This ain't so bad at all!

Sorry I haven't posted anything in the past week or whatever (if it even matters). But I've found some really great stuff while glued to my laptop in the endless pursuit of knowing more things than I knew yesterday and then writing about them for money.

1. I wrote a long piece based on all the Turgenev/Nihilism/Postmodernism stuff I rambled about not too long ago. Because of that research I discovered that I was right about many aspects of "postmodernism" (ie; it's not really a coherent thing at all), but also that I was a bit closed-minded about it and there are some writers whose stuff I really appreciate. One of them is Richard Rorty. When I first was exposed to some of his ideas I thought they were reprehensible. Of course, when I read the interviews with him gathered in Take Care of Freedom and Truth Will Take Care of Itself, I realized I agreed with an incredible amount of pragmatist and antifoundationalist thought. It also germinated a drive to recast elements of nihlism in a more positive light (though that's a really long-term project, I guess). You can get a good idea of where my brain might be after reading the essay through which I was exposed to Rorty's ideas. Now I don't necessarily agree with everything in the essay, but I don't think I have to agree with anything. Necessarily.

2. Tonight I finished an article on string theory and cosmology that was exhausting to research. Fortunately I found a great guide to help me out and give me some focus. A couple months ago I waddled my way through Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe and enjoyed it despite not really understanding a whole lot of what was going on. Thankfully, PBS made a three part documentary based on the book that makes a fantastic companion! The whole thing is streamed here in segments which make it way more manageable to watch. It also makes it a hell of a lot easier to watch a part again if you didn't understand it the first time. I had to do that a few times.

3. After this week I'll hopefully be able to return to posting a bit more regularly. I just have a bunch of material to submit in a short time. Since I have no idea when the site I'm writing for is going to be up and running, I may post more excerpts and links to keep any readers updated on things. Also, if any of you haven't yet, go check out some of my friends' blogs. A few of them (here, here & here) have been contributing material to the same website and I think the product will be incredibly interesting (I'll keep everyone updated when it finally goes online).

The Shape of Nihilism to Come

"The favourite formula was to declare that 'spiritual' - for the naive primordial opposition of spirit and matter was still accepted in those days - had not kept with 'material' advance. This was usually said with an air of moral superiority to the world at large. Mostly there was a vague implication that if these other people would only refrain from using modern inventions so briskly, or go to church more, or marry earlier and artlessly, or read a more 'spiritual' type of literature, or refrain from mixed bathing, or work harder and accept lower wages, or be more respectful and obedient to constituted authority, all might yet be well."

- H.G. Wells, The Shape of Things to Come

This week at work I picked up H.G. Wells' The Shape of Things to Come as I put down David Ramsay Steele's Atheism Explained. The latter of these is actually a fantastic read for anyone who is interested in the philosophical underpinnings of atheism and doesn't wanted to be ranted at by Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens. Arguments and (a)theological currents I hadn't been privy to or thought of filled this book to the point where I had to put it down. Essentially it got boring because, let's face it, there are no plausible or logical arguments for God and once you've read nearly 200 pages of debunking various arguments, things start to repeat and get a bit stale. Wonderful effort, though, and provides great answers to folks who get badgered by religious people about why they don't believe.


As for Mr. Wells, he was a genius and a prophetic bastard to be sure. I think I had mentioned in a recent post my ongoing struggles to understand and get a grasp on postmodernism and the postmodern condition. I had finished Terry Eagleton's The Illusions of Postmodernism, a critical yet even-handed examination of the "phenomenon" currently en vogue, at the same time I completed Turgenev's Fathers & Sons. At some point in my mind nihilism and postmodernism entwined and I've been gasping for air ever since. I bring up Wells, and the quote above in particular, because he was a good thirty-odd years ahead of the curve with some of the descriptions of what has come to define our contemporary modernity.


Right now I'm working out some of the interconnections I'm finding between the nihilism found in postmodernism, the supposed nihilism that follows the death of God (i.e.; the Nietzchean conception), and Turgenev's conception as portrayed in Fathers & Sons. Of course, this is material that would probably fill some huge volume, so I'm not even going to attempt it here, but I'm excited about the possibilities that Wells has set up in his own "history of the future" and how it might interact with what's in my head already. That's something I'll post on when I get there.

Rootless Rooted To This Router

I'm currently sitting in my room listening to self-selectable internet radio, reading a fantastic discussion on humanity and placelessness, and ruminating on critiques of postmodernism that I've been reading at work. In the past seven years I've lived in nine different apartments and I'll be moving again at the end of March (most likely and hopefully), hardly ever getting the chance to settle in before having to up and out all over again. Regardless of where I live, though it seems, I can tune in to knowledge and information distributed across vast times and spaces. At any time I can (and often choose to) disconnect from my surroundings and envelop myself in a world that I seemingly make for myself. Of course I'm not going to get into the real pros and cons of such a situation.
But what I really wonder at this moment is how I'm not supposed to feel separate and disoriented, without narrative and only the most tenuous grip on what could be considered "true" or "real." As much as these attributes seem to define the postmodern condition I can hardly help but heap barrels of disdain upon what amounts to little more than intellectual criminality and cultural hogwash.
None of us should really be posting inane diary entries for anyone around the world to read, but after spending most of our lives (at least those of us under 30 or so) being dictated to by every conceivable form of media, we'd love for somebody to listen to us for just a minute, please! If everyone else's bullshit opinion is valid and credible, surely my "educated" opinion is worthwhile, too, right?
Well, probably not generally speaking. But until we have the intellectual courage to move and think beyond tired, lazy, paralyzing postmodern theoretical drivel I'm afraid we as a technologically-connected segment of our species are confined to remain captives of this spectacle. In the meantime I've been trying to muddle my way through critiques of this state and try to make sense of a diffuse body of purposefully obfuscating, jargonistic theory that will probably only be really understood when we're dead.
So far I've found these two books really enlightening and helpful:

Christopher Butler - A Very Short Introduction to Postmodernism
Terry Eagleton - The Illusions of Postmodernism

Both explain the pros, cons, ambivalences and context of all this mental buggery. If you can relate to anything I just wrote and need help clearing your mind, I think these books are a great place to start.