Someplace Like America

     It's hard to suppress the upwelling of emotion that rises in my throat, like bile, as I read through the introduction to Dale Maharidge's Someplace Like America. Foremost among those emotions is a burning anger, a hatred, towards the utopian lie of the American dream that I'd been expertly peddled throughout my youth. Even then, as a young child, I was rebellious against the ideologies laid in place by my forefathers. I grew up the only atheist in a family generation that included more than thirty children. In my adolescence I became an avowed democratic socialist. This was another first in a fairly affluent family of capitalists. Today, as I watch the rising tides of despair swell all around me, even in this short reading, I am more than reaffirmed in the decisions that I've made. The flames of capitalism must be extinguished.

      In the two decades I've been alive, I've seen the supreme court declare corporations as personages, and grant them rights to unlimited political contributions. This alone makes me markedly ashamed of my country and it's political institutions. I've seen the introduction of the Patriot act, which was merely the first wisps of snow before the damning avalanche of revocation of personal rights, known as the war on terror. I've seen a young populist president with the momentum of a nation behind him fail utterly, either by choice, or fear, to modify the structures of power that brought the American economy to the precipice of disaster. I've watched the bailout of bankers, investors and hedge fund managers, as families lose their home, their jobs and their futures. I've seen the numbers on the record breaking bonus checks of executives. I've seen the writing on the wall.

     Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.

     It's past time for realizations and epiphanies. How far must the teeming masses be pushed backwards into a corner of despair and poverty until we speak up in revolt​? Not in violence, but in peaceful unity against the policies smothering our opportunities. We must wage war, not physical war, but war against the failed ideologies of oppression and striation. Every man, woman and child in this country deserves the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, as we were promised as children. Instead this country has become a privileged dream for the few and a nightmare for the many.

America stands as the final first-world country to institute a policy of socialized healthcare, stands as the last bastion of a deep wrought greed so powerful that even the medical needs of our fellow human beings do not serve as reason enough to separate grubby fingers from coin. This alone proves as a profound exercise of political cartography and a dangerous precedent to leave as acceptable behavior. If we cannot even stand up to save our own blood, skin, muscle and bone; then the future we leave for our children is grim and dark indeed.

     What liberty and democracy we have left as a nation is slipping quickly from our grasp. Here, and now must be the high water mark. We must turn this tide back before we all drown miserably in a tangled mess of flesh and broken pride.

On the History of Science

     On The History of Science is an interview with director of The Max Planck Institute for the history of science, Lorraine Daston, conducted by David Cayley. It's subject is the framing of the philosophy and history of science. It brings under scrutiny even our modern views of what science is, what science means, and the role of science in the twenty first century and into the future. As a student of physics and science, as well as a lover of history and philosophy, this is a subject near and dear.

     The primary subject of the interview is the book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn. One of his central arguments is that the manner in which the general population and even scientists of the modern and pre-modern eras have placed science into their worldviews and intellectual frameworks. Kuhn declares the essential problem is the lack of both understanding and examination of the axiomatic philosophies of science and the form of scientific progression. He surmises that a fundamental disconnect exists in the behavior of near religious abstraction by some prolific theorists. He argues that this attitude has seen memetic transfer to humanity and our social constructs at large. Examining the tendency for famous and influential scientists to be taken as a kind of seer or prophet provides a foundation for agreeing.

     The interview's second narrative and an argument I find more effective as it has become quite attachable to and enforced as a lesson of my personal experiences; is that the study of the history and philosophy of science has become far too concerned with names and theory rather than experiment itself. Encompassing the modern tendency within physics culture to garner more attention upon elegant mathematical systems, such as string theory, rather than fully appreciating the basis of empiricism itself. While there are certainly valid reasons to appreciate the deep symmetries and invariance within the art that is theoretical mathematics, experiment and applied mathematics are far more fundamental and crucial to the relevance and importance of science to mankind.

     Especially in modern time where humanity is presented with a practical tsunami of novel devices and information, all owing their origin to the practice science, it has become noticeable that a mistrust of science has slipped in and taken root in the public consciousness. Daston argues that this unfortunate phenomena has resulted from two primary reasons. The first being that scientific inquiry fundamentally clashes with the vestiges and remnants of archaic theological thought that is still firmly entrenched into the shared consciousness of our society. The second is her argument against the Kuhnian theory of periodic scientific revolutions. It is rather, she argues just a continued series of modifications on the older frameworks of thought.

     While it is undoubted that much of humanity, maybe even a majority, hold tightly to archaic modes of thought out of fear, desire or imagination, it is clear to me, at least in knowledge of myself and those I have known that at least some minds have been permanently and thoroughly disconnected from the erroneous perceptions inherited from our fore-bearers of thought. While history itself has many lessons to teach and it is still necessary to understand the ethical, emotional and pathological mentalities of those that came before us we are privileged to a panoramic view of our existence that allows the modern thinker to escape the bondage of thought that preceded the previous three centuries.

Poltical Compass Results

Five Questions

Five Questions:
1. Where are you from?
A:I'm from Lexington' Kentucky but I'd like to answer the question in a more abstract manner. To be fully encompassing of of the thought I'm trying to emote I'd like to say I'm a fundamental manifestation of existence itself, an expression of the universe comprehending itself.

2.What is your experience with writing?
A: My primary experience has been recreation. Though I have been gearing up for more scholarly objectives.

3. What do you believe in?
A:Before anything else, I'm primarily a physicist and a scientist. In modern terms you could describe me as an atheist and a skeptic, to the point of asceticism.

4.What kind of pop culture do you consume:
A: I don't watch television or listen to much popular music but I do enjoy popular internet culture.

5.Why are you in college?
A: From an early age you could say I'd like to know the mind of god (Interpret this in a pantheist way, in the manner of Spinoza, not the biblical god) and I've found that I can best accomplish this through mathematics and science.

ἀγωνία

I start to think my own thoughts of the situation in which I find myself. I even think that I think of it, and divide myself into an infinite regressive sequence of "I's" who consider each other. I do not know at which "I" to stop as the actual, and in the moment I stop at one, there is indeed and "I" which stops at it. I become confused and feel a dizziness as if I were looking down into a bottomless abyss.