“Broken glass does catch the light in a certain way” you wrote. Your words conveyed your experience of being. I believe I saw some of that light in how you wrote. Thank you. Daniel
Be proud of you PB . To discuss big concepts is important , refreshing and very needed . To explain them in ways people can understand is an art . It is appreciated more than you will know . In a world that is fragile , terribly superficial and conformist . It is like a bright light being shone . I have learnt so much in a short time from your musings . Kind gentle deep thoughts . We need more . Thankyou . Please keep being you .
Pinged off chimes in me from Mary Oliver’s “In Blackwater Woods” and Thomas Merton’s prayer from “Thoughts in Solitude” (sometimes referred to as “The Merton Prayer”). In my life the people who successfully *grasp the matter and put it away* seem confident that if their efforts fail and they drop what they ought have carried there is something bigger waiting attentively to pick it up again the moment they do so. One can claim that this is a utilitarian success given our fear-forward neural architecture or a sleight of hand that misses some crucial point entirely, but it seems implausible that anyone making such claims fully understands both positions simultaneously in their fullness.
You once wrote “I can see no better way to (honor the struggles of our ancestors) than to treat their lives as a sacrifice, the historical grounding of a world in which the enemies they fought - violence, famine, sickness and death are defeated. A project which enthralled Bohdisattvas and Abrhamic prophets alike. Death where is thy sting, grave where is thy victory.” Not, I imagine from the outside, quite the same as being able to put the matter away for once and all by "giving it up to God.” But it seems to participate in part of the same mechanism, using words to invoke a felt calling big enough that it can pull the mind’s eye up and away from matters that cannot be forced down through main willpower. Unknown though you are to me, I am grateful that you have provided words to help make that call easier to hear and to communicate to others.
I certainly don't feel I _know_ you, but I really appreciate your writing.
I don't know whether this will come across as quite the compliment it's meant to be, but: Your style of discourse reminds me of an instructor I had in college, who was a Philosophy department grad student, but was earning part of his stipend by teaching a Practical Composition section over in the English department. He basically turned that Prac Comp class into an excuse to read classics of political philosophy -- from Plato's Republic, through Hobbes and Locke and Rousseau, up through modern writers like Rawls, Popper, and Fish. (He even snuck in a week on Nietsczhe.) He was a tremendously animated and engaging speaker, and it's his fault I ended up choosing to make Philosophy of Mind one of my two focal areas for my Cognitive Science degree. (The other was Linguistics, and then I also did a whole other major in Computer Science -- I learned how to build statistical language models before it was cool.)
In any case, he was the best teacher I ever had. He really got across how much he cared about big ideas, why he thought they were actually important to people and life and the world.
“Broken glass does catch the light in a certain way” you wrote. Your words conveyed your experience of being. I believe I saw some of that light in how you wrote. Thank you. Daniel
Be proud of you PB . To discuss big concepts is important , refreshing and very needed . To explain them in ways people can understand is an art . It is appreciated more than you will know . In a world that is fragile , terribly superficial and conformist . It is like a bright light being shone . I have learnt so much in a short time from your musings . Kind gentle deep thoughts . We need more . Thankyou . Please keep being you .
You writing makes me feel less alone.
In a word
Yeah...
For what it's worth, I also appreciate your writing. You're trying to figure things out rather than pretending to have all the answers.
But I understand how that tends to push people away.
You are a good Philosophy Bear <3 and your writing is valuable to me.
Pinged off chimes in me from Mary Oliver’s “In Blackwater Woods” and Thomas Merton’s prayer from “Thoughts in Solitude” (sometimes referred to as “The Merton Prayer”). In my life the people who successfully *grasp the matter and put it away* seem confident that if their efforts fail and they drop what they ought have carried there is something bigger waiting attentively to pick it up again the moment they do so. One can claim that this is a utilitarian success given our fear-forward neural architecture or a sleight of hand that misses some crucial point entirely, but it seems implausible that anyone making such claims fully understands both positions simultaneously in their fullness.
You once wrote “I can see no better way to (honor the struggles of our ancestors) than to treat their lives as a sacrifice, the historical grounding of a world in which the enemies they fought - violence, famine, sickness and death are defeated. A project which enthralled Bohdisattvas and Abrhamic prophets alike. Death where is thy sting, grave where is thy victory.” Not, I imagine from the outside, quite the same as being able to put the matter away for once and all by "giving it up to God.” But it seems to participate in part of the same mechanism, using words to invoke a felt calling big enough that it can pull the mind’s eye up and away from matters that cannot be forced down through main willpower. Unknown though you are to me, I am grateful that you have provided words to help make that call easier to hear and to communicate to others.
Thank you
I certainly don't feel I _know_ you, but I really appreciate your writing.
I don't know whether this will come across as quite the compliment it's meant to be, but: Your style of discourse reminds me of an instructor I had in college, who was a Philosophy department grad student, but was earning part of his stipend by teaching a Practical Composition section over in the English department. He basically turned that Prac Comp class into an excuse to read classics of political philosophy -- from Plato's Republic, through Hobbes and Locke and Rousseau, up through modern writers like Rawls, Popper, and Fish. (He even snuck in a week on Nietsczhe.) He was a tremendously animated and engaging speaker, and it's his fault I ended up choosing to make Philosophy of Mind one of my two focal areas for my Cognitive Science degree. (The other was Linguistics, and then I also did a whole other major in Computer Science -- I learned how to build statistical language models before it was cool.)
In any case, he was the best teacher I ever had. He really got across how much he cared about big ideas, why he thought they were actually important to people and life and the world.
(If you're curious: https://people.ucd.ie/graham.finlay )