things to come…

 

The Sea Within

Linky and I are going to the ocean tomorrow. Standing in the surf at Galveston on the first day of this new year we resolved to make it a monthly pilgrimage. February is nearly finished. Below is the final chapter to a truly beautiful book, The Sea Within: Waves and the Meaning of All Things, by Peter Kreeft.

Technology is the most obvious and pervasive new feature of our lives, the one thing we are very, very good at, the defining feature of our modern civilization. Machines are good things, of course, and the artificial is natural to us; after all, our own hands are tools. But they are less deep and less real and less alive than we are, and we are becoming more like them, less deep and less real and less alive. We have made our good servants into our bad masters.

We did this by giving our machines two precious things, time and power, the two things we designed them to give us more of. But everyone knows it has worked the other way: we have less and less time the more time-saving devices we have, and we feel more impotent, more harried and hassled than our pre-technological ancestors. Our time-saving devices have turned us into worried slaves instead of leisured masters.

The sea is a powerful antidote to this. For the sea gives us time, when we give time to it. . . . The same is true of power as is true of time: she gives us more power and control over our lives if we first give it up, if we give up trying to control our lives, if we just sit there quietly for an hour a week and watch waves. When we do that, we emerge stronger, because we have left our obsession with strength back on land.

By a wonderful paradox, the same sea that restores our inner passion also restores our inner peace. Like God. For this wild thing is also a supremely peaceful thing. Like God. And she gives us a peace that land cannot give. Like God. That’s why it’s a mystery.

-Steven

Happy Valentine’s Day

fireflies

My friend Colleen sent me this link to gorgeous firefly photos tonight. It was great to get home from a long day and great dinner talks with friends to find that treat on my interwebs. It also immediately brought to mind one of my favorite songs by one of my favorite bands, Some Say Leland. Dan Grissom, is a genius songwriter and an all around awesome guy who I’m lucky to call a friend. In fact, every member of the band is equally outrageously talented, funny, and genuine. I highly encourage everyone to find their albums and buy them. Dan is also the writer of that gorgeous love song “One Thing” that I posted months ago and that Steven and I have taken to playing together lately. It may also be played during our wedding ceremony. You’ll just have to wait and see. Anyhow, looking at the firefly photos while listening to the song=perfect bedtime ritual. Wishing you all sweet dreams full of “childish grace”.

-linky

Thanksgiving

HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYBODY!!!!!

There are soooooooooooooooooooo many things to be thankful for! I am most thankful for love!

Thank you! thank you! thank you! thank you! thank you! thank you! thank you!

The pictures below were taken at the Weber Thanksgiving celebration in San Marcos.

–Steven

Lovers for life!

Cousins for life!

Bosom sisters for life!

Siblings for life!

pefekshunizm

With creative projects it seems like perfectionism can go one of two ways. The first perfectionism is that which desires special recognition, praise of the highest caliber, from all else who experience the project in its completed form. The other perfectionism desires self expression in the fullest sense. The first perfectionist cannot finally produce a project in its completed form because there is always a more laudatory artist in view; for this perfectionist every project is tentative, “still needs a little tweaking” because the piece in its current state cannot possibly compete with others’ work. The second perfectionist cannot finally produce a project in its completed form basically because the heart is still inscrutable despite even the highest artistic talent; for this perfectionist every project is tentative, “still needs a little tweaking” because the piece in its current state seems to the artist something like an inaccurate/incomplete translation.  In either case perfectionism risks squandering the inspiration that excited the creative impulse in the first place.

Whichever of the two perfectionists you are, consider the disservice you are doing to others by withholding something potentially meaningful or helpful. And the clutter. Be done with it. Clean house. Move on already.

Linky and I have realized that each of us are a bit of both. And we want to move on already.

Below is a fairy tale I began writing about a year ago, inspired by  a Josef Pieper essay. It still needs a little tweaking . . .

-Steven

Birds

A long time ago there was a king who ruled over all the land from a small island palace in the middle of a stormy sea. The sea was so stormy that ordinary boats couldn’t pass over it so, to stay in contact with their king, messengers from each district of the kingdom used carrier pigeons to send alerts and to make petitions. No one who successfully petitioned the king for aid was ever known to have been disappointed. For this reason the king came to be called the King of Consolation. One day a duke from the most challenged district in the kingdom, which came to be called the District of Desolation, resolved to petition the king for aid. The only three messengers in the District of Desolation happened also to be brothers. They were appointed for their unique diligence and eagerness to serve. Though each was extraordinarily desirous to serve, each differed from the other in his response to that desire and to desire in general.

The Duke of Desolation sent first for Presumption, the eldest brother, who lived luxuriously nearby and spent most of each day in the marketplace. A successful merchant, Presumption kept company with other successful merchants from the four most prominent classes in the district, which were Wealth, Power, Honor, and Pleasure. Presumption’s ways were such that whatever he desired he set his mind at once to acquiring and was immediately delighted by an indubitable certainty of acquisition. He celebrated his desire for fulfillment whether the acquisition occurred or not, so much so as to become deluded into thinking he already possessed what he only moments before began desiring. It was boundless self confidence that satisfied Presumption and an invulnerably secure expectation of success became both the cause and the effect of his exhilaration for desiring and acquiring, which were so similar by his thinking that they amounted to the same thing. So fearless of failure was he that he was commonly mistaken by others for being a most joyful and fortunate man; in fact he was regarded as the happiest and luckiest man in the entire district and everyone loved him.

The Duke of Desolation sent second for Despair, the youngest brother, who lived meanly near the marketplace in a neighborhood called Acedia. He didn’t have to work because he took a stipend from the District Treasury for his appointment as messenger. Despair was unfit for work anyhow owing to sickness. He passed most of each day lost in thought while taking long walks in the neighborhood. His illness was a sort of sadness familiar to each of the families living in Acedia, whose ranks included the Restlessness, Loquaciousness, Instability, Torpor, Pusillanimity, Rancor, Malice, and Cruelty families. The illness was uniquely advanced in Despair, distinctive because, unlike the others, Despair wouldn’t allow himself even the crudest imitation of happiness despite desiring it more acutely than did all of the others. The suffering he endured was self-imposed by a sort of perversion of will that constantly denied every possibility of any of his desires finding either immediate or ultimate fulfillment. It was neither clinical depression nor mere discontentedness; it was rather like he lived his entire conscious life suspended from all of the positive and possible things he knew he could be and simultaneously desired to be, dangling over and above and ever-confronted by an ever-nearing—nearing by his own pulling, not by its own approaching—frightfully detectable, utter and irrevocable doom, a doom of his own selection, a doom of constant speculation. All Despair could feasibly manage were long walks in Acedia, where even his closest neighbors hated him resolutely for refusing all happiness; in fact, he was the most hated man in the entire district.

The Duke of Desolation sent last for Hope, the middle brother, who lived somewhere in the wooded valley beyond Acedia. Very little about Hope was known by anyone in the district. As a consequence of his appointment to the office of messenger, the duke and his staff were required to know at least some things about him, which happened to include the facts that he was technically homeless and lived where he pleased, and that he passed most of his time with two of his dearest friends, Magnanimity and Humility, whose counsel he often took. Almost nothing was known about Magnanimity and Humility, either, except that Magnanimity always directed Hope to an understanding of what was possible for him in a given situation; and that Humility always revealed to Hope what limitations surrounded those possibilities. It was whispered by some in the district that he and his two companions gave counsel to certain residents who eventually fled the district and never returned; the duke and his staff either had not heard these rumors or they rejected them as false. Others still, mostly those living on the outskirts of the district—and this is even more mysterious—made the claim that Hope appeared unaccompanied to them in dreams and in times of life-threatening distress in order to impart a kind of inspiration, but was barely recognizable owing to the dazzling brilliance of his form. These claims were mostly discredited as having been hallucinations; others said it wasn’t Hope, but a ghost; others still said the claims were lies, told for attention. Hope was mostly unknown in the district and misinterpreted by those few who had encountered him.

Presumption appeared in the duke’s court that morning, not long after he’d heard in the marketplace that his duty as messenger was summoned. He and a small retinue of colleagues and admirers bustled boisterously in with flushed cheeks and smug smiles, each one more self-satisfied than the next, each one dressed in the most current and lavish drapery marking men with that special distinction of having really made it in the world. The Duke beamed at their entrance and even rose to greet them, kissing each of their hands and faces, winking and giggling, jovially announcing his keen pleasure of receiving them so punctually. They stood there in the center of the court for about an hour, each one talking and laughing loudly over the other, cackling like fat hens about business and current affairs, rehearsing the latest jokes and rumors. Somewhere amid the gaiety and, by now charmed past the point of inebriation, the duke briskly mentioned his desire to reach the king and humbly slipped in his request of Presumption, that, if he please would, could he please perform his appointed duty as messenger? The duke then invited them to table and the company moved into the dining hall, where much was eaten and drank and ribaldry abounded. An hour or so after being left by himself, the duke was still very warm and lighthearted and his stomach ached from laughter. He was sleepy from wine but something about his meeting with Presumption kept him awake. He slowly recalled the gravity of his need to petition the king. He carefully reviewed his meeting with Presumption and began to worry whether this seriousness corresponded proportionately to what he’d said to Presumption that morning.  The more he thought and worried about it the more he distorted what actually occurred in the meeting, to a point where he wondered whether he’d clearly stated the message to be sent or if he’d even mentioned his desire to petition the king at all. He tried comforting himself by the conclusion that even if he hadn’t directly stated what message should go to the king, Presumption was a smart man and would connect the dots; such was the effect Presumption’s contagious self-confidence had on people. He grinned at the thought of Presumption’s handsome, youthful face.

Despair appeared in the duke’s court that afternoon after he’d basically been arrested by henchman while taking one of his infamous walks around Acedia; he’d seen them coming and fled. The same henchmen all but dragged him into court and planted him before the duke, whose face blackened at once. The henchmen left and the two were alone. For several minutes neither said a word. Despair stood hunched over before him, glancing periodically at the wall, perceptibly twitching the sinewy muscles in his yellowish, emaciated face. The duke’s pulse accelerated and a grimace overtook him as poisonous intentions polluted his heart first then filled his whole being. An explosive bark from the duke disrupted the stuffy silence. Still Despair wouldn’t face him. The pressure in the room became unbearable for both, and each stiffened his posture in preparation. In one fluid motion, the duke sprang from his throne and stomped curtly over to Despair to strike his face with such a jerky and unrestrained force that he lost his balance and crashed on top of him to the floor. He was immediately on his feet again and began a wild pacing-about, circling the balled-up Despair on the floor, pronouncing hysterical exhortations in a voice not his own—a shrill, cracking sound that bounced off the walls and became several voices—sporadically interrupted by convulsive fits of shouting and sobbing, a broken falsetto over Despair’s wounded, whimpering baritone; the effect was disturbingly musical and gradually haunted each of them into a bothered state of hush. The duke became very still staring at the balled-up Despair; he couldn’t choose between thrashing him to death and helping him to his feet—such was the effect Despair had on people—so he signaled his henchmen to have him removed. Then, covering his face with shame, he retired quickly to his private chamber for the night, unable to shake the residual desperation that clung to him.

Hope appeared to the duke not a moment too soon, though the manner by which the visit occurred shook him greatly. It was well past dark and he had just climbed into bed behind several locked doors. Exhausted more from worry and by an indefinable grief than from the day’s activities, the duke had energy enough only to desire sleep. He had just closed his eyes when the black backs of his eyelids turned pink. He bolted upright and through his upraised hands squinted at a radiant form in the middle of the chamber. Though he recognized the form by a vague recollection, he reflexively begged the brilliant presence in the room to be merciful.  Then he dropped his hands and, instead of squinting, closed his eyes and began speaking to Hope, for by some innate faculty he realized he was in the presence of Hope himself. Beginning with a flood of words, the duke laid the whole thing out for him: the troubles facing the District of Desolation, the urgent necessity of the king’s intervention, the failures of the past several years, the failures of the past several hours, his own desolation and violence to others and several other things that rose up from him unexpectedly. He released the tension in his shoulders along with a long sigh and let his face and shirtfront become wet without restraint. He sat in the silent warmth and light emanating from Hope and slowly formed the words of his petition, punctuating the plea by a prolonged period of silence, gazing with ineffable awe and dread on the splendor of light before him. In that resplendent moment he recalled with alacrity his connection and allegiance to the King of Consolation and was overcome by a flood of emotion. The room was all too suddenly dark again and he sat in stupefaction for several minutes before easing bedward, sinking slowly into consolation. He intended to make arguments to himself that he’d dreamt or hallucinated, but invisible consoling arms cradled him swiftly towards a pacifying sleep.

When Presumption and company left the duke earlier that day, they returned to market and did very well for themselves, as usual. It was late in the evening and, after a great feast with various strangers whom he regarded as his closest friends, Presumption returned home bloated and quite drunk. Passing his birdcage on the way to bed, he looked dreamily on the carrier pigeons before him. It struck him then that he was supposed to send one to the king that day, with a message. He struggled to recall the message. It was a long time since that morning when he’d been summoned by the duke. Much had passed in the interim. His babyish face cracked into a gleeful smile as he recalled all that he had accomplished that day. He stood this way before the birds for several minutes until finally he opened the door to the cage, reached gently in and extracted one of them. He closed the cage again and danced over to the open window and let the breeze fill his open shirt. Again he was transported to a childish cheerfulness, forgetting the bird in his cupped hands. He closed his eyes and became very drowsy and, because of the spirits he’d imbibed, swayed this way and that. He awoke just before tumbling out the open window, but nothing could upset his spirits. He laughed loudly, all the more loudly still when he looked with wonderment on the bird still in his hands, admiring its beauty, desiring that minute to acquire more birds like him. Before tossing the bird out of the window, sending him homeward in the fading night, Presumption addressed the bird aloud, telling him to do whatever it was that the duke said to him that morning—this is exactly the way he phrased it, too, because the duke neither told him what to say in the message nor could Presumption have remembered it if he tried. He watched the bird disappear into the fading darkness and became possessed by the praise owed to him by both duke and king; he was never happier than at that moment because he knew he’d done them a great favor; that he’d served well in his duty as messenger. It was dawn when Presumption lay down to sleep. Moments later, just as the sun rose, as the bird was passing over the wooded valley beyond Acedia, a hunter shot an arrow through its heart and he was soon afterwards eaten for breakfast.

When Despair left the duke earlier that day, he took the long way home, as usual. He was lost in thought by the time he made it to Acedia and he remained that way until dusk when he suddenly and uncharacteristically remembered his meeting with the duke and his duty as messenger. He happened to be standing on the outer ridge of Acedia, facing the wooded valley below. He paused there and considered the wooded valley below. He knew of the valley below that it was filled with hunters, but only during the day. He knew also of the valley below that it was filled with predators, but only at night. Looking beyond the wooded valley toward the sea separating himself from Consolation he decided that any bird of his wouldn’t make it. It had to pass over the wooded valley below, and the wooded valley was too dangerous; it’d be killed by a predator that night or by a hunter in the morning. He sank back into Acedia, slinking through the streets like a haint, haunting passersby. Once home he went directly to his cage full of carrier pigeons. One by one, he removed them all and tore each one of them apart with his bare hands.

When Hope left the duke that night, he returned to the wooded valley, as usual. On the way he passed through the marketplace and spotted his brother, Presumption, but was unable to reach him in the heaven to which he constantly projected himself. On the way he passed through Acedia and spotted his other brother, Despair, but was unable to save him from the hell to which he constantly lost himself. Magnanimity and Humility met Hope at wood’s edge and they plunged together into the forest toward a great tree. When they gathered at the base of the great tree, Hope whistled and a carrier pigeon descended and lit on his shoulder. Magnanimity handed him a pen and Humility a strip of parchment. Hope wrote down the duke’s petition and attached the strip to the bird’s ankle. Bidding his companions farewell, Hope took the bird softly in hand and broke into a hard sprint toward the other end of the valley, which rose into a cliff above the sea on the other side—the same stormy sea separating Desolation from Consolation. Hope ran at an inhuman pace through the dark wood, dispelling all predators from his path. It was dawn when he reached the base of the far edge of the valley. He accelerated up the steep slope with supernatural determination, rising rapidly to the pinnacle. Leaping from the cliff he released the bird and sank like an anchor to the floor of the sea. Racing to impossible speeds the bird burst into ten thousand duplicates, distending like a thunderhead across the incredulous sky, burning homeward like ten-thousand wounds across the faces of the most distant heavens. Hope resurfaced in the churning breakers, face thrust skyward, limbs begging sea for clemency, eyes sky for the bird—the bird! Off the edge of the horizon without a witness, gone was the bird, out of sight. For a long time he remained in the rolling waves, looking homeward after his vanished bird. Night fell again and still he lingered, rising and falling with the sea’s fevered breathing, eyes aflame like candles in the frightful blackness, tears of consolation caked like wax to his illumined face.

________________________________________________________________________

 

 

 

 

Linky here. Aren’t you glad he shared that fairytale? Me too! To exercise my slap happy imperfection muscles, I sat down at my kitchen table 2 days ago and recorded two songs. This is virtually unheard of (for me). They were both live recorded and done in one take,with a couple of harmony tracks recorded over each. I’ve been nitpicking and stalling and worrying and ultimately losing my drive for recording my songs over the last couple of years. So, it felt incredibly liberating to just sit down and do them…and then move on. That doesn’t mean that I don’t hear every flat note and guitar flub and it doesn’t get under my skin. But I’m not letting it keep me from trapped in edit/redo/try again/make it perfect HELL. And I’m even willing to share them. I added a couple tracks to my dusty old Myspace account. Anyone who is inclined to take a listen to in the moment imperfection, is welcome to click away. And, since I discovered that I can’t share MP3s on this blog without adding a $90 upgrade, I posted one to Youtube. The song is about my brother, Bobby, and that’s a photo of him taken several years ago. Steven had the opportunity to meet him in Fort Worth during our visit and I was so grateful for that.

Happy early Thanksgiving to all of you. I am eternally thankful for the wonderful friends and family in my life, who accept me as I am and challenge me to grow.

 

kalimba

So, I was reading my Kalimba Magic Newsletter today (really…I’m a nerd), and I found this video of an original composition by Shawn Jackinsky featuring kalimba (mbira’s cousin) and bowed saw. It makes me feel like I’m in a wondrous paper ship, floating on a silky, fabric sea with two birds slowly circling each other in an overcast sky. Know what I mean? How does it make you feel?

-Linky

collaboration

“Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than the one where they sprang up.” - Oliver Wendell Holmes

“It takes two to speak the truth — one to speak, and another to hear.” - Henry David Thoreau

Yes! I love the idea of transplanting ideas into another mind. Botanically speaking, transplanting  “most often takes the form of starting a plant from seed in optimal conditions, such as in a greenhouse or protected nursery bed, then replanting it in another, usually outdoor, growing location. Botanical transplants are used infrequently and carefully because they carry with them a significant risk of killing the plant” (Basics of horticulture – Simson, Straus. Oxford Book Company, Edition 2010).

I’ve transplanted botanicals while working in nurseries and at my own home. It’s a process that requires tenderness and focus. It’s safer and easier to keep an idea or creative impulse stored in the greenhouse of your mind, where it won’t be blown apart by judgment or poor translation. But these seedlings will often remain stagnant and wither if they’re not urged out into the open air. I’ve entertained the idea of co-writing songs several times in my life. However, the time and circumstances hadn’t permitted it until last night. I started feeling a little tickle in the back of my mind and picked up my guitar. I’ve been lazy about playing guitar until recently. Steven has really encouraged and inspired me to pick it back up, revisit old songs, and think about new ones. Well, this tickle started yesterday while we were both up at Avenue L Coffeehouse. I’m generally sort of shy and solitary during creative periods. I feel like, if I make too much noise or look at the thing directly, it will disappear. So, I like to hole up in a quiet corner and look for it quietly and out of the corners of my eyes. I did that for a while yesterday and I strung some chords together. I also had shimmerings of ideas and images that were compelling to me but also abstract and not clearly connected. I wrote a few lines about them and was dancing around the edges of this incongruous collage of ideas when Steven came over to me and asked to hear the song. I played through the chords and he learned them with me and played along. I was happy to play together, however he asked several times if I had words to go with the chords and I immediately clammed up. This stemmed from my perfectionistic tendencies and from feeling vulnerable about exposing half-baked notions that weren’t even clear to me yet.

But he, thankfully, was persistent and, after gently questioning me a couple more times, I decided to attempt a song seedling transplant. Neither of us “knew what we were doing”. We both kept reassuring each other/airing our insecurities that we didn’t know how to co-write. But then we would continue swapping ideas and clarifying our story and adding structure and…it was working! His knack for clarity and form really jived with my knack for floods of images and glimmers of  emotions that want to be translated. We moved our project upstairs into the little office with hideous and psychedelic ’60s wallpaper, and continued to play and talk for two or three more hours! I’m so grateful for this experience. I believe that at least two songs are now sprouting out of our sharing. If I had remained clammed up about it and too scared to try, I might have never even gotten one song. This whole process was a clear reminder to me of a benefit of trusting. If approached with gentleness and an openness to speak and hear, collaboration can be infinitely rewarding.

We’ll hopefully have some finished songs to share in the coming months. -Linky

Why

Assembling an application package to send to these folks and certain latent, preliminary questions resurfaced: What is philosophy? Why study it? What to do with it?

What isn’t it?

Sometimes people use the word philosophy in a narrower sense, as in “I have a different philosophy of life.” Here philosophy means worldview. A worldview is a set of fundamental ideas that help us make sense of a wide range of important issues in life. A worldview defines for us what exists, what should be, and what we can know. (Vaughn, 4)

In the broader sense,

[I]t is a discipline, a field of inquiry . . . concerned with the examination of beliefs of the most fundamental kind—beliefs that structure our lives, shape our worldviews, and underpin all academic disciplines . . . [it] is not primarily concerned with what causes you to have the particular beliefs you do [but] whether a belief is worth believing . . . [W]e are trying either to devise an argument to support a statement or to evaluate an argument to see if there are really good reasons for accepting its conclusion. . . . [P]hilosophy’s sphere of interest is literally everything there is. Its subject matter is divided into four main divisions, each of which is a branch of inquiry in its own right with many subcategories: [metaphysics, axiology, epistemology, and logic] . . . (id. 3-7)

Why study it and what to do with it?

I started studying it with an interest in discovering what is true and worth doing in life; lifelong and fulfilling but not an altogether straightforward project. I am going back for second helpings because my itches need scratching and because I want to get paid to help youngsters scratch themselves, too. Plenty of less perverty explanations among the Google fruits.  Go on now, don’t be shy.

The application package I’m working on at present requires a writing sample so to get back into the swing of things I’m having a look at this book, from which the above block quotes were taken. And this book, from which the below quotes and argument were taken or inspired.

“[O]ne of the most remarkable things about the great philosophical books is that they ask the same sort of profound questions that children ask. The ability to retain the child’s view of the world, with at the same time a mature understanding of what it means to retain it, is extremely rare—and a person who has these qualities is likely to be able to contribute something really important to our thinking” (Adler, Van Doren, 271).

The argument below attempts to account for the origins of the philosophic impulse and offers one plausible explanation for its interruption.

PREMISE 1: All humans are wired for philosophy from birth.

Supporting Conclusion 1: Philosophy begins in childhood.

Supporting Premise: Childhood begins in wonder.

Supporting Premise: “Philosophy begins in wonder.” –Aristotle

Supporting Conclusion 2: Children are philosophers.

Supporting Premise: Children are natural questioners.

Supporting Premise: Philosophers are natural questioners.

Supporting Premise: Children primarily ask why.           

Supporting Premise: Philosophers primarily ask why.

PREMISE 2: Events in life leading up to adulthood thwart attention to philosophy.

Supporting Conclusion 1: Parents condition children not to ask why.

Supporting Premise: Parents thinly conceal irritation whenever pressed with barrages of why.

Supporting Premise: “There is no answer” is a common response to why.

Supporting Premise: “Stop asking me why” is a more common response to why.

Supporting Premise: Children are eventually impressed with notion that inquisitiveness beyond a certain point is impolite or otherwise wrong.

Supporting Conclusion 2: Puberty: changing bodies condition minds not to wonder about why.

Supporting Premise: The why questions typical to philosophy are always difficult but are normally less concrete and pressing to one’s attention than are the immediate concerns of one at the onset of puberty.

Supporting Premise: One’s questions at the onset of puberty aim simultaneously at the resolution of many difficult and definite problems associated with changing bodies, personalities, and environments.

Supporting Premise: One’s attention can only be one place at a time.

Supporting Conclusion 3a: Many formal education systems in the United States condition children and young adults not to care about why—unless why can gain college admission.

Supporting Premise: Public education (K-12) in the United States functions normally as preparation for education at the university level.

Supporting Premise: Standardized tests administered through public educators (K-12) in the United States predict fitness for success at the university level; also, they determine high school graduation and admission to the university level.

Supporting Premise: Public education (K-12) curricula in the United States are disproportionately focused on standardized test preparation. This disproportion harms a student insofar as rote learning and test-taking skills replace organic intellectual maturation; also, it can generally discourage “extra-curricular” curiosity of both faculty and students.

Supporting Premise: Interference with intellectual maturation and discouragement of curiosity discourages attention to why.

Supporting Premise: Prolonged inattention to why devalues the importance of why.

Supporting Conclusion 3b: Many formal education systems in the United States condition children and young adults not to care about why—unless why can gain employment.

Supporting Premise: Public universities in the United States function normally as producers of more apparent contributors to society, i.e. people who will create jobs, stimulate economy, etc., e.g. students of business, finance, accounting, natural and applied sciences.

Supporting Premise: Students of philosophy in specific and liberal or performing arts in general make contributions to societies that are less apparent to the common American perception.

Supporting Premise: The typical American university student normally wants a job that will provide financial stability.

Supporting Premise: That liberal and performing arts degrees are less likely to provide financial stability is a common American perception; it is also a devaluation of a liberal or performing arts degree.

Supporting Premise: The devaluation of liberal or performing arts degrees with respect to the American job market discourages attention to why.

Supporting Premise: Prolonged inattention to why devalues the importance of why.

CONCLUSION: “We must be able to see as children see, to wonder as they wonder, to ask as they ask” (id. 271) if we want to participate in the activity of philosophy, because “[t]he complexities of adult life get in the way of the truth” (id. 271).

“What happens between the nursery and college to turn the flow of questions off, or, rather, to turn it into the duller channels of curiosity about matters of fact? A mind not agitated by good questions cannot appreciate the significance of even the best answers. It is easy enough to learn the answers. But to develop actively inquisitive minds, alive with real questions, profound questions—that is another story. . . . The great philosophers have always been able to clear away the complexities and see simple distinctions—simple once they are stated, vastly difficult before. If we are to follow them we too must be childishly simple in our questions—and maturely wise in our replies” (id. 270-271).

 

-Steven

Blog Blending and Fort Worth

Howdy,

I’m happy to nerdily announce that Steven and I (collectively known as Barminky by some) are blending blogs. He’s leaving his old blogger in the dust and hopping aboard the cloud show. So, keep your eyes peeled for postsosts by him in the future! Speaking of photos, we took a trip to Fort Worth and Dallas over the weekend and Steven took some great shots. We got to visit my Dad and Stepmom, my brother Bobby, and our friends the Belshes. Here are a few shots taken from the roof of a parking garage in downtown Forth Worth (click on them for full resolution).

                 Nikki and David Belshe

There were also amazing cloud shows all weekend. Steven took this one yesterday at a stoplight:

On Saturday, we took advantage of my Dad and Ginger’s family membership to the Kimbell Museum and we saw the Caravaggio and permanent exhibits. Richard Serra’s massive Vortex sculpture is across the street from the Kimbell, near the Modern Art Museum. The acoustics and echoes in there are so crazy. I definitely want to return with instruments. Steven took the new blog header photo from inside the Vortex (looking out the top of it). I also caught one of him inside the sculpture.

On our way home, we stopped through Dallas and visited the GIGANTIC, original Half Priced Books and, somehow, made it out of there with just one book each. We also went to the new In-N-Out Burger and Steven got to experience his first animal style burger. In-N-Out is a total phenomenon on the West Coast and I’d gotten to experience it a few times when I was on tour 3 summers ago. They apparently just expanded to Arizona, Utah, and…Dallas?! I’m not sure why, but I’m glad for it. Stay tuned for more photos and stories from our recent adventures.

-Linky