Intro

     Let's begin this day with a quick preface. Last night, I finished my first blog, so late at night, and with the next day looming ever closer. I felt I needed to wrap things up rather quickly and I feel that the ending of "The Naming of Things" to be rather abrupt. In the future I will try to refrain from such circumstances. Let's just call it... The Prologue; the experiment piece; that which would lead to more. This is where we take our first steps.

     Hmm... Now the question is where to step next? Imagine you are a tiny, minuscule, singular point on the surface of a perfect sphere. There is no set direction for you to move, but you feel you must move. How do you choose which direction to go? There is no 'right' or 'wrong.' There is just you, with infinite directions to meander about, forever until the day you can move no longer... This is the position I am in right now with my blog. There is no proof of reason that I can employ that will dictate a path for me to follow.

It's up to me to make this what I will.

     I think that's why I am so suddenly in love with the prospect of blogging. I finished my first blog this morning at about 4:00 AM and I stayed up for another hour, unable to fall asleep, just thinking about what I was going to write next. And even all day today, during any spare time (which there's plenty of), all I could think about was what direction to move in. Oh, the excitement of it. My own thoughts and words, for anyone besides just myself (who is generally my only audience and discussion partner).

     The medieval philosopher, David Hume, talks about how without any sort of passion, making a reasoned decision between two or more things that have no real distinction would be nearly impossible. There was even a case study a few years back about a man who has an abnormality in his brain that pretty much renders him as being solely logical, he had next to no feelings or passions whatsoever. When he was presented with a blue ink pen, and a black ink pen, it was impossible for him to reason out a decision. He sat for hours upon hours, trying to decide which pen to use. And to be honest, I can't remember the outcome of it... One of my philosophy professors presented a similar scenario where we have the same guy, but he's in the cereal isle of a grocery store. Could you imagine it? The choice of which cereal to buy would be impossible for this guy to make...

     Hume is quote as saying, "Reason is the slave to Passion." And after hearing that case study and subsequent reflection of myself, I can completely agree. It disappointed me slightly though, because I have felt for a while that deep passions and subjective beliefs were considerably counter-productive. But ultimately, counter-productive to what? Our society's goals? Our goals are based on our values and our beliefs and our passions. Such a realization to make...

     And yet, here I am; here we are. We sit, still, on this tiny, point, seemingly insignificant against so many other insignificant points. So the path becomes somewhat clearer to us. The road begins to take shape in the fog. I can stay where I am, content with what I have already written, set up shop and call it quits... But that's not the case. There are so many fields I feel I need to cover. So many subjects to observe and unravel. My passions will lead the way.

     In order to do this in what I can only describe as, for lack of a better word, the "correct" way, I feel I must implement some ground rules for myself. To continue on last night's point about naming things, and to connect to today's subject of choice, I feel the criterion for naming each blog should be severely limited; dealing with the subject (obviously), but to make things easier and more time-efficient, I will do my best to pick a song name that relates somehow, and at the end of each blog, I will link that song in some fashion. Now do I map out a set path for myself? Picking out topics far ahead of time?? hmm... I think not. As I said yesterday, that would be spoilerish of me and it takes away the excitement of what I'll write about next, and what you'll (hopefully) be reading.

     So I think this is where I will end for now, seeing as I have my first final tomorrow and I would prefer to get in some last-minute studying in. I'll leave you with M83's, "Intro" from his new album, "Hurry Up, We're Dreaming." (You can listen here: "Intro" by M83)

Until Next time...