I’m reading Camus’ Myth of Sisysphus but what I really want is more of his lyrical essays. In Myth he’s trying to argue points. It gets really convoluted. But the book still speaks to me. I am a man aware of living in the absurd, as he is.
My sentence started the day I was born. It will end the day I die. No time off for bad behavior. But in his lyrical essays, he writes about what he sees and thinks. And he does it with grace and wit, and understanding.
“That should be the way things are. Good name for a book, too. Seeing and Thinking.”
They’re actually much more profound than his philosophical essays.
“When you die I’m going to have to find another live-in philosopher.”
You can’t. There’s no one out there.
“I’ll find another ex-con.”
That’s only a piece of me.
“I know; I’m joking.”
There’s a lot who start off. They all quit. They get tired. It’s hard to keep fighting (for truth, justice, what should be the Amerikan way…)
I’m not against intelligence. I’m not against learning. It’s just, the intellectuals get away from life, and they start filtering facts through philosophy.
“It’s like they have to figure out what to believe rather than letting it manifest itself to them.”
Right. Now I can understand having something to believe. But when facts change, you must also change. I can see how you need a philosophy of life to start off with. If you haven’t formed one yourself, you can take one off the rack. But you gotta customize it as you go along. Your philosophy has to be mutable with new input. You can’t change fact to fit philosophy.
Three people have written, complaining about what we’ve written. I’ve answered all three. Two of them we’ve never heard from again. The third, of course, is Melissa, who’s brilliant in her own right.
Wallace Stevens and a whole bunch of other philosophers, like Dewey, all say sorta the same thing. There’re three requirements for building your philosophy: one, it has to have a correlation to reality. Just because you say you can walk in front of a moving bus doesn’t mean you can.
Two, it has to be able to be changed. Because you don’t know everything, and you might learn something down the road.
And three, it has to bring you joy. Why create a life philosophy that makes you miserable?
“I think some people might retort that philosophy is about Truth, not about the Ideal. But the other way to think about this is that philosophy is an outlook, a way of dealing with truth.”
When I say philosophy, to me philosophy has three components. How the world really works, what you are, and the moral interface between the two.
“That’s interesting.”
Just because you think something should be don’t mean it is. Right now my philosophy comes down to two statements: brighten the corner where you are (from Mr. Rodgers) and do as you would be done.
It’s like ripples on the water. Waves, wave theory. When waves intersect, no matter which way they’re going, they increase in amplitude. Whereas the trough between the wave decreases. So if you spread Bad, it’s going to amplify existing Bad and decrease existing Good. And verse vice-a.
Sometimes all it takes is a smile and a thank you. And laughing with — not at — always works.
It’s just everybody, all these little artistic cliques, and poetry cliques, invest so much in their own little construction and domination of their clique…
“Um hm?”
…that they fear anything that varies.
“I like your lucidity.”
Yet one of the best meals I can think of is a really good stew. But in real life the potato people would be fighting the Sauce.
“Ha ha ha ha ha ha…”
And the carrot people would be off in the corner licking themselves. My apologies to Chiplis.
You know, my ego is bigger than anybody’s. Yet I’ll listen to everybody and consider what they have to say. Because I’m semi-complete inside. People outside my own parameters don’t threaten who I am.
“I love listening to you. I know you’re a genius. But I think you’re rough with other peoples’ egos.”
I’m very rough with other peoples’ egos. I’m not a fucking babysitter. I’m very nice to children, old women and animals. The rest best be able to take care of themselves. I’m tired of babysitting weak souls. But I also keep my mouth shut unless you force me. I no longer need to be seen because I know what I am.