if anyone is wondering, i have the final answer to everything. you'll have to earn it though.

A friend of mine, who is an atheist, was recently bemoaning the fact that there are many people now who can be called 'atheistic followers'--just as closed minded and hostile as feels some fundamentalists are. He told me that he had always considered 'free-thinking' an atheistic quality, but now saw that there are, to put it simply, good people and jerks on both sides. He then jokingly said how he needed a new way to divide the world with him on the good side.

It got me thinking about how there is no truly satisfying way to do it. The problem is that people are never just one thing: there are fun, open minded people who are jerks; boring, ignorant types who are smart and nice, etc. etc.

I don't really see the point, myself, in trying to search for a quality to value above others. I think that people are a mix of contradictions, values, tastes and often enough, bad ideas. Just take people as they come, I say. I mean, I wouldn't want to hang out with a neo-nazi, that's obvious. But perhaps they still have something to say that could make me think--even if I passionately disagree with it. Seeing them as only ridiculous means that I commit the error of thinking I'm better than them, that I'm part of some elect group that really knows what's best. That sort of thinking is what lead to eugenics.

Point is, no matter what it is you don't like people to be: stupid, mean, ignorant, too nice, right-wing, left-wing, pro life, pro choice, feminist, misogynist, whatever. They're not going away. Yet many people (especially in the states) seem to think that if they happen to win a shouting match then their opponent will just burst into flames. Michael Moore and Bill O'Reily are the two best examples.

Master Brinker always tells me that to shove an idea someone's throat, you have to get them to open their mouth first. To change someone's mind is not to batter it until they submit, but help see the value and reason of your position. Furthermore, maybe the best idea isn't to change people's minds, but make sure they think about why they hold to something and encourage them to use empathy in order to entertain other positions.

Or we could all just kill each other. Whichever works best for everyone.

In other news, it has been a long week. I'm a little behind but that's what the weekend is for. I find it hardest to practice when my mind is tired. My body I can pull along pretty much under any circumstance, but after a paper that makes it feel like my brain has been deep fried all I want to do is stare at a wall. I can still do that during pushups, I guess. Anyhow, back to work.

beards and glasses everywhere--(1/10)

So I spent the weekend at the Western Canadian Philosophical Association annual conference, held conveniently right here. It was a fantastic time and occasionally over my head, but hey--I think I learned more in three days than over the past two months of school. I'm not going to get into many details because, well, most of you will find them boring. A while ago I wouldn't have recognized that and would've gone into a little story about contrastivism, I guess I'm growing.

Ok, now I have to at least sketch out what contrastivism is because I'm no fan of cliffhangers. It's the statement 'S knows p rather than q' as opposed to 'S knows p'. Basically, it's a claim that all knowledge is in relation to what it's not. So when I look at water, I know it's water because it's not cola.

This stuff is fun once you get into it.

Two things have happened as a result. Firstly, I've gotten off the fence and decided that, after China, I will go to grad school and become a philosophy professor. It feels nice to finally have made a decision about the direction of my life and while there will be a lot of work, the best of life requires it. Plus I already have a beard to stroke while pondering.

Side note: so many beards. At least half of the men there had one.

Secondly, I was also inspired to start my living heroes project with one of the few heroes that I've actually met. So here's Adam Morton.

Morton is a professor of philosophy at the University of Alberta. Before that he taught at Bristol and received his Phd from Princeton. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (a big deal), chairs the Canada Research Council on Epistemology (another big deal) and is a past president of the Aristotelian Society (a huge deal). The man even has his own Wikipedia page, much harder than it seems. Point is, he carries a large stick in modern philosophy and I'm fairly certain he's the cleverest man I've ever met.

Now, I said cleverest, not smartest. While I'm sure he's way up there in terms of IQ, what always impresses me more is his razor sharp logical facility and unending thirst for knowledge. He didn't present any papers at the conference, but instead was content to sit and learn.

Being in his sixties and with the reputation he does have, Professor Morton could easily rest on his laurels. Yet he is still publishing papers and writing books. I've only taken one class from him way back in my first year, but I've never forgotten his incredible thirst for knowledge and the sheer delight he takes in teaching and researching the same subject he has been for thirty or forty years. The awe and humility he approaches philosophy reminds me of how Master Brinker always insists (and exemplifies) that we should never get tired of kung fu and also never stop having fun with it.

He's also legendarily absent minded, probably because he has so much to think about. Plus the guy can unicycle, how cool is that?

Super cool, for those of you wondering.

dead (broken (dead)) robots littered on the ground, silicon a poor substitue for gore

My computer is dead. It lasted an impressively long time considering how many times it was dropped or knocked off my desk by a dog. Ah well, such is life. I still have ready access to a computer through school, but I'll probably only be on when I have to do some work. I have no plans to get another one. Sorry, I do have plans to get another one, just no money.

The reason I'm telling you all this is that as a result my kwoon talk/SRKF sifus postings and my email reponses will be at a snail's pace. Please don't take it for indifferance.

So I'm back

...though I would say I never really left. I have a paper journal full of entries from the past 5 months, so there. So why did I leave and why am once again posting here? I'll answer the latter later. That just rolls of the tongue: latter later.

Honesty is the best policy (though Woody Allen once pointed out that implies dishonesty is the second best policy) so I'll be straight: I'm publicly journaling again because I have to. Under Master Brinker, myself and several other black belts are student members in something called the Ultimate Black Belt Test, which is going to last until February 2010. Looking at the end date, I just realized how far in the future that is. 2010! If there hasn't been a robot uprising by then I'll be sorely disappointed.

I had a point, at one point. It was that as part of the UBBT I have to publicly journal once a week, most likely Sundays. I missed last week--here I am making it up. Now, just because my hand is being forced doesn't mean this won't be a positive thing. In fact, I'm pretty happy I got this kick in the pants to blog again.

I stopped blogging because my re-reading my posts annoyed me. As many of you know, I have a lot to say...er, write. Whatever. But this little slice of tube was a soapbox a mile high. I got sick of ranting instead of saying something. That's not a failing of the medium, it's of me. After all, it's easy to write an essay on how important DIY ethics are. They're everywhere here. What's hard is to convince people why they should care. I'm not even going to do that, though. I'm coming at you all sideways by doing something I hate: talking about my life, referencing all this boring social/philosophical stuff in how it relates to day to day stuff. It'll probably just little bits, but who knows, I may confess to some horrible crime on here--wouldn't you hate to miss that?

So stay tuned: bat channel, bat time and so forth.