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just because "if 50% of people with x have y", then it doesn't implied that if you are one of the 50% with x, then you are 50% more likely to have y..........just seems too much of a superficial understanding of statistics.

Thinker's/s' blog

im desperate for inspiration, yet everywhere i search i end up in a helpless struggle in the forces fighting against me.

My months of lethargy and stunted creativity are finally reaching the point whereby my mind seems empty…. empty to comment, to think. My inability for critical thought and discerning interpretation of texts has waned to the point of “brain deadedness”, almost as though it has lead to an undeviating apathy, or to be more analytical, a lack of confidence due to use of mental energies in other corners of life. With the lack of confidence, there comes an unconscious denial to be interested in anything, for fear of there being some kind of interest but still lacking thought.

So to attempt to regain an enthusiasm, a need to start writing, I search for the something that can provoke that oh so needed reaction.

I realise, that this something cannot be found in the library, nor on the internet.
The common link between the two being that they are both such a mass of potentially provoking possibilities, which are practically pre-ordained to implicate us with creativity, and this is where it’s downfall lies.

It is the universal, or the general, and in order to get to a particular idea that you need, you to have more than just some idea of what that particular is which you are searching for.

You need to have a “searching for”! Yet any attempt to find this “searching for” in the library, or on the internet, is pretty much a path to no where.

So where is it that we search, or seek to find the conditions for the possibility of this particular?
It must be something directed, self selecting yet something spontaneously fallen upon. It cant be “looked for”, you cannot do a search in google for “my interest”. An example, I have discovered Something quite interesting and unexpected in relation to what has provoked me to write, and think, and to get unreasonably angry about (so much so that I am obliged, for my own sanity, to write it down). One of the many activities that I took part in, and yes “taking part in” is the most appropriate word, when at home (not at uni), was watching tv.
Im talking about documentaries, factual programmes, the news, and this is part of being involved in society. With a critical eye, you can pick up awkward terms or phrase used, you asses how the hierarchy in society is embedded in certain programmes, and you can reflect on how other programmes lead to learning, along with all their propaganda.
This is why I used the words “taking part” above. It is about participating in the reality that is inevitable. No matter how much Freud or Marx I read, I am just not in a position to critique such texts. They are historical, I am out of their context, and despite that, what am I going to do? Prove them wrong!!??
My need for writing, MOSTLY not necessarily, comes from that single reality that if I try to escape from, then my position in it will be that of the passive, academic student with my face in books only in order to get to the last page in time for the lecture. This is a solemn state of affairs, and one which seems to pertain to myself at this moment and is causing me this anxiety. Just by Watching a group of peoples’ body language in a café I am more likely have a creative idea which I would own. It is not an analysis on whether Nietzsche was an ant-semite, or if levinas was a misogynist, it is pure, subjective, fleeting moments of reflection.
To be embedded in the culture, actively embedded, not passively consuming it, is how I manage to ward off the lack of stimulation that comes from remaining in the monotonous and isolated world that is academia.

Of course this is not necessarily the case, but the pressure of having to read a certain amount of text, and to have write as many notes as possible in a lecture, leaves no space for reflection. It seems that implied in the word academia which has come to be thought of as “cultural accumulation of knowledge”, is just that, an accumluation, an over accumlation stunting the channals of creativite thought by its mass of facts and emphasise on memoriesing.

adorno

in a passage from Adorno's Minima Morlia, he carefully scrutinises an apsect of life, which he associates with that of "Fascist maltreatment". the aspect he is concerned with is about how our interaction with our environment is dealt with.
technology, according to adorno, has warped our previous physical actions, such as quietly closing a door, into a maniacal slam.
our relation with the objects and tools around us seem to have lost their aesthetic quality, and are now functional objects whereby the way we have contact with them is only on the perogotive that a desired operation shall place. adorno's view is that the priviliged role played by such consumer items, is that of performance.

this seems problematic, i would agree that there is perhaps a mechanical nature (oxymoron???)to our actions in relation certain functional objects, eg a microwave, but maybe this is because it is a funtional tool and thus we act towards it in that way, limiting the possibility of reification.

it is the fact of reification, so imbued in society and culture, that people to treat objects as though they were the most precious of humans. yet our reification of objects seems to be directed to those which do not necessarily serve most useful, and those that do, are taken for granted.

could reification be a useful component of society, for example, in relation to the natural environment. reification in a non-metaphysical sense, or not?
if we lived with a reified, dare I say, polythiestic weltanshuuang, then our need for care and preservation would indeed be greater, well perhaps!
yet of course, it is indeed a riduculous and fruitless effort speculating about what might have been, we shall focus on what has been, and what possibilties are in front of us.....