warmheartedness

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I’m most certainly no masochist, but I get warm fuzzies from a put-down by someone who has clear warmheartedness with me, such that the tease might seem otherwise (to someone just entering the room) dismissive or coldhearted. I love being teased by a friend.

For example, I say: “I didn’t know the software could do that,” and my friend replies: “There’s lots of things you don’t know.” I get a good laugh.

thinking of excellent ontogeny without egoism

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What is the developmental basis of a very good sense of self, independent yet easily empathic? A well-enabled sense of self avoids habitual and extreme egoism. Egoism expresses, ironically, disabled self sense. How goes developmental avoidance of egoistic personality, resulting in strong, constructive self efficacy with very good empathy?

midland days

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I make notes offline to a variably larger extent than writing online (let us hope). I sometimes put here what interests me during the day to have online (daynotes), and postings are part of a piecemeal journal toward actualizing a large-scale project (or Project) already largely realized, yet

a serene elation of wealth

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X amount of force in a depth of water may cause a serene flow where that same amount of force in shallow water causes a frenzied flow (same energy; less space for it to flow in). The frenzied energy of a young mind (having a relative thinness of neural connectivity for given available energy) may be serene in later years, as the older mind (so rich in density of associativity) is actually doing more with given energy than the younger mind can, but far less overtly, maybe appearing passive to youth. The attention span of the young mind may be very episodic; its listening shallow, where the much-older mind may seem passive (even inattentive) when such a mind is deeply receptive.

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life as literary psychology

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Thursday morning, 4/1

The New York Times reports on recent interest in bridging cognitive psychology and literary studies, something that’s been going on for many years. But commonly in interdomainal inquiry, there are new vistas to explore. I think it’s a can of worms, but I wouldn’t want less for my leading edges. The Times article has many aspects that are valuable to me, so I’m going to use themes from the article for a series of five postings.

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irt: in relation to—or better: in relation with

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‘irt’ means “in relating to.” It’s easier to keystroke than ‘vis-à-vis.’

Yet, I understand with as the basis for “…to”: being in relation with, thus in relation to. I want to understand being-with as the basis for a sense of being in relation to, relating. That’s not always apt, as in simply asserting a semantic connection, yet we’re always doing things with words, enacting a relation that can be reflectively regarded as relating to.

[Nov. 13, 2011: Excuse my linking to this posting so often
from other pages, if that has become tedious for you.]

I think so much vis-à-vis things being vis-à-vis that I always use ‘irt’
in my notes. I might as well use it online, and have this little posting.

Besides, I don’t do French, so ‘vis-à-vis’ feels unduly pretentious,
even though it’s now common for English (and I commonly have
no compunction about being pretentious).

Basically, though, ‘irt’’s a time saver for someone obsessed
with interfacing, interplay, interality, inter-intering (recursive potential), and so on.

[revised April 9, 2019 and June 4, 2024.]

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reading time: between simulacrumand literary legacy

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Monday, 3/29

The simulacral condition of hyperNetted textuality has become vertiginous, though still a kind of lowland (and very “noisy,” in the info sense). “Literary” textuality is very different, involving complex appreciation, giving time to reading, solitude.

memo from the library

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If you publish something, you want it read. You want to be influential.

There is so much published, and they all sought to be influential. Some lasted. Indeed, so much lasted, one might think that nearly everything that can be said about life, world, humanity, is said, waiting to be influential again, to be brought into another centripetal appreciation of legacies; or more, advancing what might last beyond our bones.

philosophy pre- and post-quake

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Long back in this posting trek, I quoted philosopher Philippa Foot quoting philosopher Normal Malcolm quoting his mentor Ludwig Wittgenstein on the latter’s deathbed, Ludwig saying he’d had a “good life”— not difficult when one comes from a wealthy family and has
the leisure to wander Cambridge, go away into the heights to write Philosophical Investigations, come back when he pleases.

a topologist in flatland

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The day can feel defined by a sense of living in two separate worlds
at once, where others, in casual relations, have apparently no idea of
the possibility, so we interact in common sense, with common sense, as if that’s everything. The other’s comfort may depend (I feel) on an unrealized common-sense attitude that wouldn’t know what that is as such (it seems to me), because there’s just “the” day, the world
in common. The notion of common-sense attitude only makes sense
(as such) relative to there being a different way of understanding
that becomes, relatively speaking, an “uncommon” attitude (the issue
of eccentricity again).

individuational writing on individuation

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Well, finally, the “individuation” section of the “conceptuality...” project is done. It’s intended to be read as is, without some background explanation. But I can’t let well enough alone, I guess. I’ve posted a background explanation.

inFlowering

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Self-reflectivity ultimately becomes a play of the world, the way that being in the world or inWorldness happens, worlds (verb), Self worlding, self-worlding in the play of things in reflection. The horizoning child is ultimately phenomenological. The artist plays, improvises, sketches, stands back to see whom she is now, changes his mind, plays more.

Self-reflectivity proximally may seem withdrawing, abstractive,
yet flowers into its self-horizoning.

So it goes—will go—beyond my discussion of individuation
for the “conceptuality...” project in its ending sense of flourishing.

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holding time in being held

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Persons make their own way by way of actualizing potential based within herself/himself, inasmuch as s/he’s true to his/her own venturing.

Unsightly slashes for a language lacking gender-neutral indicators.

Why not coin some neologisms: ‘hiers’ for “her/his”; ‘hiermself’ for “her/himself”? Is etymogeny malleable or what?

If individuation seeks gender balance—which was the Jungian-archetypal idea of Anima/Animus Shadowing on the way to one’s ownmost humanity in “the second half of life”—how are we to denote that female and male may each embody a balance of feminine and masculine?

At least, one may need the question for intimacies feeling all those so-gendered complementarities of Literature and psychology as ours, recountable in some singular way, as if in one name.

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December 10, 2019

OK, so ‘they’ gets to be Merriam-Webster’s “Word of the Year” as non-gendered option. One can get used to that.

“Persons make their own way by way of actualizing potential based within themself, inasmuch as they are true to their own venturing.”

But my point above had been about gynandry (or androgyny): acknowledging gender balance in oneself, not washing away gender.
I wouldn’t say of you that I love them.

Of course, it’s very odd to highlight your gynandry by saying of you that I love hierm.

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wondering a way

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Friday, 3/19 — 6:41 am

Merriam-Webster’s “Word of the Day”: wanderlust

My way into spring will be magniloquent.

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Friday / Saturday

Idealism is good. But it doesn’t presume actuality of the ideal.
It’s not a given by which others are evaluated. My idealism is
aspirational for myself, so I don’t regard myself as some exemplar
of ideality actualized. I want to be influential, but I don’t expect it.

value of individuation

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I don’t regularly go back in my blogs’ recent archives looking for threads, though I know I’ll find some when I do.

empathy through individuation

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This complements last month’s posting on genuineness in learning from the experience of others, as well as briefly addressing—one could argue (as I would)—the basis of caring about and desiring to care for others,
in parenting, teaching, and ethical life.

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some points of philosophical corroboration

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Speaking of philosophical work, I’m really not quite so odd as I self-effacingly say. Joseph Margolis (a senior member of America’s philosophical community, author of 30 books, it’s said) has just published Pragmatism’s Advantage, evidently the culminating work of his life, which seeks no less than to prospect and recommend a sense of philosophy as such for the 21st century—and I’m beyond him!—though I’m the only one who knows that, and I lack his erudition (which will be useful for me to appropriate—with all due credit), which is not especially important, by his own argument, for scoping a sense of the future of philosophy, where we’re all girl/boy scouts.

inhabited

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Fascination with the diverse scale of the days, making a fine-grained incohering of labyrinthine times a sign of some fantastic artistry in our evolving, a wealth of a library that interests a few, so much good reason for happy conversation—and serenely fruitful solitude.

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self-reflectivity: where learning never ends

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Genuineness is one mode of validity, which is also about realism/factuality and appropriateness/exemplarity, including a welcoming of critique as a chance to grow.

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a note on “philosophical work”

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6:51 am

Question for today: Why does—might—philosophical work matter?

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2:27 pm

I asked that morning question because...hmmm, I forget. The question is about a kind of work, not: Why does...philosophy matter? That question pertains to lecturing about philosophical topics; but is such lecturing philosophical work? Is “doing” philosophy the same as presenting well-organized explications of philosophical material, i.e., themes, arguments, ideas, taken from standardly “philosophical” works? What can be distinctively said about a kind of work, appropriately called “philosophical”? Why does that matter?