I’ve been reading a couple of Plato’s dialogues for my Ancient Political Rhetoric class and it got me thinking that that is a really cool way to do philosophy. Other philosophers have done it as well; Thus Spake Zerathustra is sort of a dialogue of sorts. And I’m sure there are others.

Anyways, I thought it’d be cool to put together a book of dialogues that address more practical philosophical assumptions of our world. Here were some I was thinking I could include, questions that would be worked out through dialogue:

1) Is beauty derived from fragility? (the blog entry I just wrote)

2) What is happiness? (Curt and I had a good dialogue on this before)

3) What would we do if we lived forever?

4) What does it mean to be something?

5) Is it possible to self-induce altered mental states? Do we only have one mental state? (From this blog entry)

6) What is the value of depression? Emo-ness in the face of an absurd world

There are a lot of other stuff too. I was thinking it’d be cool to do these in a casual sense that would be accessible to the everyday reader. I don’t want to be Plato–I could never dream of writing with such depth and genius. I was thinking of it sort of as a “Dialogues from a Suburb”. I think that would be a good title.

I’ve had this idea for a very long time about weeds. “Weeds” is one of the most interesting words in our common language because it is a completely relative term. What is deemed as a “weed” is simply something that is out of place, something deemed by society to not belong. To “weed out” is then to remove these undesired portions. But the thing about the whole concept is that it is almost completely arbitrary; it’s whole frame of reference is within the speaker not the “weed” itself.  And what may be fine in one place, like grass, may be a weed elsewhere, in the garden.

I think it’d be fascinating at some point in my life to write a story/intellectual exploration/historical tract about this concept in human societies. Not just with plants but with people, concepts, places, products. After all, this whole idea of “weeding” is representative of one of the main functions of humans.

Just thought I’d note that.

I was laying in bed after a fantastic nap this afternoon trying to think of ideas for pieces that could provide me the opportunity to go out and do research and the chance to create more charged and helpful pieces. Also, I was thinking I wanted to be a little more humble about all of this and really get down on my hands and knees, so-to-speak, and see if I could come up with something good.

Then these two ideas occurred to me.

1) A piece on the history of Rock Hill. I”ve lived there my whole life and hardly given the place two seconds of my time. I’ve always thought little of it and never particularly wanted to stick around. But now I’m started to get a peculiar sense of space, an understanding of how the place of one’s childhood influences and shapes ones existence. Before I have scorned this aspect, discarding Rock Hill, SC as a pitiful little suburb of the equally disdainful and dirty city of Charlotte.  Now I think it is time to humble myself a little. I think it’d be fun and interesting to see if I could dig up some history of that rapidly growing city and perhaps even do some quality research and interviews while I am at it.  Then if I do it well I can see if I can contact The Herald or Rock Hill Magazine (yes, there is one) to get them to publish a version of the piece, catered to whatever needs and interests they may have.  Now, I actually wouldn’t be surprised if people have written articles about this but I might be able to get some good material and it’d be some good practice.

If anyone has any info or suggestions about this project I’d like to know. Anyone good to interview, books or places to go for info, or the like, I’d appreciate the tip.  I might not start this project right away but rather do some planning first.  This could be my first good quality research piece and I look forward to digging around and seeing what I’ll find. It will also mean a few trips up to rock hill for this purpose, and I’m sure my family would appreciate it.

2) I was also thinking that it’d be cool to do something similar with Columbia, but have this one be more motivated by a sense of place and history. I already want to do an experiment piece where I walk every where I go for a week to see where that takes me. I’ll have to do that during the school year though. For now, however, I’d like to try to do something that requires research, something about the status of Columbia, SC in the expanse of its history. What is Columbia today in relation to its history? Columbia does not really hide its history but it is growing rapidly beyond the place it was before, becoming much more of a modern intermixed city.  It could be interesting to do some historical work here as well.  We’ll see what I can put together then I’ll see if I can get it put out anywhere–there are quite a few magazines and newspapers around here, and USC’s many magazines also appreciate this kind of stuff.

So yeah, we’ll see where these two ideas take me.  Both I think could be fantastic for getting out there and doing research and interviews and whatnot.  Two pieces like that could be really good for expanding my portfolio.

When I came to college I was full of excitement for life and an eagerness to learn. I honestly thought that I knew a lot about life and would be able to contribute a lot to the world, even back then.  I spent an enormous amount of time thinking about everything I encountered, coming to all sorts of conclusions that I thought were new and exciting. But then reality started in.  Over the next few years the same thing kept happening: every cool idea I thought I had “come up with” was already “like so and so” and “oh, that sounds like X.”   

Quickly I developed the impression that everything I would ever think had already been thought.

This happened again today. I was going through some blogs and I came across an excellent entry on Lateral Action on “The Rise of the Creative Economy.” I plan on writing an entry on this still, but I found it somewhat frustrating.  I was really hoping that idea wasn’t already taken. Silly me.  Of course people have noticed that trend.  

Honestly, being young in this world sucks sometimes. In the eagerness of youth your mind races through ideas a hundred miles a second…only to find that most of them aren’t original at all. After all, how does a 21 year old know enough about the world to know what is new and what isn’t? And when you finally know what is out there you run the risk of being locked into the ideas you were trying to usurp.  Forget the phrase “youth is wasted on the young.”  Youth is wasted on the ignorant is by far more accurate. 

But it goes beyond this. In a world full of billions of people how does one voice hope to make a difference? In the same way that currency dilutes with the increase of availability, so do opinions and ideas.   From the view of a young twenty-something is seems incredibly intimidating to embark on a blogging enterprise that attempts to catelog the world’s problems when I know so very little in comparison to the wealth of knowledge that is out there. What is my two cents to the trillions of dollars being tossed around?

Yet at the same time it is a relatively well-known trait of the business world that it is the twenty-somethings who possess the open minds to come in an reshape things in exciting new ways.  Might ideas and opinions work the same way? After all, despite the numerous “oh that sounds like X” I think I do have potential to contribute new and exciting ideas. The problem is, there is so much to learn about what is already out there to know where I can actually contribute. This is part of the reason that specialization is such a big deal today, particularly in academia.  Trying to do something like what we’re doing here, well that’s just ludicrous. 

Maybe. Or maybe that’s why it will work. Regardless, I will repeat the same thing I’ve been saying my whole life: man, I’ve got a lot to learn. Perhaps with time and a lot of hard work my two cents will finally be worth something.