Becoming Your Own Hobby (word vomit)

Is it just me, or are people becoming their own hobby? By that I mean, is personal maintenance, reconfiguring, and re-branding ourselves (losing weight, getting smarter, new clothes, etc.) a more prevalent part of our lives due to convenient tools for marketing and selling ourselves via social media, and is it becoming a hobby?

I can't be the only person who spends their free time constantly working on me. I'm sure there are others who are future-oriented.

Does the amount of time one spends contemplating the future and acting on those thoughts have a direct-causal relationship with feelings of obligations to conform to norms? Or is it the other way around? Does one's feelings towards social norms cause them to react, and taking steps to conform a common reaction in our society?

Are norms stronger when one is an active member of social media? Does the public eye affect our attitudes and behavior? Do members of society that are not active on social media sites care less about what others think?

I wonder if social media reaffirms the social boundaries of society? If it does, negative boundaries (redundant?) are strengthened, but perhaps only if deviants are scolded. I think this is what Foucault would say. But perhaps social media also offers a space of resistance, a space to speak publicly against the status quo. I think that social media reaffirms social boundaries & offers a space to resist them or challenge them publicly. But I think those that are contested are those that are generally acknowledged by the public as not being controversial, and issues that appear normal go uncontested. By not contesting certain norms, social media reaffirms aspects of society that might be problematic but not controversial. For example, we see no tolerance for blatant racism, and those who are are scolded (at least in my experience). But issues like going to college or having a career aren't contested as problematic norms. Social media reminds us that those with an education are in someways better, and presumably reminds those who aren't graduates of some university that they are breaking the social boundaries, and are at risk of being scolded. In a way Foucault's idea that punishment is no longer public is in a way antiquated.

I need to get a job...

A Comment About Philosophy

Perhaps this is just a correlation, but I'm starting to think that a person's philosophical -- economic, political, social, and spiritual beliefs are not founded on objective reasoning, but on a desire to justify their actions.

1. Branding the Constitution with Capitalism and Minarchism.

Libertarians and Republicans argue that the constitution and minarchism are directly connected. However, I think that they have made a misassociation and as a result have fabricated a mainstream misunderstanding of what the constitution states. The constitution claims that democracy should be defended, not minarchism and more bluntly neoliberalism.
Their incessant use of the words 'socialism' and 'unconstitutional' are successful because they have associated the constitution with capitalism, minarchism, and neoliberalism. However, for the sake of argument, based on the constitution, the country could become a communist state through democracy, or any political system. It is valid to point out that democracy and capitalism are not defended by the constitution, and that only democracy is.

To be continued...

The Middle East

Damn, I know this is a so-what point, but there is so much conflict in the middle east.
What will the future look like? And what does it mean for the rest of the world?
Will the middle east become more democratic? Will the Baath party spread across the region? Will factions break apart from current states and form new ones?
I don't even know how to end this post. It doesn't help that I know very little about the region and it's history.
Will the internet be a tool for change in the region?

Macro Economic Forces

I'm not saying anything profound, but I just realized that the economic policies of a country's prime political figure will affect the global market. That's not worded very well, but I wanted to at least get my thoughts down. Any thoughts?

The Youth and Ron Paul: Holding on to The American Dream.

I'm going to write this later.

Have you heard about Jurgen Habermas' Emancipatory Knowledge?

I just read Habermas's Exerpt Emancipatory Knowledge from Knowledge and Human Interests. I think Habermas was saying that although science attempts to be methodologically objective, our use of scientific knowledge is not methodologically objective. As a result our application of scientific knowledge always serves our human interests. Pretty dope.

I think one of the most obvious and contemporary examples would be the multinational agricultural biotechnology corporation Monsanto Company. Whose genetically modified seeds are the result of scientific knowledge, and whose patent serves their individual and collective interests.

While their application of scientific knowledge is not only subjective but self-interested, it is only capable of being successful because of the political, economic, and social systems that exist. Commence pondering.

Social Engineers

I anticipate that when we get to the future we'll attempt to understand how the future was shaped. I also assume that we will look back and attribute many of the changes to the liberal social engineers. Liberal social engineers are individuals attempting to change political and economic institutions but are primarily concerned with changing social norms. Liberal social engineers in the most superficial analysis attempt to take power away from those who have had it for so long and disperse it amongst the many marginalized groups of society. While they attempt to shape the present, they will ultimately be responsible for the future. Also, social engineers do not label themselves 'social engineers' but I presume we might one day label them as the engineers of our culture.

Here's one example of the work of liberal social engineers:



By changing the way people act, we can affect future generations' socially learnt dispositions.

The Rolling Temple

My interview with Thyoung, AKA Richie

MyInterviewWithRichie by ellistheisland



I live in a town in the San Francisco, Bay Area. Mostly populated by an Asian population. One day as I was driving I noticed an RV that was advertising free books. Awesome I thought, and then I realized that they were about buddhism. I sighed, and thought too bad they aren't political, radical text, and how awesome it would be if they were. Then about a week later I was driving around town bored out of my mind contemplating the idea of making a documentary about my hometown. I turned a corner and saw the same RV parked on the side of the road. Bored out of my mind, I decided to pull over and take a closer look. The RV was old, probably at least 15 years old, probably older, and the signs on the RV looked tattered. I stood there staring at the books that were in Vietnamese and Chinese, thinking about striking up a conversation with the monk that had just stepped out of the RV. He came out to pick up CDs that had been blown off the shelves by the strong winds. I bent over to help, then handed the pile to him and was thanked. I decided to ask some dumb question like “is this your RV?” We started talking and I asked if I could come by the next day to interview him. He agreed without hesitating, and I was so excited I went home and thought about the interview. I tried to come up with questions, but I couldn't come up with a list of questions that would give me a decent story. So I forced as many decent questions out of me as I could and the next morning headed over to the RV to meet Richie whose Vietnamese name was Thyoung.





Before I went home the night before, I wrote down some questions for Richie because he asked me to since his English wasn't that good. I wrote down about 9 questions, handed them to him and left. When I arrived the next day he invited me into his RV which can be described as a mix between a library and a temple. He had tons of books stacked all around the RV, and posters and statues of Buddah. He asked me to sit and then gave me a stool. He then pulled out the list of questions and his answers that he wrote in red ink. He started the interview by addressing the last question on the list: 'what message do you want to give people?' He asked me why people are sent to jail, and I immediately thought about giving him some question related to maintaining an obedient society that is forced into a capitalist system. But I was fortunate enough to be slow on my feet and he was able to proceed without my annoying answer.

He went on to tell me that earth is like a prison and we are here because we are sinners. And he went on to tell me more but I couldn't really understand what he was saying. I felt like he wasn't making any sense. I tried my best to clarify what he was saying but it was useless. And I concluded that the general message was in order to get out of earth we would need to live a life without sin.

After about twenty minutes I started asking Richie the questions I had come up with the night before. Richie was born in Vietnam to wealthy parents who owned a wood company. He didn't go into much detail, but made it clear that life as a child was good. He then came to the United States in 1979 when he was 19. He arrived in San Diego and attended Mesa College where he got his AS degree. Then in 1984 he attended San Diego State University and pursued a degree in electrical engineering. He told me dropped out because he didn't have enough money for school. After dropping out of school he moved to San Jose in 1987 to work for Memorex in order to make a lot of money. After a few years of working in San Jose, Richie began gambling in order to get rich quick. He quit his job and became a full time gambler. He told me he would spend all his time at big casinos playing games like Texas hold 'em. During this time in his life he quit his job and started living in what is now the rolling temple. As a full time gambler, Richie would sometimes win it big and sometimes lose it all. When he was down on his luck, Richie would have to find work and regularly made money in illegal ways. He mentioned he also frequented brothels. But it all changed one day when he was playing a card game in a casino. He said the card that he was holding changed into another card and he realized someone was sending him a message. It was in 2001 that Richie visited a temple and a year later and became a monk and started the rolling temple.

I asked Richie questions like 'do you ever get lonely?' 'do you ever get bored?' and he would give me the same answer that went something like 'no I don't get lonely or bored, I spend my time meditating.'
I ended the interview asking Richie if there was anything he wanted to say that we hadn't covered and this is what he had to say: “A religion is come to practice not just come to pray, like you rely on someone, a religion is supposed to teach people to, like you work you make money with your own hand. Religion is the same, you don't teach people to rely on others, just like you want to cross the river, you need to learn how to swim, you can't wait for people to take you. A religion has to teach people how to swim, then you know how to swim, then you swim. Don't rely on others.”
I showed assent, took some pictures, and thanked him for his time.

Richie told me he would be there for a week, and I said OK. I guess the story that I have is the story of how a man came to buddhism. The strange sight of a monk in an RV in the middle of a suburban environment is mind-boggling since I imagine monks to be at a temple or at a monastery. The rolling temple is like a Wikipedia on wheels. Move over food trucks, philosophy on wheels is the next big thing.