödinger series, and the On Freedom of Will post) my own personal development is not just for my own person, it is from and for the socio-economic system as a whole. However grandiose that sounds, I think that our expressive narratives and interpretations about the world are what constitute it entirely (which I hope to make a case for as this new series develops). We are never really alone in our development and our communities are as much a part of us, as we are of them.
You are a very interesting person. Your interests are a lot more esoteric than mine, and I feel like an idiot when I read what you say, but I appreciate it never the less. It makes for a much better blog than the average crappy blog out there.
I also appreciate your core holistic values you have. Although I will never be a vegetarian, I think you have done it for the right reason and I respect that.
I am glad to have ‘met’ you, even though you are a canuck and therefore my mortal enemy. :)
@san i really appreciate this and every contribution you give.
i really worry about trying to make these things as accessible as possible and i’m sorry if you get lost sometimes. i don’t think it’s the problems of the ideas, but more my writing is abhorrent and confusing as fuck.
the one problem i have with philosophy is that it’s often viewed as elitist and only available to the upper echelons of the social system. i think it’s quite the opposite. nothing is as free (or almost free) as a library card.
i’m most interested in just talking about ideas in general, and coming up with better ways of doing things. i think, at the end of the day, that’s philosophy, and it’s what’s missing from the majority of media we get in the ‘mainstream’. dialogue.
if anything i am not an authority on anything, i don’t believe in experts, i’ve just read a bit more of one person rather than another, and have a compulsion to share and engage in a dialogue about the things that trouble me.
The Council for Dissemination and Misappropriation does not support, and actively rejects, holism. The CDM instead promotes halfism and fragmentation of all kinds. The CDM will suspect, inspect, and infect all sites related to Blue and Brown Books. Thank-you.
@CDM you seem fairly, some might say ‘wholly’, committed to this endeavour. i applaud you and support you in your halfist convictions.