Sleep is the main emotion at the moment. Music puts me to sleep. University puts me to sleep. Winter puts me to sleep (but so does summer). Toothache puts me to sleep, becuase you force yourself to be calm, and keep way more controled than otherwise. It feels strange to be so calm and empty, and good too. Panadol puts you to sleep too, I can so see how people can get really into panadol, I always want to take way more than it says you should, I enjoy it.

I was listening on the radio to day, about the dumbing down of university courses, worldwide. And it made sense.

What do University Proffessors want:

a.) Time and energy to pursue thier own researches

b.) Simultaniously, to keep their teaching job; it's the income, and a good one too, the job being largely unregulated by other bodies and having low hours.

And what's an easier way to do this? Why, make courses shorter, simpler, easier, less complex/challenging. This works for both the above points:

a.) such a course takes less time to prepare, mark, etc. etc.

b.) such a course leads to higher student evaluations, rather than ones from failing students frustrated with a course.

Meanwhile, there really is little motivation to dedicate huge amounts of time and energy to your lectures/courses, other than, you know, personally holding the belief that you really want to attain teaching excellence, and inspire, challenge and motivate your students.

Now, of course it's an over simplied model, and there will be university proffessors out there who really do a fantastic job. Still, I do think the argument does indeed hold some weight. Especially from the personal perspective. I mean in Ethics at the moment, I know I'm falling asleep. And I know it isn't 'cause the topic's not intresting, it's becuase the lecturer is dreary, unmotivated, his slides and infomation basic, and just generally tend to veer away from any element of the issue that looks like it could be remotely challenging/intresting/controvertial. He just slowly speels out stuff you already know (but with bigger philosophical words attached, of course) over a 50 minute period. The worst bit too is that, there's no real attempt to, you know, offer a comprehensive set of perspectives on an issue. It's wholly bias, he is, the slides/selection of writers/material is, even the rest of the class is. We're doing Animal welfare/Environmental ethics, and there's been 5 lectures so far, and all we've heard is, don't kill animals, and save the environment. Sure, there have been a variety of different reasons for why this should be the case. I'll admit that. But over 5 lectures, only having 3 lines from one philosopher that provide any truely alternative perspective? That's just not on. And he trashed him. I thought he had some intresting points I wouldn't have minded hearing about. But oh well.

I think you compare it to school, where teachers (most of them, anyway) are passionate. They do want to be there, teaching. It's thier choosen career path, they've trained for it, they (again, most of them) sat down, thought about it, and sought it out. But philosophy professors? They trained to be philosophers. Same with any other academic. And the teaching? Well I'm sure most of them would be happier on research leave, without it. But that's not the same of secondary teachers. but hey, there you go. I thought it was intresting. And the whole make courses easier and easier thing, it's a continuous downward spiral. And it's mad. I duno. Anyway this was all about sleepiness. fucking tangentttttt.

Um. um um um. That's a sleeping noise. I am happy. I am stressed but then I forget about it and I am happy. then melencholyyyy. that's spelt wrong. I always think Joni Mitchell 'there's comfort in melencholy/ when there's no need to explain/ it's just as natrual as the weather/ in this moody sky today'. Just like that. I'm definitely sending Sonya that CD. Let this be a note to self right here. I have a spare copy, I just need to write a little letter about it, and mail it.

Fuckk, this all sounded way better in my head. It keeps deviating. If you intend things, they never go the way you intend. it's so weird. I want to stop intending things. But I think that involves ALOT of untraining. you know? You are conditioned, and I must admit I have conditioned myself, to think like that. plan things out. consider, judge, weigh up, analyse. It has some benifits. you do well in exams. There are other benifits too, inc. good jobs, ability to live a reasoned and pleasant existance, abilty to solve problems in your life, ability to help others better, ability to have greater stabilty. But I think I take it to extremes. I want to just go lie in the sand or something. Like this:

I so struggle to feel proper emotion. Like so I begin to feel something, like crying. That's not an 'emotion' persay, but I think it's a good example. See haha, it's funny if you say, I want to stop being over-anylitical' and the way you do that is by analysing, but ah, i have just now sat here and considered it, and i find it benificial to continue. So crying. so you start crying. and i think it's a pretty pure emotion, like, it takes a bit of build up to cry, and it should be quite a fairly fairly powerful experience. powerful in the right sense, you know which sense I mean. But like, I get there and I say 'is this really justified?' 'Are you at a level where you are truely this upset?' 'Are you just pretending?' 'Should you be upset about this?' 'Are you slightly out of kilter but then just driving yourself forward and indulging in crying becuase for whatever reason?' you know. And so you fail to feel the true emotion. the pureness of it. Becuase you're always pulling back, always asking questions. And if you're always doing that, well, it's a mess. You'll never get there. Whereever you want to go, you'll never get to feel something if you keep analysing why/why not/should you/ should you not be feeling/trying to feel it. That's the problem with philosophy too, you see? Generally anyway, in many cases. We are doing religion at the moment and, jezz, you're not going to get hardly anywhere sitting around and writing words (words!) and having arguments and reading what randoms from the 18th century have to say on the matter. At various points perhaps I should note, so as not to seem so absolubte on the matter, these have thier benifits. But overall, it is slightly absurd.

Everything is the same. FUCK, everything is the same. See how crying and god are the same thing? What is up with that. everything is the same thing. honest. watch. it's the same too, literature vs. philosophy.

Literature is like crying, and philosophy is still the questions. Literature delves in and bam. And it's confusing, and it's a mess, and you just feel it. literature should be anyway. I talked about it with Sonya. Now how did it go...

Mostly the difference was evidenced by looking at the process of writing english essays.

Now the idea of english essays, is to extract the ideas, themes, ideas, etc. etc. etc. from the book, and note them down in a logical form on paper, backing up all you've found with textual examples. Now that's absurd. Did i say this before? Because, if all there was in the book was this list of ideas and themes you were looking for, well fuck, just go read lists of ideas backed up by examples, it's called philosophy. One must note of course that one thing literature has over philsophy is this ability to engage the reader, relateble/perspective giving character etc. etc. and that's importiant, but still I think there's more than that. Becuase you can write about that, examine it, understand it. But there's something else, the core emotion you can't quite get hold of. I want to draw a diagram. It's like not word, no argument can capture anything of value. But like, in a mass of hundered of higgedy piggledy pages of book, swirling round and round, you can get somewhere, maybe. Not very far, to be sure to be sure, but perhaps somewhere more.

You can say 'beauty' but there's nothing there. same as you can say 'God' or 'crying'. And you can write an essay and say 'beauty is x y z becuase of x y z' and do the same for God or for anything else. And you can say 'Text A shows us that beauty is x y z becuase of textual examples x y z' But fuckkk, none of that is anywhere. hon-hest.

I duno. And again, this could be all just idealised pursuit of some imaginary shit that I have invented for fun and becuase arguments and explaining shit (stop explaining things!) can be so boring and hopeless. All you get is 'we don't really know anything' when it comes down to it. But hey, i dunoooo ehhhh. just know everything is fucking the same as everything else. Everything I think is the same.

Okay I sort of uderstand uploading shit and there's a diagram up the top. X can be a lot of things, let us know it as 'infinity'. It encompassess alot of shit. Then around the outside spiralling around, are things that represent words/questions/arguements/ ideas etc. etc. That's the model in my head atm for how books work. and everything in general. See language, which is all we have to comprehend things with, or not to comprehend, but to UNDERSTAND (in a scientific, academic, absolubte sense of comprehension, you know waht i mean, so you could write it all out with science and arguments and premisses n cconclusions and things) is finite, and is limited, and can never fully express. never FULLY. but you see like, it tries to. Notice how some dashes are closer to X than others. and it's like that. and you see everything is related. You can't ever know X, but you can infer its existance, and come to know something about, or of it, through the stuff round the outside. that's words for you. people try to get there. good writers do. or try to say something about the process. good monks do too. good bums or good psychopaths or good children or good old people sometimes do, too.

The other importiant thing about it is that it's irrational. the center. It lies outside reason. you see the problem with philosophy is it is about reason. no wait! okay I've got a better model. the first one is books. philososphy is the second one, lemme go draw it. okay shit they're just deleting each other. I'll upload them later. I don't know how to use computers properly. Let that be DIAGRAM II. Ah so much to say. That is for philosophy's assult on x. Note how say the first one is a book (literature book) and a whole book. and it's swirly wirly, like a book. And say philosophy one though, each set of lines is a sperate argument attempting to reach realisation of something. get somewhere. Get there. That's philosophy's style. Note of course, how it hasn't got there. Does anyone notice how after 2500 years of western philosophy (always remember we can speak only of the west, I think, and I just don't know enough about anything that the east thinks, they refuse to teach it at school, and almost all of university. ) it fails to answer any of the questions it poses. i duno, i'm losing my train of thought. My panadol is wearing off, I need some more more fucking more, soon soon. But humans are finite beings. And they're not perfect. And they can't. they cant get there. not with reason, not with rationality. which is their thing. it doesn't work. oh god, i know what i mean but i don't know if anyone else does. my tooth hurts. there are so many things to think about. anyway, the spiral does a better job, i think. but you've got to embrace it. And see the english essay thing, taking the spiral and linear-ising it doesn't work, it makes it all alot less effective. English essays are importiant, i should say, and i learnt a lot from them, but now, now, it's different. Creation is the construction of a glorious spiral. Actually everything is everything. Say if God created people, and God is the X and the people are the dashes in the spiral, and some are and get closer than others, and they can never fully concieve God, but they can get closer, and work towards it, and catch glimpses of God in thier world of crazy spiralling people, and it can make them happy. Fuck, there is so much to say. say how nature can fully embrace, and be x, becuase it doesn't think, it just is, and is for eternity. And humans are apart, and round the outside, and although they have consiousness, and rationality, it sure brings some problems. See how we break up plants to, we see each plant living and dying, and new ones, and ifferent types of plants, etc. etc. But really, like they say, it's just one big buzzing mass of neurons and protons and all that other shit. And that's what it is. But humans, they compartmentalise. And they break it down. And I tell you, it ruins the magic alright.

It's the apple too right. Say the X area in the spiral diagram is the garden of eden, and then people have been banished from paradise to the spiral of consiousness. that apple eh.

And then see how the garden of eden, and crying are the same thing!! these are the only things my mind thinks about. I reckon that J writer guy, he must have been pretty darn on to it back in the day. I know Harold Bloom rates him as being up there amoung some of the greatest of all time.

I really want to read 'Gravity's rainbow' by Pyncheon, you know. I do believe it's about trying to get to X, and not getting there, and that being rather funny. My only reservation is that i won't understand it, since grappling with the Crying of lot 49 was hard enough.

Okay, that's enough. I talk shit and make alot of typos I'm wayyyy too lazy to correct. at least for now.