The Monkey in the Mirror

This book has added onto my knowledge and inquiry into the conceptualization of the "soul" in humans.

I stated previously that to understand why and how we came about with our conceptualization of the soul. I then had to ask what makes us so special.

Previous probes have equipped me with certain factors: namely language (both spoken and written).

This new book has given insight into how exaptation (the incidental hero of our 'evolution') has allowed us the ability to find a novel use of our structurally-lower vocal chords to produce speech. Spoken language put us above and beyond other creatures who had and have written language. With spoken language, we were then able to build upon our essentially wonderful ability to re-conceptualise the world around us in abstract logic. This was also another "Big Bang" in terms of cultural-releasing.

We also are gifted with extended consciousness, the ability to add the awareness of the past and future into the mix and factor in such variables into decision-making.

Which came first? Symbolism in language which graduated to abstract meaning to language which in turn helped us scale greater cognitive heights or the ability to cognitively re-conceptualize our world? I guess we will never know. It may forever be a case of chicken and the egg.

Yet again, I find cause to praise our consciousness and the ability to be conscious of our consciousness. (which Satre may deem weak) Weak it may be but still it allows us so much cognitive scope and possibilities that probably makes us the most dangerous animal on earth.

So yet again, I find little reason to purport that we are spiritually privileged creatures. Indeed, we are the product of lucky exaptations and rugged ancestry. But given the power we hold over the rest of terran life, environment and this planet's possible trajectories, I find the question "What is the SOUL?" even more pertinent.

On The Sopranos: Everything I know I learned from TV

Only thing interesting that I gathered from this chapter is about how Pyschoanalysis provides us with aspect-seeing metaphors and how These are metaphors that allow us new ways of looking at and thinking about ourselves. Psychoanalytical analysis cannot be tested right or wrong.

By contributing evil to a personality and mental disorder, Rowlands posits that we cannot achieve meaning in our lives by pitting ourselves against evil anymore, not in this modern world.

But I think this is a commendable point of view that should not be taken too far. By offering help to the "evil", we distinguish what a person is and does from his true nature. Deep down, everyone is "fixable" and can be restored to the order that Plato prescribes (of Reason, Spirit and Appetite).

Of which, Tony Soprano is not. He is evil because according to Plato's view, his order is not in the correct form. Thus he is fractured and he has to put on different faces and accomodate conflicting actions in conflicting situations.

On Buffy: Everything I know I learned from TV

A nice book with which freshness into philosophical inquiry is brought in with the help of some pretty nonacademic language features and phrases. :)

Rowlands interestingly defines modernity as a tendency in all of us to swing towards some pretty conflicting life philosophies, namely: individualism, relativism and voluntarism. So basically we are pretty screwed up.

Buffy is the first to be examined. And he defines her rightfully as a pre-modern girl (with her inability to avoid the obligation of being the slayer) living in a modern world.

This is made even more obvious by her existential counterparts, the vampires whose lives are "light" (read Milan Kundera, "The incredible lightness of being") and no obligations bind them (because our consciousness is what allows us to act and choose and it lies outside the natural order and therefore also avoids the realm of obligation, as Sartre supports).

The next point that Rowlands puts forth is something that I have argued before. It concerns the positive nature of death and the mutually-defining phenomenon of life and death, the infinite made finite by the finite.

Thus, death is Buffy's gift as it is all of our's as it allows us to permanently become our actions by stopping the process of becoming and be fixed and for the first time anything.

Thus our actions, Rowland(as I do) asserts, does have bearing and that is why obligations should bind as we owe it to ourselves to leave positive legacies behind.

Then of course the problem is that modernity, with the help of relativism makes everything "small" and very little of everything in life is left "big". So it is tougher on us on the surface to make significance and meaning to our lives as relativism deludes us into believing that everything and every value is not fixed.