Synaxis TV

• This day kind of disappeared in a sleep engorged blah. But I did go to my Atheism Discussion Group meeting — we talked about that classic atheist topic, free will. Someone said, “It’s just so obvious that I have free will — I can feel it.” Hee hee…

Remember that time I was in Japan and I was really happy when there were days that I didn’t spend any money? Yeah, it’s just like that…

Sometimes it’s not easy being a nihilist.

You struggle with the ambiguity of the things that you value always looking for something that doesn’t budge when you poke it with your mental stick. It’s an absurd search but it’s not something that can be avoided, like the ubuiquitous analogy of tonguing a hurt tooth.

The problem with my values is that I know they aren’t real. So while I do care about/enjoy/like people, I know I don’t have to. And when I see people suffering and experience the discomfort that brings I am faced with the honest option of not caring.

I understand these values to come from socialization, but more than that I understand them to bear a close relationship to my body. In fact I understand all morality to be predicated on bodily pleasure, both material and symbolic.

Today I finally decided that the values I have for abstract concepts such as democracy and equality are all symbolic and not rooted in my body, so I’m not going to worry about them anymore. All I am going to worry about is that which is in closest proximity to me — my body. Of course, I still have to pay attention to these structures because the pleasures that I can experience are connected to the way I act in this society. But I’ve accepted that the body is all that is real and now I am free.

It’s commonly held that “we are a visual culture,” but is that really the case?

I say that because I finally broke down and got an mp3 player today, and the microcosmic autonomous space I entered after I put some songs on there, closed my eyes, and hit play was glorious.

This is something we see all day everyday. People walking around with headphones on immersed in their own private little worlds. I’m even listening to my new device (albeit the radio) as I write this.

I think that we are at a point where sound is competing with vision for pleasure. We’ve certainly had access to portable sound media for a long time, but I think these devices are easier to use.

The reason I think this is important is because there are certain assumptions people seem to make about human nature given the importance of visual pleasure, but I would argue that the prevalence of visual pleasure in our society is simply the result of technologies that were sufficiently developed to mediate visual pleasure, and now that aural technologies have been sufficiently developed this view of human nature should be tempered.

My apologies for any consistent readers. It’s become too difficult to come here and post a report every day so I’m in the midst of figuring out what to do. I still want to speak to you, but I don’t want it to be work.

The rest of my break was fine. I watched lots of movies (Chronicles of Narnia, Walk the Line, King Kong, The Producers, and Memoirs of a Geisha) and ate lots of food (gained five pounds). I also spent some time with old friends like Kevin, Bobby, and my sister.

The weirdest part, though, was dealing with my relatives. They are all pretty proud of me for being in grad school and at Purdue, but I know there are much better schools I could be at and I don’t feel like being in grad school makes me a genius, so it’s strange to see how these things affect them.

My mom still has this mistaken idea that I will make tons and tons of money as a professor. Unfortunately, she hasn’t read Bourdieu’s work on the relationship between symbolic and material capital.

For new years, when I turned 30, I went to Kansas City and hung out with my sister. It’s a wonderful new tradition that I hope to uphold for many years to come. When my mediated vision sees the world drenched with shit she is always able to shine through with a radiant sparkle that makes this existence bearable.