“Finishing a book is not wanting to see it anymore.”  Michel Foucault.   Reviewing, editing, reviewing, editing, so bored was I.  Pure tedium.  When I started, it was all fresh and fun.  

Writing philosophy may jeopardize friendships.  After all those years together, you may discover just how different your worldviews are when you bump into each other, fundamentally, for the first time.   

So many times in reviewing what I put forward, I've thought that "It's not wrong, but it's not right either."   The biggest problem is conflation - merging ideas that need to be clearly separated.  I suppose a related problem is "get-there-itis," wanting to be done when a good product requires thinking it through.

In sage country, there's no hype, no selling, no manipulation.  In other words, freedom.

Is cosmic curvature the compromise between two macro forces:  inertial, straight-line motion (Newton's first law) and large gravitational masses that bend that motion?   When the two are in balance (also in Newton's first law), there's an orbit.  But when a body's inertial motion is greater than a gravitational mass, it escapes; when a gravitational mass prevails, inertial motion moves toward and is incorporated by the gravitational mass.

Question everything.  We defer to 400+ year old philosophers because they are old and presumably wise.  Or we work within existing paradigms, and repeat what has been said before, but in our own words.   It's said, authoritatively (the case is closed, philosophically) that an "ought" cannot be derived from an "is."  It's a biological fact, an "is," that we want to survive (as a general rule - no need to nitpick about suicide) and, therefore, we ought to direct our behavior to survive.  It's said that we seek pleasure and avoid pain, but this doesn't explain our motivation for doing so:  We seek what we need and we resist what we don't want.  Both are "pain."  When we are successful, there is pleasure (satisfaction).   We see common references to "the fabric of space-time,"  but what is "fabric?"   Among other things, the word suggests a flat piece of cloth with "stuff" below but not above it, whereas space-time is all-encompassing, and inertial motion flows inward from all directions.   "Kin selection" is said to explain altruism in biology, yet we adopt non-kin and love just the same, or we extend our love to non-kin animals; and, frequently, there is hostility toward family and love for non-family.  In the galactic picture above for this "Commentary" section,  do the spiral arms orbit the galactic center or do they spiral into the galactic center, as Einstein's theory might suggest?

A professor-advisor once said that a PhD is the beginning, not the end, of one's education.

When writing about heavy and abstract thoughts, leave a lot of white space.  Like a ledge for a rock climber, short paragraphs allow the reader to rest. 

When reading, zipping through a book fast allows one to get the gist without getting bogged down in the details, which are often examples of the gist.   One can cover a lot of ground this way, checking out books that one might not otherwise have the time for.

 One might not be a writer, but a thinker who writes; writing fine is not the same as thinking.

 As a Motown musician once said, "If you don't feel the beat, don't play the song."   This applies to writing.  

Quirks of a writer:  not any pencil or pen, but a particular kind of pencil (thickness, weight, lead #); yellow, not white, legal pad paper neither soft nor shiny; a clipboard that is rough, not smooth, on its back side;  background music that comes to the right ear, not the left; background voices are good, without interaction; no munching sounds, no sounds of crunchy plastic;  etc.  

If I can't capture an idea complex on a 3 x 5 note card or if I can't diagram it on a small whiteboard, do I really understand?

The essence of Buddhism is said to be, "do good or, barring that, do no harm."  It's the Golden Rule.  But the nihilist responds, "Why do good?"  "Why not harm others if they are in the way, or if one just feels like it?"  "Who is Buddha (or Jesus) to say?"   They are wise, the response goes.  OK, but "what is wisdom, especially when the cosmos doesn't care one way or another?  In a survival-of-the-fittest world, isn't it that only the strong survive?"  

Or, in Sartre's example, if there's a man standing on a street corner of Paris on a rainy night, a driver of a car can pick him up and give him a ride, or can drive through a mud puddle and splash water on him.  What does it matter?  To subscribe to a philosophy that does good, or no harm, to the self, or to do good or no harm to others, including other life, as well as to the self, is an existential choice for those young people who look for a philosophy to guide their way through life in an intellectual atmosphere where moral authority and dictates and wisdom-based mantras no longer hold sway. 

From Michael Shermer's The Science of Good and Evil:  "If there are no absolute standards, then morality must be relative."  Then Shermer quotes Edward O. Wilson to say:  "'Either ethical precepts such as justice and human rights are independent of human experiences or else they are human inventions.'"  If they are human inventions, why are they so?  Might they not be prompted by our biological being (i.e. the right to our own freedom, and for that to be true, the right of others to be free so long as they do not impede the freedom of others)?

But still, this debate between objective and relative ethical principles is plagued with the legacy of Plato - that the mind controls the body, begging the question about why should one, ethically, care about others?  For Plato, the Stoics, and most of the subsequent Western philosophical tradition, while the body follows what the mind tells it to do, where's the motivation to follow what the mind says?  For Plato, the Stoics and others, it cannot be the body (self-interest is so animal like and cannot be about others by definition), so they are left with the mind making its own choices based on, for Plato, some putative objective standard, or for the Stoics, a "Mind over Matter" mantra to deny pain.  But in evolutionary terms, motivation is the self's interest.  We follow because we either feel the self-interest of others as our own (sympathy) or because we know (utilitarianism) it's in our own interest to respect the freedom of others to prevent conflict and to ensure that our group coheres.  Seen this way, the body tells the mind what it needs to do to serve the self's interest (survival and bodily well-being).  The body provides the why of action.  The mind then tells us what to do and how to do it.

If you ask the right question, the answer can be concise.  You don't need a tome.

Until I re-read my book draft after letting it sit for three months, I thought it was in fairly good shape.

What is a poem?  It seems now to be anything and everything.

Now and then I get a flash that I put down in verse form.  It takes two minutes, and then weeks to mess with it. It's the flash that's important:  I never sit down to write a poem.

On formatting a poem, I typically do four line stanzas with no more than seven words per line because it forces me to be concise in my thinking and that helps me with my writing in general.   

 "'They tell me you write poetry,' Dirac said to Oppenheimer. 'How can you do both? In physics we try to tell people in such a way that they understand something that nobody knew before. In the case of poetry, it's the exact opposite.'" American Prometheus. The triumph and tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer

 "Effort, struggles with difficulties! that is as natural to a man as grubbing in the ground is to a mole. To have all his wants satisfied is something intolerable - the feeling of stagnation which comes from pleasure that last too long." Schopenhauer, Essays 

 "No one can alter his own peculiar individuality, his moral character, his intellectual capacity, his temperament or physique; and if we go so far as to condemn a man from every point of view, there will be nothing left him but to engage us in deadly conflict; for we are practically allowing him the right to exist only on condition that he becomes another man - which is impossible....you must allow everyone the right to exist in accordance with the character he has....This is the true sense of the maxim - 'Live and let live.'" Schopenhauer, Essays

 “Authors should use common words to say uncommon things. But they do just the opposite. We find them trying to wrap up trivial ideas in grand words, and to clothe their very ordinary thoughts in the most extraordinary phrases, the most far-fetched, unnatural and out-of-the-way expressions. Their sentences perpetually stalk about on stilts.” In the same vein, he adds this: “To use many words to communicate few thoughts is everywhere the unmistakable sign of mediocrity." Essays

“The New Testament…must be in some way traceable to an Indian source: its ethical system, its ascetic view of morality, its pessimism, and its Avatar.” Essays

Regarding “unnatural distinction Christianity makes between man and the animal world to which he really belongs: It sets up man as all-important, and looks upon animals as merely things. Brahmanism, and Buddhism, on the other hand, true to the facts, recognize in a positive way that man is related generally to the whole of nature, and specifically and principally to animal nature; and in their systems man is always represented by the theory of metempsychosis and otherwise, as closely connected with the animal world….Christianity contains, in fact, a great and essential imperfection in limiting its precepts to man, and in refusing rights to the entire animal world.” Essays

Voices of the Future:  In talking with an automated voice on a routine issue, "her" sign off was "I hope you have a better day."

Attended three memorial services recently. All three went to God and left their bodies behind.

A friend said that there's something "higher" out there in the cosmos, adding that "there's evidence." Herbert Spencer said that the ultimate question about who or what started it all cannot be answered. We cannot assert a truth here by default.  

Shortly before he died, Husserl reported said, "Philosophy has to be built up all over again from the beginning." [Sarah Bakewell, The Existentialist Cafe]. That's true, but not his way.

When I struggle to write it is, simply, because I don't know what I'm trying to say.

It's the thinking that I enjoy. Writing puts down what I thought. When a thought is particularly good in a breakthrough sort of way, I have to take a break. Or, I am done for the day.