Saturday, January 2, 2010

On cultural difference

Okay, so only decisions made by informed consent can be evaluated for moral content. All decisions, if made with informed consent, are guided by reason. Reason is intrinsically evenly distributed between men. Provided informed consent, all men would make the same decisions because they share the same reasoning capacities. Ceteris paribus this leads to a John Rawls-style society. Therefore all not-same decisions are due to arbitrary factors, such as circumstance and change. In anthropology this leads to the rise of separate cultures. Differences in cultures are arbitrary and therefore not subject to moral evaluation. However, these differences--deviations from the norm induced by the presence of an outside factor--can be used to deduce underlying truths about that norm, which we do not know. We know it is 2 now and that 1 has been added to it; therefore it is naturally 1. We know that it is A now and that it is so if and only if B is present; therefore A is not the natural state of man.

Monday, December 28, 2009

Reflections on Chronicles

I just finished reading Bob Dylan's Chronicles, Vol. I. Not written like any other autobiography but he plays it close to the chest. He talks about the things that matter to him, it is easy to tell. It resonated at a strong frequency for me. Here is a guy who saw what he wanted to do and did it. The insight he sees the world with is incredible and I'm scared to think whether I could ever share it. At times he seems to have just chanced on things by blind luck, and it is hard to tell whether things come about because of or in spite of his vision. I can't put it in words but this has all come at the right time for me--a dose of the good doctor's medicine for a malady without a name. It all just makes me want to bust free but it also reminds me of the virtue of patience. No thing worth having comes before its time. Bobby waited but when it was time he was ready. It's okay to be alone; I've had my Suze Rotolo and it seems like that's all in the past. Now I need people to think with. Maybe that's not the way it works; we're always alone and there's not much to be had either way. But there's the rub: perhaps the only thing we have in common is our uncommonness. We share aloneness, and that aloneness is the foundation for all communicable thought. Other takeaways: history isn't worthless, read Rimbaud, go to the action, everyone's got something to contribute, there's no sense in fighting the things you can't change or in standing by the wayside when you can.