June 23, 2005

• My friend borrowed me this book…days of war, nights of love.  It’s a fun read, a collection of left-wing counter-culture writers got together and put together this manual for revolution, only they know it’s more of a personal tool for living your own best life, than a tool for real change, because real change on a grand scale is imaginary.

  
  

  What I enjoy about some of these readings is how it combines extreme political viewpoints w/ an honest philosophy about life.  You don’t get that from politics in the mainstream.  There was a section about why politics fails…it’s because it’s boring, and people’s lives are filled w/ enough things to have to worry about boring politics.  Politics isn’t supposed to be simply about politics of policy, it’s about the politics of life and how we live.  I was happy to read that, because it helped ground this book that is generally in the air with how things ought to be.

  
  

  There was another section on plagiarism, which interested me.  Most of you don’t know this, but I got in trouble my last semester of college for just such an act.  While 99.9% of people think I should have been expelled (I only failed the course), I felt then, and feel now, that I was unjustly punished.  This book argues that anything that needs to be said, has been said already, and virtually everything we say is borrowed.  What we consider to be original, or our own words, are really ideas from other sources. 

  
  

  In addition…what gives an author complete ownership over intellectual ideas?  If you copied something I wrote, it might be different because of the context.  I’m not making a complete argument in my defense, but it was just interesting to see someone else taking up that argument.  The book itself isn’t copyrighted, and in fact encourages others to reproduce it. 

  
  

  Another section in the book talked about how people go on vacation and photo/video everything.  They were critical of the fact that people don’t live in the now…or some junk like that.  And that’s what i really hate about some forms of idealism (and here I am trying to grow out of my shell), is that they take a simple image, such as people staring through a lens while on vacation, and then they make a grand assumption about the quality of life of that person.  What happens…is the people taking the photos are probably just enjoying themselves, while the person criticizing the people taking the photos, are in a world of mental anguish because they’re concerned about others, while at the same time making a judgement that they know how to live life better.

  
  

  The book goes on to talk about why people volunteer or do politics.  And it was talking from one political person to another, asking bluntly if the real reason they were doing it was because of a sense of moral superiority, or out of some sense of guilt.  It was really getting at the psychological reasons why people do what they do.

  
  

  I think i’ve drained a bit of my life living in a real “Dan Bubble” of how the world should operate, which is ok, but not at the expense of still living in the real world.  At the end of the day, I should be able to come home and be normal w/ my friends and family, regardless of my own changes in philosophy. 

  
  

  Tom. I need to get up early to bus it to the AERO (alternative education resource org.) conference, which is already in progress, but I’ll catch the speakers I want to hear for the weekend.  I received 15 books from cafepress today, fortunately, the back cover was printed wrong, so all my first letters on the left-side of the back cover are chopped off, an annoying inconvenience, but it turns into a financial savings for me

  
  

  -dan

  • 10:37 pm
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