Now, So many years later... I am hardly the same person, so should I use the same blog-site?

The continuity of one persons life is interesting. My daily habits are starkly different, as are my thoughts. If it is true that every cell in our body is changed out every seven years than I am a short four months away from being a completely new man. That word "Man", for example, is one that I was very reticent to use while describing myself at the outset of my blogging adventures. I had started blogging, not because I had anything to say, but at the insistence of my father, and while I have never possessed abundantly the virtues of filial piety I have at least always had much respect and love for my parents. Writing a bit was the least I could do to make him happy.

"I"... "always"... the conventions of language are absurd - there is no doubt about that.

In all absurdity, while daily becoming a new person, having embraced the flux and impermanence of life, I can not deny the continuity of my existence as a distinct being.

Now, at 32 I am undeniably shaped by the past in the same way that the present bares down and molds me.

I am alone that great crevasse
between what I am
and what I am to be. 

To weak and cowardly to hazard its abyssal deep 

I am what I am 

and what I am to be
I leave in the hands of god. 

This poem was written by my father. As much as I am myself I am the result of the union between a man and a woman. I am the result of billions of years of evolution, and thousands of years of thought. While I can't say that I am proud of everything that I have done in my life; I can say that I have lived well.

I truly believe that I 'should' not have been born. My life is the culmination of 'irresponsible actions' that were somewhat at odds to my ethics. Having fully condemned my own life, while embracing the facts of life as I understand them, I go beyond the weak minded relativistic moral stance of hypocrites.
Philosophy as therapy is much more honest than philosophy as a guide to life, and much more useful than philosophy as a grounds for righteous indignation.

To live in paradox fully is to acknowledge the limitations of reason without eschewing it's validity.

The vapors mingle whirl and tumble
wisp to shapes of infinite aspect
yet have no form nor  beauty
till those who pause look up 

to find that good and evil are parallax
for truth is always good
and evil what we make of it.

Bud Clough                                                                                                               

I guess I'll take a moment here to say that I'm not particularly religious, unless you use the term in the way that William James used it. Some may say that his usage is denoted by what many now term "spiritual", but I think that would be naive at best.

Lately my dad talks about "god" as serving the function of X in algebraic equations. Drawing an analogy that religious practice is something like an algorithm seems apt.




































I have been told that Einstein once said that one could look at life as if there are no miracles, or that everything is a miracle. It's irrelevant who said it, but that pretty much sums up my attitude on the subject. Certainly there are no authorities which can be fully trusted in any domain of life. Yet, healthy skepticism is - in my experience - less common than the blatantly inexplicable.

When I showed the following picture to a friend of mine she told me a beautiful story of her learning to be a more accepting person. As another apparently wise person must have said, "Righteous indignation is the favored refuge of a hypocrite." This, I think, sums up much of the strife I see in the world.
Between the religious and atheistic, and the various stances of political tribalism. I see my world being torn apart, not by vice, but by an obsession with what is right and the exercise of rights.

Well, from here on out I will be blogging at NoCommonThread.com. 

Not because I am a different person... but that's a silly statement.

I'll be doing more photos than rambling, maybe.