February 2013
1 post
MOVING TO NEW SITE
As of 2/18, I will not longer be using the following blogs:
NaturalPoliticks.com
ChangingStates.tumblr.com
AbstractPerspectives.tumblr.com
I will be posting all new blog posts, of any type, on my new vehicle
RBSProductions.blogspot.com
December 2012
6 posts
3 tags
Feeding
(This is another “religious pragmatics” – reimagining parts of the Biblical story that have never been told before. The sources I used to research this one are: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feeding_the_multitude for the general overview, and http://www.biblegateway.com/ to read each story. Other posts in the same inspiration are “An Iota of Thought” and “When They Saw the...
6 tags
The Importance of Pedagogy
(Here is a post that is meant to demonstrate one of the many explicit connections between relativism and absolution - the notion that you can learn something from everything. This could be an elaboration of a previous post - “Functions of Ontological Sophisticated Philosophy”, which is to immediately come after “Ontological Sophisticated Philosophy” and then another post of...
5 tags
The Difficulty of Invention
(As a result of the systemic complexity of our symbolic culture, the creative things that we need to do, to get the economy on super-sure footing again, create more wealth and prosperity, are exceedingly difficult. But only by focusing on and studying how complex things are can we create the pathway forward. For more posts that deal with this systemic complexity, please see “On the...
3 tags
Functions of Ontological Sophisticated Philosophy
(Here is a functionalist explanation of what I’m calling Ontological Sophisticated Philosophy. To learn the gist of what it is, read “Ontological Sophisticated Philosophy” and then read “The Principle of Ontological Sophisticated Philosophy: Modeling the Complex Interpretation of Moral Virtue”. I’m planning to write a post soon that deals with the implications...
5 tags
On the Conservatism of Precedent
(Here is a third post of personal philosophic works, to follow “On the Relation of the Mental to the Material”, which is supposed to follow “On the Arbitrary Definition of Abstract Terms”. This post is about how systems of validation and accreditation are so inherently complex that we need a whole ton of open-mindedness and activist researching in order to learn more about...
6 tags
The State of Things: A Take on the Social Lexicon
(Here is my third post in a vein of thought attempting to place sociolinguistics on a more firm theoretical basis, trying to incorporate the transformational grammarian Chomksy’s insights and dominant sociolinguist William Labov. The first was “New Perspectives for Sociolinguistics: A Treatise on Symbolic Interactionism” and the second was “Discourse on Determinism: The...
November 2012
14 posts
2 tags
On the Relation of the Mental to the Material: A...
(Here is another post on some personal philosophic works I’m working on, a post to follow “On the Arbitrary Definition of Abstract Terms”. It is my take on combating the systemic complexity and excess sophistication that seems to be oh-so-prevalent in so many aspects of philosophic social theory.)
In how much complexity and confusion there can be in considering the arbitrarily...
4 tags
On the Arbitrary Nature of Abstract Terms
(Here is the beginning of a conceptual take on philosophic theories of meaning, or semiotics, especially as it relates to an individualistic pursuit of knowledge (epistemology) and wisdom (philosophy)).
I hear a clink of metal-on-metal as I put the gas nozzle into the tank. A beep as I press unleaded. A loud voice over the PA system saying I’m authorized for inside payment. Glug-glug-glug of the...
3 tags
A Science of Beauty: A Purely Theoretical...
(I thought of turning Chomsky’s notion of creativity into a purely artistic sort of creativity one day while driving home after class. I got home, went for my Moleskine, and eked this out shortly thereafter.)
One of the insights of the Chomskian paradigm of linguistics is recognizing how much creativity that language allows for every human being. But in the sense that he means...
5 tags
Ontological Sophisticated Philosophy
(Here is another post trying to explain what “Ontological Sophisticated Philosophy” means to me. Since I like this one better, it will probably go before “The Principle of O.S.P.”, which is loosely connected to language use in society, a subject pertinent to “New Perspectives for Sociolinguistics” and after that, “Discourse on Determinism”.)
There...
13 tags
Three More Concrete Examples of Hypocrisy
(Another post in what will evidently be a very long series in pointing out hypocrisy. The first was “On Hypocrisy”, which tried to lay out what it is in theoretical terms, and the second was “Three Examples of Hypocrisy” which was a more philosophico-ideological take on what it is. These three examples are more tangible and contemporary examples.)
Double standards are...
1 tag
Thousand Word Love Life
(Actually it’s less than 700 words long. I embellished some of the time-scale aspects to obscure any attempts at figuring out who the specific people are. The people themselves can probably figure it out, though. Also, not every single person that I’ve been romantically involved with is included in this piece of prose.)
In grade school, my friend and I competed over the same girl....
6 tags
Arriving at Essential Essences: Toward a Focused...
(After realizing that my first nonfiction piece “On Voting” virtually stands alone in a line of inquiry directly relating to what voting is, I decided to conceive of this piece to make sure I didn’t over-simplify neither the issue of voting, nor the concept of justice.)
My first ever attempt at a piece of nonfiction that was supposed to be short was a piece entitled “On...
3 tags
Three More, Additional Highly Interesting...
(This is the third time I’ve written about three different philosophic concepts. This first time was “The Philosophy-Economics Distinction”, itself a post to come after “The Case for Politically Economic Normatives”. The other post is “Three More Highly Interesting Philosophic Concepts”. I only aim to demonstrate that there are many avenues to increasing...
5 tags
How a Single Metaphor Can Empower So Many People
“I put both my feet on the ground
Took the bag from the basket
So pleased it had not be crushed
By the mightiness of all else
That goes on and gave you the sentence inside.”
-the end of Jessica Greenbaum’s poem ‘I Love You More Than All the Windows in New York City’
We need the ability to think for ourselves and create our own sense of power and understanding. An artistic, creative...
4 tags
Discourse on Determinism
(Here is another piece about language, following “New Perspectives for Sociolinguistics”.
My fascination with language continues unabated – finding new areas where popular misunderstanding gets in the way of factual understanding. For example, the typical exercise of comparing animals to humans. It can be interesting to thing about how active certain animals are in communication...
3 tags
A Ballad to the Ghost of Feudal Commerce
(This is a short story that I recently wrote, a combination of the vivid description and short scenes of flash-fiction with a story that could, in all reality, be a novel. Telling a friend of the plot, he described it as “thrilling political drama”. Enjoy.)
Prologue: In an almost ancient age: the entire concept of law and order where both completely different. But what does...
6 tags
Three Examples of Moral Hypocrisy: A Range of...
The era of cynicism is over, but it’s going to get worse before it gets better. More and more people are turning towards wisdom and virtue, given how much criticism exists of so many aspects of the media, the government, and big business at large, all with very legitimate merit though there is quite a bit of sensationalism in many camps.
In thinking of the evidence of so much...
11 tags
The Media Needs More Art!
(This is a post I thought of one day after yoga class. It is definitely supposed to mirror “We’ve No Poetry In Politics”, expanding a little bit on the benefits and structure of responding to life with more artistic creativity. I’d be very interesting in exploring how I could connect this specific post to “Any Single Jester & the Ethics of Comedian...
6 tags
Three More Highly Interesting Philosophic...
(A post that mirrors “The Case for Politically Economic Normatives” as well as “The Philosophy-Economics Distinction”. I’m not exactly sure where this piece will fall in the grand scheme of things, it’s just a little bit about three highly interesting philosophic concepts.)
Not only can philosophy itself structure everyday experience much like a very...
October 2012
25 posts
4 tags
Running at Richard T. Anderson
(Here is a poem I wrote during a couple times of running at some hiking trails in the very southwestern corner of Eden Prairie. It was during a pretty tumultuous time for me, and using the actual lyrics from a song in the poem in this way was something I had never tried before. The italicized lyrics come from mewithoutYou’s “Grist for the Malady Mill”,)
Running at Richard T....
3 tags
On Hypocrisy
Chapter Seven of Joseph Stiglitz’s book The Price of Inequality is called “Justice For All? How Inequality is Eroding the Rule of Law”. The first paragraph gets at something fundamental to keeping and open and critical mind, as well as commenting on something fundamental to keeping America an exceptional place to call home. He talks about “the rule of law” that “we have championed [to] other...
4 tags
Escuchame, Mi Hijo
(A couple of months after the break-up and I’m still on about the same girl. Tsk Tsk. Well, here is another fusion of flash-fiction and a novel, where the story could go on and on and on but it is only very prominent scenes. This might not even count as “flash-fiction”, considering it’s almost 1,500 words. I love the Spanish language, and so it feels incredibly natural for...
7 tags
New Perspectives for Sociolinguistics: A Treatise...
(This was one of the funnest posts to write, ever. I took the main pathway of topics from my textbook for my Cultural Anthropology class. I’ve been interested in linguistics a long time before this class, however, as well as the nature of relativism and determinism. After reading the sections on Linguistic Relativism and Linguistic Determinism in the textbook, I thought it was a great...
4 tags
As Their Paths Cross: A Mini-Novel
(Here is a really experimental piece - an attempt to fuse the two seemingly opposing formats of the flash-fiction piece, which is just a short-short story, with the long, drawn out plot of a novel. It was inspired by hanging out with a friend last weekend. I’ve already started, and almost completed, a second one!)
Prologue: There were once two great warriors, each having an army that...
6 tags
The Principle of Ontological Sophisticated...
(As I said in “The Decline of the Interview”, Ontological Sophisticated Philosophy is the name of a manuscript of philosophy that I have forthcoming. Here is a primer, the gist of what I mean, whereas the forthcoming manuscript is a longer, in depth, fundamental treatment.)
The point, or one could say function, of philosophy is to acquire wisdom. Philosophy literally translates as...
20 tags
The Philosophy-Economic Distinction
(I enthusiastically welcome the third part in the weirdest accumulation of rhetoric ever attempted. This piece is designed to follow “The Case for Politically Economic Normatives”, which is particularly significant considering that that post itself is a supposed continuance of a previous post “The Metaphysics of Economics”. I continue to value hope in my ability to...
6 tags
Any Single Jester & the Ethics of Comedian...
(Here is a post that started with just the jester talk after I told the basic thesis to a coworker who seems to take nothing seriously. Thinking about it later, I thought of the “comedian journalism” part. Typing it up just now, I added the ethics parts, finishing it off for a good first draft.)
Any single jester can poke fun at and characterize the King and/or nobility for only so...
7 tags
The Case for Politically Economic Normatives
(Here is a relatively massive post, considering it’s over 600 words. This is to immediately follow The Metaphysics of Economics, I’m working on a post entitled “Economics as Philosophy” to follow this one sometime.)
I’ve been thinking a lot about the question surrounding when it’s an appropriate time to stop researching, especially when it comes to learning r relearning...
9 tags
The 3 Simple Reasons Why I’m Voting “No”…Twice
(I wrote this yesterday, largely out of frustration at how immature a lot of the people I spend my time with are.)
I try to be a fairly open-minded and tolerant individual, but one thing that I will no longer be tolerant of is bigotry. Here are three simple but substantive reasons why I am going to vote No on both amendments to the State Constitution.
First, I’m pro-liberty. Voting...
8 tags
Panic & Uncertainty
(After watching a CNN interview a bunch of small business leaders, it’s clear that the “systemic uncertainty” argument of all/many prominent Republicans just doesn’t make sense. In fact, one could make the case that the far-right-wing intransigent obstructionism is causing more problems than it solves.)
Actually listen to what small businesses are saying: What is causing...
5 tags
When They Saw the Schematics
(Another exercise in religious pragmatics that I wrote the other day thinking “what was it like for Noah to try and get his family to help with building the ark?”)
When his family saw the schematics that Noah had drawn up, they knew he meant business. He had told them that God told him to build an ark because it was supposed to rain. Heavily. They took some time to convince. ...
2 tags
Go!
(Here is a fictionalization of a dream that I had a while ago. The actual dream was very vivid and much more complex than what 2 pages in my moleskine allows.)
Block-font 3 on the goggle-screen with a beep, 2 and a beep, 1 and a beep, and then a Go! with what sounded like an alarm loudly strewn over a gigantic PA system. Gunshots could be heard immediately, so I ducked and ran around for cover,...
5 tags
A Miner Turned Drastic
(This is a short vignette about power and financial status. The dramatic political undercurrent is wholly intentional.)
Kent Xashesupe sat in his subterranean office, candles lighting topographical maps, letters to travel long distance to wealthy sponsors in Chicago and New York, pen plumes with vats of ink. His door burst open, and he yelled “HEY!” reproaching.
“Sorry, sir, I didn’t...
1 tag
Go For It
(This is a highly experimental piece where I play around with storytelling. They are essentially nonsense, yet I’m told that the have a particular flow.)
i. There was once a father and his son, teaching him how to paint. How to get paint on the brush, swiping techniques, preparation, and cleaning procedures. But there was no fence, the man was painting a room indoors, the son...
2 tags
I'm Losing My Faith In Love
(This, obviously, came from a dark place one morning when I woke up from a dream that had someone who broke my heart in it.)
This was the day that the pristine crystalesque image, reflected purely in the contemporary zeitgeist, began to crack and blow away like dust, dirt dropped from a hand testing the wind’s temperament. I had a dream that I’m pretty sure was a recurring one, though I’ve never...
4 tags
We've No Poetry In Politics
(The triad of poetry, politics, and philosophy is a theme that I address at length in a forthcoming book of philosophy. Here, I try to address the need for progressivism to restore some sort of exceptionalism and pride to our civic discourse.)
If you make a cross-section of where poetry, politics, and philosophy come together, the overlap of poetry and politics seems to be the least understood...
4 tags
Just To Keep On
(Another song fictionalization, drawn from the album Menos El Oso by Minus the Bear)
A. The beginning is always muddled, but sooner or later you begin to realize certain things, seeing the plot under all the story behind you. By then, you already know how to play games, you’ve been enculturated your whole life. But you can learn how to create your own game. And so, we were on the move...
2 tags
An Iota of Thought
(This is a highly experimental piece that I call “religious pragmatics”, an attempt to elucidate pieces of the Biblical story that aren’t found in the scripture.)
When Yaw found out Eve had been tricked by a serpent into eating the forbidden fruit of the knowledge of good versus evil, and we learned we were to be banished from Eden, it took me moments to catch my breath. As...
7 tags
Life as a Spider: The Mosaic Nature of Rational...
I sometimes wonder what it would be like if I was a spider, or if I had just some of the qualities that spiders have. Two things I want to emphasize are the possibility of never getting lost from home and the ability to navigate the intricate complexities of the web.
First, I think it would be very beneficial if I was able to have a string constantly attached to me; I would never lose...
5 tags
Forms of Relative Wealth and Poverty
(This basically speaks for itself. A commentary on relativity via a vignette that is quasi-pornographic.)
They had no mind, the middle-school era photo collages, the intricate color-doodles with your name in marker and abstract designs with colored pencil, the abundance of family photos gazing out from colorful, illuminating frames. They didn’t mind at all, impoverished of thought, staring down...
2 tags
The Decline of the Interview
(The first of the presidential debates was last night, and so I figure this fits perfectly with being disappointed by some journalists.)
Another sort of dream isn’t just the images that come to me while I sleep, but the vision that I have for my future self. When I am sitting somewhere, like a boring lecture, or in traffic, sometimes I let my mind wander…
In this...
3 tags
The Metaphysics of Economics
(Here is a pretty intense article that could grow with a ton more research and rambling, but I like the basic outline I have here.)
In the classic philosophic parable The Cave from the classic Greek philosopher Plato, we have what has come to be known as a tale that comments on the unknown, or the spiritual, or the metaphysical. We get a story or scenario that can easily comment on almost...
3 tags
The Exquisiteness of the DJ
(This is a short-story/vignette that I thought up a while ago, it has to deal with post-modern “meta”-ness in the sense that the character doesn’t just handle talent a la Entourage, but rather he handles the talent that handles talent, an Ari Gold-esque abstraction.)
I hopped out of my low-riding sports car, turning around slightly to lock it with the remote, walking forward as...
2 tags
Overcast Weather Conditions
(This is a dream I had a long time ago that I remember very vividly, about a tornado pulling us forcefully.)
I remember one dream that I had, I remembered it very visibly when I woke up after, and I still remember it very visibly to this day. It was overcast, and I was in my car, driving with three other people in the car. We could have been jamming on some tunes…
Ok, I...
September 2012
3 posts
4 tags
On Voting
It’s a special time, an important season, there are major presidential elections coming up. For someone as interested in politics as I am, it’s the main event – show time of dramatic theater that we spend months, nay years, nay our entire lives practicing for. For the die-hards, we spend 24/7 reading everything from each other, to the news journals, to hardcover and soft cover books and magazines...
5 tags
Warm Milk, Add Cocoa
(This is an experimental piece that I’ve labeled a “song fictionalization”. Think of a song with really good characterization, setting, or plot, and then create a short story from it. This is an attempt (the first) at fictionalizing an awesome song called “Piss & Vinegar” by Against Me!)
The television pops on surreptitiously, responding to the remote signal...
2 tags
Bear Dream
I had a really crazy dream the other night – when I dream I have very lucid images. It feels very real, as if I have control over my actions in the dream.
I was with my friends, two of them, on a porch overlooking an expanse of grass situated between some woods. In the middle of this lawn area was a fence that ran about four-fifths of the way across the entire knoll. Parallel to the...
June 2012
10 posts
6 tags
Forthcoming Rhetorical Perspectives: A...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/03/paul-krugman-paul-ryan-budget-plan_n_1566362.html?ref=paul-krugman
Much of the discussion of this video has been about Paul Krugman, how his use of facts and data utterly demolishes the moral argument of his ideological “opponents”. I have argued previously about Paul Krugman’s ability to connect incredible rationalism with a legitimate take on ethics,...
