So I guess this is from Aristotle. Relevance is to reinforce idea that point of this blog is habitus. Not worth doing at all if I only do it on occasion. So. I'll give myself Christmas off but this needs to be habitual. Probably not a good idea to do it in the morning, wouldn't happen. Before bed is also probably a bad idea. This is a fundamental problem I have. Seems that most habitual things seem to occur before or after sleep which is the time they are least likely to get done. Anyway, I think that I'll tentatively say that after dinner is a good time for this because there's usual a short period during which I am not busy and am not ready to do homework. Alternatively, I could do after class, but this might vary too much. Dinner is more regular. So I'll start with that. The other idea is back up, for now. Anyway, I can start the after dinner thing tomorrow, rather than waiting for classes. Any kind of habit is going to have some problems because of the big change going back to school but I still think it's worth starting now.
Perhaps as this becomes habitual I may be able to achieve some level of transparency. That is a hope. I guess that's one of the points of this. Primary impetus is to write and be comfortable writing. But I think that part of that is being able to write my thoughts transparently, which means I have to ignore the medium to some extent. Of course, a lot of times my thoughts themselves are all meta and not transparent, but anyway. I think I'm pretty bad at ethical habitus in general. Main obstacles include sleep and shyness. There is also a certain idea of will which I have some trouble with. I think—here is a thought that has been loitering but I've only just realized: there is a certain fundamental connection between existentialism and conservative rhetoric. Specifically this notion of 'personal responsibility'. It should be pretty obvious what I'm talking about. Both philosophies depend on a certain idea of a willful, acting, and free subject and disregard psychological and societal restrictions. I guess both emphasize the primacy of the subject. I guess this all ties in nicely with Adam Curtis and Century of the Self, even though it is opposed to Freud. Hmm... Freud was also concerned with a certain primacy of the subject, but a very different kind of subject. Freud's subject is fundamentally divided and conflicted, incapable of singular decisions. That is, Freud's subject is not a singularity, a monad. In contrast I think for Sartre and neoliberals, like for Descartes, there is a certain identifiable and singular subject who may be called upon for responsibility for action and choice.
There. That was more transparent. In one sense. In another it was totally opaque, but that's beside the point. Maybe I'll return to academic language at some point. For now I've moved away from it, but I still keep the issue in mind. But anyway, that was good, I think. It didn't hurt, though when I got stuck I had to move on or it might have hurt. But it's a step. If I can continue to get transparent paragraphs without pain perhaps I'll eventually be able to move on to lengthy and coherent discussions painlessly. That's a big next step, but I'll take it gradually.
