User:Across.The.Synapse
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This user is a citizen of the United States of America. |
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Today is April 1, 2007. |
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This user's time zone is UTC-5. |
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This user lives in or is from Connecticut. |
Across.The.Synapse (talk)
[edit] Intro
Hello. My name's Matthew. I am a college dropout of Miami University of Oxford, Ohio; I studied Philosophy and English Literature there. My low g.p.a and the fact that my transfer credits didn't apply to most of Miami's classes prevented me from graduating. After 2 or 3 nights spent homeless in Oxford, I realized I would go insane if I went on like that for much longer; I have been living with my dad ever since, with plans to start looking for a place of my own as soon as I accrue enough money. The facts of my life are myriad, but ultimately unnecessary to relate to you (my favorite work of fiction literature is To The Lighthouse, my favorite work of non-fiction literature is Soul On Ice, my favorite album of popular music is The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan...) The most essential thing to relate is that I am a failure in almost all the spheres of my life. The one thing I wish to accomplish is to understand things. One of my current projects is to read every western philosophy work ever written in chronological order. Currently, my project is to read two biographies of Socrates before moving on to Plato: at the moment I'm reading through W.K.C. Guthrie's "Socrates", before tackling Vlastos' "Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher."
[edit] Picture of the Day
| Picture of the day | |
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A statue of Louis Agassiz, a Swiss-American geologist, after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, on the campus of Stanford University. It is said that when the earthquake struck, "[the statue of] Agassiz stuck his head underground to find out what was going on in the earth below and with his finger pointing saying, 'Hark! Listen!'" Photo credit: USGS |
[edit] Quotes
| As they [bathers] step into the same rivers, other and still other waters flow upon them. —Heraclitus |
| The way which can be uttered, is not the eternal Way.
The name which can be named, is not the eternal Name. |
| We cannot maintain the complacent positive belief that only the law of the State is law properly so-called... We know that the law can be used as an instrument of policy... We have heard of, we may have met, the victims of laws that are oppressive, brutal and degrading. We believe that... Human Rights may stand above positive law. —A.H. Campbell |
| I could bring counter-accusations, but I will not. I would rather seek acquittal through my virtues than your vices. —Gorgias, Defense of Palamedes |
| The finest possible expression of gratitude to a teacher is to go beyond him in just the way that Plato did. —Julius Stenzel |
| Born to a premature death, a menial, subsistence-wage worker, odd-job man, the cleaner, the caught, the man under hatches, without bail--that's me, the colonial victim. Anyone who can pass the civil service examination today can kill me tomorrow -- with complete immunity. —George Jackson |
| "That incomprehensible power, that immediate influence of the Deity which we call the vital principle, pervades all nature. We everywhere behold phenomena and effects which evidently announce its presence, though under an infinite variety of modifications and forms; and the existence of life is proclaimed by the whole universe around us. Life is that by which plants vegetate, by which animals feel and are actuated; but in the highest degree of perfection, sensation, and form, it appears in man, the supreme link of the visible creation. If we survey the whole chain of being, we shall nowhere find so complete a combination of almost all the vivifying powers of nature; nowhere so much vital energy, united with so long duration, as here. It needs excite no surprise, therefore, that the most perfect possessor of this benefit should value it so highly; and that the bare idea of living and existing should be attended with so much pleasure. —Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland |
| "When we look deeply into the patterns of an apple blossom, a seashell or a swinging pendulum... we discover a perfection, an incredible order, that awakens in us a sense of awe that we knew as children." —Gyorgy Doczi |
| "The proletarians of the world have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE" —Karl Marx |
| "I would like to see every single soldier on every single side, just take off your helmet, unbuckle your kit, lay down your rifle, and set down at the side of some shady lane, and say, nope, I ain't a gonna kill nobody. Plenty of rich folks wants to fight. Give them the guns." —Woody Guthrie |
| "If I write a cliché our language suffers. If what I write doesn't flash a spark into the nerves of the brain, then what is the use? What is the use of writing at all unless your writing can bring people to desire, or feel deeply, or see anew, or inspire creativity or reach out in solidarity? There is no use. If my writing is useless or cliché then tear it down. But show me!
Even now, you, reading these words, "hypocrite lecteur, -- mon semblable, -- mon frere!" - why are you not creating yourself, writing your self, making a narrative out of your self, or if you can't make a narrative, why then aren't you creating a view of the world you perceive and love, a view that will help us see and know more completely? Why not? What of your own rage and desire at this moment? Why aren't you searching through Percy Shelley and Emma Goldman for new inspiration to live a life where you can experience the sunlight coming through the window in all of its burning beauty and dirty ugliness? Or perhaps this is also failure, our search, our longing, as well as our writing. Because we must fail always, even as we succeed, when our success is not with others. Even our talk of beauty must fail when it implies ignorance of so much suffering. Only when we are all creator/spectators of the democracy of genius that is in each of us, only when we are making it possible for all individuals of our species to experience the world to its fullest, only then will we become the creative human beings that each of us should become, must become, to fulfill the genius which is the specificity of each individual. When we can all have a chance to work together, write poetry, make movies together, theorize for others and for ourselves then we will know our desires, and truly begin to make a human world. So this is your utopian note, hypocrite reader. I know I will not always live up to my hopes. I know that these are only notes for something better -- the longing to read and to be read, to experience and understand -- but I welcome all readers, all questions, all comments, all criticism, all help."'' |
| "What man is a man who does not make the world better?" —from Kingdom of Heaven |
| "A friend is one before whom I may think aloud." —Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| "He cannot kick with his left foot, he cannot head a ball, he cannot tackle and he doesn't score many goals. Apart from that he's all right." (on David Beckham) (2000). —George Best |
