Wednesday, May 26, 2004

So there are only two more full days of being in Budapest until going back to a world which is but a faded memory in me now. And, somehow, I am fearful of what I will say to people and how I will interact with them. Mostly: I am fearful that I will say things about what I feel I've realized here and people will just stare blankly at me and say, "Yup, that's life." And give me no more attention than that, as if I had just learned that two plus two is four. But the things I realize are more significant than that because of all the pain that went into their realization. Indeed, this is a universal condition--everyone goes through such painful realizations--I am no special than any other human being but doesn't that make it all the more important that whenever we see this development that we treat it as something sacred? Isn't any sort of development sacred, no matter how seeminly small and insignificant? Why should we just say, yep that's life, as if "life" is something one studies in a book or takes a course on and everybody learns the same thing? This is another confusion of the general mass of people: that if you find life painful, you should just keep quiet about it because you're not the only one, or if you're going to say something, write a story, or be creative, but until then you must keep silent and earn your right to speak out abot the human condition. To be sure it's wrong to just cry and cry out ("Oh woe is me!") because it does nothing really good, and hence it seems that if you are going to say something then you should do something creative that turns the pain into something communicating the truth of this universal condition. But I don't know. But I do know this: the development happens incrementally and in the "trenches" of the existential battle, but the creative result (e.g. the work of art) is merely the result and comes far short of depicting the real struggle of the existential battle that occurs each day--and I mean each day! This is why it may be wrong to tell someone to keep quiet and don't complain, or else make something good out of it: because the creative act remains mute about the real truth about the existential condition of the human (this is not only a fight for survival, which is primitive and which modern society has rendered impotent, but the fight against an emptiness which puts the individual in grave danger of becoming meaningless, void, out of date). Indeed this may be what modernist art is attempting to overcome: to find the true expression of this latter day battle for existence, but somehow, I find that the real solution has remained from the grasp of modern or even contemporary art. Perhaps the true solution is the community.

Thursday, May 20, 2004

For anyone interested in a summary of my conclusions about my foray into the jungle of Budapest academic life, see my little piece "Community at Tabor" which was published in the Tabor Mathematical Sciences department newsletter recently. There's no talk of mathematics--interesting, but done on purpose.

For anyone interested in what I've been doing in Budapest (other than studying mathematics I don't understand) see my little piece on Georg Lukács, a 20th century Hungarian philosopher. I wrote this little piece as the final project to the history class ("Making of Modern Central Europe") I took here. Lukács (the 'cs' in Hungarian is pronounced like 'ch' in English) is a philosopher who, I think, will affect my thinking for some time to come. I've even been contemplating picking up where he left off (when he joined the Hungarian Communist party in 1918) as far as his trying to develop a synthesis which transcends the fleeting moments of the aesthetic but yet isn't offensive to the "enlightened" mind. Yes, unfortunately, this implies some sort of absolute metaphysics, this is whole problem he was trying to deal with in the first place! Anyway, the thing you can read is just me getting to know the Lukács of pre-1919. After that, he gave up, and never again went back to, his work on the problem of aestheticism.

Tuesday, May 18, 2004

Here's an esoteric moment.

On Sunday I was visiting one of the many museums here in Budapest. This museum is called the House of Terror which is comemorating the victims of Communism in Hungary. The museum is run, however, by the Right wing of the Hungarian political scene. Consequently it is painting a somewhat obscured picture of the facts about Communism in Hungary. My history professor called the museum the "Disney Land of the history of Communism in Hungary." After only a few minutes in the place I came to realize the truth of her statement.

Here is the esoteric moment. At one point in the museum my professor was commenting on one part of the exhibit which was particularly misleading about the numbers of individuals murdered by the various regimes which took power after World War I in Hungry. Commenting about this my professor said "I am a post-structuralist historian, but, come on!, there are some facts."

No one responded to this comment, and she didn't really care. I thought it was the funniest thing I had heard in a good long while.

Monday, May 17, 2004

I'm going to try to be a little less a.r. about what I post here. I.e. try to be a little more open, or random, or free-wheeling or whatever.

Right now there are only like 11 days until I leave Budapest, and I'm really getting to hate the city. Call me a crybaby or whatever but this is how I feel: each morning is just another day I have to get up and go outside and contend with an environment that I don't understand. I feel completely alien in this place. I am not a citydweller. I have no interesting experiences to tell...i am reclusive, I live a life of the mind, which some would say is no life at all. But I will argue against those who say so. But you can argue back and forth forever and where do you get? Each party just has its own interests in the end and will claim to be right no matter what an argument says. So much for dialogue or dialectic or whatever one wants to call it. It's hard to see how there can be any development without a leap of some sort, a leap to finality, to metaphysics or something.

I have to take two math finals yet and I don't care. The first is on Thursday--today is Monday and I have nothing to do really since I got the paper done early for my East European history class, so I should be studying...theoretically. I have emailed so many people about these ideas, so it feels really crazy to be writing them here now--like I'm just rehashing old shit that everybody knows about and I'm just burdening everybody with all the time because I don't have the balls to really stand up to this existential mess that I have got to deal with--this mess that every human being on the planet has got to deal with.

About the paper I wrote. I feel like it's just worthless. Actually it is. I didn't really do anything but just quote a few things and write a few things--boom 1700 words of notes basically, and somehow that get's me a comment from the instructor that I can consider the paper done. (I submitted a rough draft early.)

I want so desparately to write but each time I begin, I feel like I won't really get anywhere with any of it: not "real scholarship", "not serious scholarship", what the hell is that anyway? Does it mean someone sitting at a desk pouring over books and papers and such for hours and hours, perhaps weeks, and months, not knowing where he or she is going with his or her ideas until one day there is a manuscript ready to be sent to some publisher? Is that what it really is? But how does one do all of that? Each time I think about it, I'm afraid I don't have what it takes to really do something like that.

But then perhaps it doesn't matter if I don't.

Well...have I been too personal? I did call this blog "My Brain is Open" afterall.

Thursday, May 06, 2004

My time in Budapest has convinced me even more so of the validity of my ideas about use, understanding, and meaning in language. These ideas are explained in a not incomprehensible way in an essay I wrote for Philosophy of Language (Interterm 2004) at Tabor called "Use, Understanding, and Meaning". There are some points at which this paper needs significant improvement, but as it stands it gives a pretty clear picture of my thoughts on these issues. Perhaps the weak points will receive further attention in the coming months.

Tuesday, May 04, 2004

My first blog (The Social Construction of Truth) while having a definite purpose is a little bit restrictive--too much so for free and open thought. Hence I have created a second blog in which to place thoughts that don't really fall under the subject of "truth" but which I deem worthy of publication.

I can think of a few thoughts that I have had since the creation of my first blog which would certainly have found their way onto this blog had it been in existence. Unfortunately, at the time of the creation of ths blog, I cannot think of any of them--hopefully I will remember some of them, but more than likely not.

So...my brain is open.