sage

Today was a good day. Kind of...monumental, in a small way. I met with the professor, and he cleared up some of my deepest issues with some of the lightest philosophical combat I've ever had.

First of all, I took my enhanced knoweldge about biology to try and take his "critique of pure reason" theorem to task. This wasn't done easily...and he swiftly diffused it without much care.
"Your ideas of god hinge on the idea that we're different from animals...why then has behavior been observed showing the links between animals and humans..." I listed a couple relevant topics such as babboons and drugs and dolphins and communication.
His rebuttal wasn't terribly satisfactory, but it did the trick. He stated that I'm wrapped up in manipulating this discourse about languge, when my categorization and discourse was fundamentally flawed. He sited Dawkins's work on memes and the idea that everything I'm saying is using a flawed system. This is...therefore because of...is a retroactive progression of ideas. I can always get a phenomenon and manipulate my theory toward what I want...therefore I can try and meld my ideas to the system that fundamentally (on the particulate level) has no explanation.
He put the ball in my court saying "Is everything you are reduced to molecules? Why then do you keep adjusting your discourse to one that doesn't explain data such as your perceived relationship failures. You categorize yourself in a non-empirical way and you flaunt empiricism..."
He was talking about the fact that I'm "short" and the fact that I try and base some sort of biological theory derived from physical phenomenon...when in reality it is based on identity. Identity has no place in biology...he said. I challenged and lost several times from every angle I could think of.

Then he really put the ball in my court by saying: satire is a reflection on a reflection. Cynicism is a reflection on a reflection of something that is not sound. He sited my projected image of toughness and the fact that I try and derive some real meaning from something that I don't conjure up unless immense pressure is placed on my thought process...at this point I lose something because I'm trying to create something meaningful...

You project upon yourself this idea of a fractured family...family is the thing that Lacan and many other philosophers say is the grounds for all personal interaction. This idea that you put yourself to has reprecussions in all your relationships because you think you're above them when you're not. Wham! Truth from the highest source of knowledge that I know...language from a man I admire prompting introspection to a level that I'm not apt to. He called it too...I told hiim Ikept a running blog of my thoughts. He said they weren't really my own...my identity is a projection, in a sense, and it causes strict judgement from when I was little until now.

He essentially was telling me to cast it off. Quit blame-shifting, my sister says. The professor took a meat-cleaver to my need for empirical dissection of personal relationships...then he disarmed me with something that I really wasn't expecting...but I'd known all along. "I'm reading Jane Austen." I criticised hiim for it. "You can judge all you want, but she knows that the only real human experience worth having is that of human connection. You can't deny its claims to knowledge through consensus and its power to create identity. What are the three things (actually 4) that humans can ever write about?"
I replied with a bit of chagrin: "The only things we know...birth, death, and sex...the fourth and most prevalent but yet unseen is the search for identity...this identity is created through knowing other people and comparison...but to have true identity we must contrast ourselves with a more prevalent being: a higher power. Bloomsbury group motto "only connect" from Howard's End...you know it?"
"yes...Austen would've been in the Bloomsbury group with high fives!"
He always can make me laugh as he mops the floor with what I think is real thought...

I took one thing away from this: Lose the attitude.

We talked about modern criticism and its aberrition toward truth...but that was beside the point. I'm in a crucial part of my life: if I don't accept the source of my identity then I will forever have self-destructive tendencies. It got deeper.

"You're an emotional masochist. You pursue the relationships that are destructive so that you can postulate why everything is stacked against you. Battle off your own demons first"

And I'm seeing this more and more. I can't get a valid explanation for everything through science. My identity is derived from one thing: God. If I don't confront what this means then I will continually be looking for water in sand. Trying to derive consciousness from neurophysiology or the movement of molecules will not give me the ordered discourse I'm looking for. This drives me against one of the most difficult dichotomies: Chaos vs. Order.

Dissociating from this concept of "God" has only led to one thing in science, philosophy, psychology, and life...anti-realism or chaos.

Then he stabbed at my alcohol use. I claimed that it was an escape...he said it was a temporary distortion of a reality that is the confusion derived from unsound discourse. FUCK! You're RIGHT!

I confronted him with Brendan's idea...God is a concept for time, they are the same because time caused the creation of order from randomness...and all energy in the universe is transferred or converted to entropy through time. I forget the argument exactly about this. My mind was just set on how much of an ass I'd been to people in the last couple months.

Saw Sarah tonight. She has such beautiful steel blue eyes it's tough to look away. She seems well. This makes me happy. I maintain my statement: if there's anything that I could ever do to make her the happiest woman on the planet then I would. For a time that mission involved being close to her. Now that means back off. In the future it might take on an entirely different role.
I can't criticize but...I feel like she's with a deadbeat man. Contrasted with the shit I wrestle with I mgiht say that about a lot of people...but from her tone I got that feeling.

The spring releases still...I've never had this much of an attack from the professor. He told me that God gave us emotion for a reason. Emotion before thought (I argued with him on that and...although thought can preceed thought...with regard to apprehensions etc...but raw feelings occur independantly, such as seeing Sarah--without any thought to our past or mistakes I felt this rush of compassion).

My thoughts are a mess right now. It's time to sleep it off.