Essay: To what extent is it meaningful to interpret Plato as a fictionalist?
(This is a 4000 word exam paper I wrote a couple of weeks ago.)
Introduction
A common view is that we should take Plato’s ideas as very serious theoretical arguments, to be held up to scientific standards, and, when found wanting, excused on the ground of being ancient and charming. With this strategy of interpretation, most of Plato’s work has to be rejected. The only idea to withstand at least the bulk of such scrutiny, and which for that reason is framed as the great theoretical achievement entitling Plato to his traditionally very high position in the hall of philosophical fame, is his so-called Theory of Forms. This kind of interpretation was introduced as early as with Aristotle, who saw in elenchus something like a rudimentary scientific method, aiming narrowly at logical definitions. The modern heir is the tradition of linguistic philosophy, where prominent philosophers such as Frege and Russell self-identified as “platonists”, referring by that term to a philosophical realism of universals and abstract objects. But this tradition has long since outgrown the connection to its inspirational root, and is generally no longer invested in the issue of how we should interpret Plato.
In this essay, I’ll propose a “fictionalist” strategy of interpretation to challenge the one sketched above, which I’ll call “theoreticalist”. The term fictionalism is primarily meant to suggest that the best measure against which to judge Plato’s work is something else than truth (at least in the conventional sense). My ambition is to persuade the reader that this is a much more profound perspective than one might at first suspect.
I do not pretend to do theoreticalism justice. In fact, I am using it as a straw man position, to lever against in launching the fictionalist interpretation. The point of this essay is not to compare and evaluate the possible ways to interpret Plato, merely to propose and elaborate the fictionalist one.
The original intentions of the historical Plato is not the issue at stake here; for the purposes of this essay, the measure of an interpretation’s merit is simply how much it allows us to take out of Plato’s work – the width and depth opened to us by it. The interpretation is thus given a long leash: It shouldn’t stray too far off course, transforming Plato into something else entirely, but, on the other hand, there is no aspiration to actually capture the real Plato.
I will start out by reminding the reader of how Plato makes Socrates go about presenting his conception of the tripartite soul, as a representative example of Plato’s constructive thought. Then, I’ll point out the difficulties a theoreticalist interpretation of it faces, and go on to introduce the alternative, fictionalist approach, not just to the tripartite soul, but to Plato in general.
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The wheel of fortune
Below is a screen capture from the fourth part of Bill Moyers’ highly recommended six-part interview of Joseph Campbell “The Power of Myth”. (You don’t have to see them in the right order. I suggest starting with the second or third to test your interest. All parts can be found on Google Video as well as on public torrent trackers.)
This is a depiction of the medieval symbol “the wheel of fortune”, which Campbell uses to express what he thinks is the the central message of myths in general: The contrasting of the drama of the circumference of this wheel to the stillness of the hub is a call for us to turn inward to the hub of existence, to find a home in consciousness rather than attaching ourselves to comforts or recognition from our peers — or to suffering or death for that matter (as perhaps Christians in particular tend to attach themselves to). All of these things are secondary aspects of reality. Non-central. Not where we should place our center.
Base-4 timekeeping method to make more sense of our standard (thousands of years old and completely obsolete) clock
Lately, beginning with getting really carried away with decimal time last year, I’ve been thinking a lot about timekeeping. Decimal time has the great advantage of making timekeeping intuitive for base-10 minds such as our own. But it doesn’t seem likely that we’ll see any revolutionary changes in society on this point, and even if we would have, I’d still have been unhappy, because I’ve realized that there is another, even more revolutionary step I’d much prefer: A step away from the base-10 numeral system. I’m not sure which alternative I prefer yet, but I think both base-8 and base-16 is far, far better. These have one huge advantage in common: They are multiples of 2. This is good for several reasons:
- Doubling and halving is by far the most intuitive way we have of dealing with numbers.
- In base-10, halving a number repeatedly becomes very hard very fast. Starting with 10, we get 10 — 5 — 2,5 — 1,25 — 0,625 — eh… That was four halvings. This is in stark contrast to the ease of halving in a base that is a multiple of 2. Take base-8, starting with 8, which in base-8 is written “10″, for reasons that should be obvious: 10 — 4 — 2 — 1 — 0,4 — 0,2 — 0,1 — 0,04 — 0,02 — 0,01 — 0,004 — etc. etc. That was 10 halvings, but you can go on forever without even having to think.
- Computers are base-2, and use multiples of 2 as byte-sizes. We all know how poorly this translates to base-10: 2 — 4 — 8 — 16 — 32 — 64 — 128 — 256. In base-8, this same series would read: 2 — 4 — 10 — 20 — 40 — 100 — 200 — 400. And in base-16: 2 — 4 — 8 — 10 — 20 –40 — 80 — 100. A numeral system with a base that is a multiple of binary is perfectly suited for our computer age.
But this post isn’t really about numeral systems, I’m just getting carried away again. Let me just point to a brilliant pro-base-16 book from 1862 by the Swedish-American John William Nystrom, and get on to what was the reason I started writing this post: I have found a close-to-perfect system for timekeeping that doesn’t demand a hopelessly improbable revolution. I romantically call it the base-4 timekeeping method. The premises are that our waking day is 16 hours long, and that 4 is the most intelligible number there is. Now, have the day split in four parts of four hours each, and each hour in four quarters, and you get a new map of the day that looks something like this (the bars are hatched up to 10:30, the time that this post was published):
A full day is 64 quarters long. You probably have a lot better sense of the length of a quarter than of a full hour, so calculating time in terms of quarters might be a good idea, in particular short spans. You gain a better grasp of the experienced duration of time that way, and, when placed on the map above, you know exactly how to weight time in relation to a full day. Timekeeping is made very simple.
You’re probably not convinced yet. But try to think about — for instance — how your waking time is budgeted on work, play, exercise etc., and I’m quite confident you’ll start seeing some benefits to the base-4 method.
Some visionary rambling
I’d like to have a virtual office, with online functionality to replicate ways of interaction from the real world, i.e. blogs and messageboards, yammering etc., but in terms that makes it intuitive for my old and technology-suspicious coworkers. Google Wave will probably be the service to save us from the horrible impracticalities of email-based office work, but that’s mostly about communication and collaboration. The stuff that goes on in meeting rooms. I want to have a home and an office as well. Something else than just another url. I would like the web to be redesigned in some way, to allow me — as a legal entity — to have a virtual place to call my own. In this place, I can build a home, an office, another office perhaps (for my future freelancing career), a study desk etc. Call these the aspects of me as a virtual entity. Visit my office aspect at an address that looks something like this: [Gorm > Office no. 1], or alternatively, you can find the identical place via my workplace: [Super Secret Workplace > Dept. of Supersecrecy > Gorm's Office].
All legal entities can have virtual locations. Indeed, I think they should have one reserved for them. Every individual, firm, government etc. should have reserved a virtual place with a unique address. First time visit by a proprietor of such a virtual place is greeted by a wizard with butler-like demeanor that explains and suggests ways to use the features available. Social networking stuff, virtual homemaking stuff, etc. The new Opera Unite has perhaps some attractive features in this regard. Your workplace can put requirements on your virtual office — for instance, it might be obligatory to have displayed a yammer gadget in your “office entrance” (how much better than “the front page of your personal office website” is this?).
It all has to be very rationally as well as intuitively designed, and completely void of the desperately social focus that a lot of social networking sites has. I have some ideas about the details, but you’re not that interested, and I have no way of realizing any of this anyway.
Addendum: I’d like to be able to design a map-like tool as an interface to my virtual world. Something vaguely resembling the Sims, where I can place my virtual home, my virtual office etc., and also my neighborhood — friends, colleagues, games I like to play, trusted newspapers I like to read etc. Imagine all of this placed on one big map with great zoom functionality (I guess this will be possible with html 5). At a distance, evertything is reduced to something diagrammatical: Icons and lines signifying relations, groups etc. But zoom in, and you get more details. Zoom all the way in, and you materialize into an avatar that shows your presence, and what you’re doing. You can talk to people, leave a note if noone’s there, search the place (e.g. your office) or “knock on the door”, which is something that pings the owner whereever he or she might be.
Model for zoom functionality: The game Sins of a Solar Empire.
Two drawings of Nietzsche
My brother Trym recently made these drawings of Nietzsche, unaware of how fitting quotes they could be paired with, as I’ve done below. The first quote is from section 146 of Beyond Good and Evil and the second one from section 4 of Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman — a rope over an abyss.
A dangerous crossing, a dangerous wayfaring, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous trembling and halting.
What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal: what is lovable in man is that he is an over-going and a down-going [Untergang].
Thanks, Trym!
Platonic Infographics
Why obsess about sentential logic and language in a time when visualization tools allow us to develop new and better ways to express thoughts? The visual language of infographics have the power to be clearer, broader and less ambiguous than sentential language, and it can offer a vision that can be shared more easily among minds, being far less dependent on interpretation.
I’m seriously wondering if studying infographics would be the best philosophical path for me right now — better than studying philosophy.
These days, I’m slowly but surely learning Illustrator, and I hope to expand to Flash and more in the future — because these tools, in this era of information, translate directly into power (in the sense of Nietzsche’s “will to power”).
I might even try to get work doing graphic design, to get paid while gaining the skillpoints I need to be able to create a philosophical work in the language of infographics. I already found a name for the sole proprietorship I’ll have to set up if I get work: “Platonic Infographics”. And in a moment of particular enthusiasm, I even bought a domain: infoplatonic.com.
The reason I’d like to associate myself with platonism, is that my own view of graphic design reminds me of Plato’s view of poetry: It is a very powerful tool that tend to be corrupting unless one actively ensures that it is wielded in the service of reason. I guess this is close to the principles of mainstream infographics as opposed to other kinds of graphic design, but I like to emphasize it anyway. And the connection to philosophy is nice as well.
Prediction
The inevitable pandemic will force schools and universities (as public places) to shut down their physical facilities and go online. There, they will meld together into a single entity (per language). And that will mark the beginning of a new age.
Fragment 572, The Will to Power (Nietzsche)
An artist cannot endure reality, he looks away from it, back: he seriously believes that the value of a thing resides in that shadowy residue one derives from colors, form, sound, ideas, he believes that the more subtilized, attenuated, transient a thing or a man is, the more valuable he becomes; the less real, the more valuable. This is Platonism, which, however, involved yet another bold reversal: Plato measured the degree of reality by the degree of value and said: The more “Idea”, the more being. He reversed the concept “reality” and said: “What you take for real is an error, and the nearer we approach the ‘Idea’, the nearer we approach ‘truth’.” — Is this understood? It was the greatest of rebaptisms; and because it has been adopted by Christianity we do not recognize how astonishing it is. Fundamentally, Plato, as the artist he was, preferred appearance to being! lie and invention to truth! the unreal to the actual! But he was so convinced of the value of appearance that he gave it the attributes “being”, “causality” and “goodness”, and “truth”, in short everything men value.
The concept of value itself considered as a cause: first insight.
The ideal granted all honorific attributes: second insight.
This commentary is absolutely brilliant, even though the involved interpretation of Plato is unfair. It seems to me that Nietzsche simply attempted to set fire to the degenerated intellectual culture in effigie, with Plato as the straw man casualty.
A better or more useful interpretation of Plato is, in my view, one supposing that he was a special kind of mythologian, one working with logical form as well as the usual tools of the trade (drama, symbolism etc). At least in this fictionalist light he becomes palatable. Whether or not it is more historically accurate is, I think, irrelevant, as all I’m interested in here is how to gain access to as much of the wisdom contained in his work as possible. Fictionalism is perfectly suited for this.
Version 3 of the Rational Calendar
Bah, rationality has a way of undermining its own proposals. I’ve already managed to revise the Rational calendar so comprehensively that it has to be called version 3. Here it is (and I think it’s a keeper this time!):
- Exactly 90 day “seasons” to replace the variable month system of the Gregorian calendar. In version 2, the length was set to 91 days, but I realized that it’s much more important to make date calculation easy than to precisely balance the seasons on either side of the winter solstice.
- The five or six days not covered by the seasons are collected at the end of the year as a holiday.
- Each season can, in a transition period, be split in three groups of 30 days and called months, by the standard names.
- 10 day weeks. Week counts are reset by each month, so you have to say what season it is to be unambiguous. This is because it shouldn’t be necessary to do calculations to understand what period is referred to.
If you’ve been paying attention, you see how remarkably similar this is to the French Revolutionary Calendar. Which, bitterly, is kind of where I started.
I’ll come back to this after my exams, wrap it up properly, present some visuals, printable calendars, a furry mascot, and much more.
Translation tables for the Rational calendar (version 2)
Here’s a couple of translation tables to make the inevitable switch from the Gregorian calendar to my brilliant alternative a bit easier:
| 1st day of Winter, 2009 | Dec. 21st, 2008 |
| 1st day of Spring | March 22nd, 2009 |
| 1st day of Summer | June 21st |
| 1st day of Autumn | Sept. 20th |
Awrg, now I’m reminded that we need to do something about the year count as well… I’ve suggested starting at 10 000, to encompass the entire history of civilization in the positive count, but I’m not completely convinced myself yet. Tell me if you have a better suggestion. Until one is found, I’ll just continue to use the standard one.
This table is better than the above for calculating what day it is:
| Dec. 21st, 2008 | Winter 1st, 2009 |
| Jan. 1st, 2009 | Winter 12th |
| Feb. 1st | Winter 43rd |
| March 1st | Winter 71st |
| March 22nd | Spring 1st |
| April 1st | Spring 11th |
| May 1st | Spring 41st |
| June 1st | Spring 72nd |
| June 21st | Summer 1st |
| July 1st | Summer 11th |
| August 1st | Summer 42nd |
| Sept. 1st | Summer 73rd |
| Sept. 20th | Autumn 1st |
| Oct. 1st | Autumn 12th |
| Nov. 1st | Autumn 43rd |
| Dec. 1st | Autumn 73rd |
| Dec. 20th, 2009 | Extra-calendrical holiday! |
| Dec. 21st, 2009 | Winter 1st, 2010 |
In the Gregorian calendar, today is May 11th, which is 10 days from May 1st, so in the Rational calendar it translates as the 51st day of Spring.
Birthdays are trickier to translate, because in the Gregorian calendar winter solstice isn’t fixed to a date, and might fall on another date in the year you were born than in the current one. My own birthday is 16th of May (1983), but the winter solstice of 1982 fell on the 22nd of December, so if I define my birthday using the Rational calendar, I should celebrate my birthday the 15th of May this year, which, by coincidence is what it’ll continue to be the next few years as well. But as this chart shows, it will slowly slide backward to an earlier date:
The word “entertainment”
I have tended to define the word entertainment in morally disapproving terms, as something shallow and meaningless. But in fact there are higher ways of entertainment as well, even though these are overshadowed by the lower ones predominant in society (also in my personal life, but to a lesser extent). Stigmatizing the feeling of being entertained as reprehensible is unhealthy, because it attaches guilt even to higher forms of enjoyment. I need to adjust my definition of the word to channelize my stream of associations to bypass this moral feeling:
Entertainment: Having one’s attention focused by enjoyment and interest. The best possible normal state — that which is to be aimed for at most or all times — is being entertained by worthy activity.
Addendum: Children and others who are not yet accustomed to worthy activity should see it as their duty to invest themselves in education sufficiently for their further development to be self-driven, i.e. driven by enjoyment and interest rather than letting oneself being pushed around by duty. These to attitudes are natural enemies, and hard to reconcile in one soul.
Version 2 of the Rational Calendar
My previous suggestion was too messy. Here’s how it should be, from the beginning:
- The 12 months are abolished. Day counts should follow seasons instead of pretending to follow the moon’s cycles.
- New year is fixed to the day of winter solstice. This day also marks the beginning of Winter.
- Each season is defined as 91 days long. The first day of Spring, Summer and Autumn is called the calendrical vernal equinox, summer solstice and autumnal equinox respectively (this distinction because the natural events may fall on other dates).
- 91 days times 4 seasons is 364 days. The extra one day (or the two in leap years) is a holiday.
- The week is also redefined, as 10 days long. The 10th day is a weekly holiday.
- The 91st day of each season is a seasonal holiday, and is outside the week system.
- The annual holiday (or days) are outside both week and season systems.
- The 1st day of each season is a holiday as well, as this is the day of solstice or equinox. They are not outside week or season systems.
Here I’ve tried to visualize this:
The holidays line up in such a way that the transition from one season to the next is marked by a series of holidays, in ascending order (if you think of the rare as higher than the common). New year, for ezample, is preceded by three or four holidays: first a weekly, then seasonal, and finally the annual holiday or days. The moment of New Year is of course midnight between the last day and the day of winter solstice. And since the day of solstice is a holiday as well, New Year is associated with a four or five day vacation. Seasonal transitions are associated with a three day vacation.
This makes for a most orderly calendar. The only unknown is when leap years come in, as it is determined by the astronomical event of winter solstice. But this uncertainty is of minimal importance, as weeks and seasons are defined as unaffected.
I need an English name
Introducing myself as “Gorm”, I’m almost invariably asked to repeat or spell out the garbled sound I just made. Even Norwegians find it difficult. Perhaps Danes find it easier. After all, they specialize in garbled sounds, and have Gorm the Old (or Sleepy) as the ancestral head of their monarchy. But everyone else stumbles on my name. So I have to follow the example of my Hungarian neighbors “Dave” and “Mike” and translate my name into English. But what to choose? I’ve searched, and the four contestants in the poll below are at this time closest to my approval. At least I like the names. I don’t know if they suit me very well. Of course, if you have better suggestions, do tell.
I have a slight preference for Graham, if only because its original meaning was “gray home”. My favorite color!
Update: The commenter Occasional Reporter changed my mind after all. I’ll just pronounce my name with an American “r”. I wouldn’t have been able to get comfortable with being called Graham or Gordon anyway. But if some unusual situation insists on translating my name, I now have a name choice ready: Graham (the other alternative is too closely associated with Gordon Freeman in my mind).
Reorganization note
I’ve changed my mind again: I don’t need to filter what I write in two separate blogs. I don’t write enough solemn and serious stuff, and don’t have nearly enough readers.
So, everything I wrote on the other blog has been imported to this address. And from now on, I’ll post whatever I feel like here, ignoring the inevitable spoken or unspoken complaints about speculative or otherwise offensive writing, especially the unspoken ones. Corrections of spelling mistakes are exempt and excused, if not exactly invited. Speculative comments, on the other hand, are more than welcome, unless grammatically more clumsy than I am.
These changes calls for a new title: Unpublisables. The primary function of it is to remind me to be unrestrained. The secondary is to remind you that I’m trying to be.
A Platonic design for a musocratic soul: a soul governed by inspiration
I think Plato’s idea of a tripartite soul (the three parts being reason, spirit and appetite), should be supplemented with inspiration as a fourth part.
If this soul where to be “writ large” by being remapped to a fictional city state, inspiration wouldn’t be mortal citizens like the other parts of the soul, they’d be more like gods or muses that only come to visit the city from time to time. The rest of the citizenry are unable to predict when they come or understand why exactly, but — at least in a city governed by inspiration, a “musocracy” — they’re always prepared to be summoned to celestial speeches or be drafted to holy wars or work projects. A city of this kind would have to have two modes, depending on whether the angelic muses are present or absent. When present, all forces volunteer to work together in the service of inspiration. This mode is easy, because true inspiration is a powerful motivator, and things tend work themselves out without the need of a formal constitution. But when they leave, disorder has to be kept at bay by some means or others, and considering the situation, religious practices seem like the obvious solution. This, then, is the lifeblood of the second mode. The rational class function as priests, reminding the populace of the absent rulers, holding back the forces of disorder by reflecting the inspiration from the muses, like the moon holds back the darkness of night by reflecting the light of the sun. At first, a constitution such as this — founded not on inspiration itself, but on preparation for and anticipation of it — is certainly unstable. But trust build up step by step every time the promises of the priests are confirmed by the muses actually revisiting. And so over time, the priests are able to subdue the appetitive majority, by referring them to the higher and superior pleasures to be found in inspiration (in particular on the side of production, but also on that of consumption).
The main concern for the city besides maintaining order, is to make sure the muses are attracted to visit more often, and stay for longer at a time. All kinds of ritualized habits and mythical frameworks can be tried out to find out what works by way of experiment, but some basics are practically guaranteed to be a necessary part of every city’s life: Crops must be harvested, streets must be cleaned, buildings maintained and so on, because heavenly visitors are of course reluctant to descend into a city that is filthy or crumbling, or whose citizens are sluggish or unhealthy. Also, hard priestly work is required: Scribes should be ready at all times to write down what the muses say and do in case of a suprise visit, so that nothing important is forgotten. Their claims, artifacts and gestures should be memorized, studied and interpreted, to get the most out of every drop of inspiration. Priests should lead the populace in daily practices of meditation and reflection, to make the city fertile ground for seeds of inspiration.
The heart and central tenet of the popular religion is its concept of the city’s purpose, and that is, in short, “doing the good work”, i.e. the command of the muses. This is what’s meaningful. And living meaningfully, in turn, makes the life of all in the city better: more pleasurable for the appetitive class, more honorable for the spirited class and truly good for the priests. Merely consuming the tasteful or inspirational is good as well, but not intrinsically meaningful. At best, it amplifies meaning from other sources; it is not itself an original source. It is like having clever friends, which, unless you have common interests, is meaningless, in the sense of being only superficially and transiently pleasant. The only activity that is intrinsically meaningful is inspired production. And it doesn’t have to be anything grandiose or important, it just has to originate from the muses. The city that follows their plans and builds according to their designs is a city in the light of heaven. Even in the face of ridicule or discredit from neighboring cities. The approval of mortals means litte compared to that of gods and muses.
Gaming experience suggests an answer to the question of the origin of ancestor gods
I was introduced to Xbox some time ago. At first, I just watched when my brother played. Now that I’ve had some hands-on experience myself, it’s become apparent how easy it is to project unreasonable powers to the one with the controls, especially if you’re not yourself familiar with the game. The one with the controls is co-credited for the impressiveness of the game itself.
I’d like to draw an analogy from this to how children project powers to their parents. Elders are co-credited for the impressiveness of the world. From this, the leap to divine status is not a very difficult one.
Eastern meditation technique in a Western theoretical framework
The technique of mindfulness meditation is all right, but not the esoteric conceptual cargo that so often comes with it. Luckily, there are a couple of quite good alternatives to be found in the western philosophical heritage, which, to me at least, are more palatable.
Pyrrhonism is the earliest school or tradition of Skepticism. It’s named after Pyrrho, who probably wasn’t a very rigorous Skeptic by our standards, but then again theoretical skepticism wasn’t his main goal. His goal was to attain a good life through a mental practice of suspending judgment. This already sounds Eastern, and in fact it is, as Wikipedia informs me: “Pyrrho, along with Anaxarchus, travelled with Alexander the Great on his exploration of the East, and studied under the Gymnosophists in India and the Magi in Persia. This exposure to Eastern philosophy seems to have inspired him to adopt a life of solitude”.
Pyrrho aimed for ataraxia, which means freedom from worry or a pleasure that comes when the mind is at rest. He didn’t write anything himself, so most of what we know about his teachings comes from Sextus Empiricus’ “Outlines of Pyrrhonism”. I guess that’s where this explanation comes from (found here, unsourced): “By suspending judgment, by confining oneself to phenomena or objects as they appear, and by asserting nothing definite as to how they really are, one can escape the perplexities of life and attain an imperturbable peace of mind.”
I have great respect for ancient Skepticism, but wouldn’t have if there was no theoretically rigorous side to it. I’m not completely sure, but I think that side of Skepticism was the main focus of the sister tradition of Pyrrhonism, “Academic Skepticism”. The most prominent character in this tradition was Carneades. His focus was less meditative. He combined severe criticism of every kind of dogmatism with allowing for a probabilist basis for our judgments and our lives. He proposed the strictest possible philosophical rigour, so strict that the resulting agnosticism is all-encompassing. He even found reason to doubt logic. He held that nothing is certain, and even included this claim itself. This position is maximally careful and, if you will, maximally humble. But contrary to Pyrrhonism, the Skepticism of Carneades is not impractical and ascetic, because of the probabilistic account of knowledge. I think Carneades might be my philosophical grandfather, just like Nietzsche’s was Heraclitus. (In case you’re wondering, Nietzsche’s philosophical father was Schopenhauer, and mine is Nietzsche.)
Epicureanism is another really interesting tradition. It is less rigorous than Skepticism, but more charming. The Epicureans was interested in natural philosophy as well as the good life. Like the Pyrrhonians, they used the word ataraxia to denote the sought-for state of mind. To them, it signified “the detached and balanced state of mind that shows that a person has transcended the material world and is now harvesting all the comforts of philosophy” (source).
I don’t know very much about Epicureanism, but Nietzsche was very fond of it, so I guess I should look into it some time. From reading the Wikipedia entry on the subject, what strikes me the most is that Epicurus “conceived the gods as blissful and immortal yet material beings made of atoms inhabiting the metakosmia”, which was understood to be “the relatively empty spaces in the infinite void where worlds had not been formed by the joining together of the atoms through their endless motion”. I love ideas like this, ones that make me associate to the modern conception of virtual space. (I should start collecting.)
The last tradition I’ll mention is Stoicism. Instead of ataraxia, they called the good state of mind apatheia or apathy (absence of passion). I don’t have much to say about this, because I’m not very familiar with it. But I’ve ordered Seneca’s Epistles, so I might come back to it later. I’ve read a couple of his letters already, and he’s very likable, but I don’t think that goes for the Stoic philosophy in general, as it is quite similar to Christianity in several respects.
FriendFeed first impressions and suggestions for improvement
Issue 1: I can’t read everything I subscribe to, and that’ll take some getting used to
Trying to read the Home filter is like trying to drink a river. “Best of day” is nice, and of course I can single out the subscriptions I’m most interested in, but I’d prefer a system where entries were sorted in levels of prominence from the trivial or unimportant to the percentile of your feed production you’d like to see broadcast the furthest. Perhaps three in total.
This sorting would have to be done at the poster side, although the only workable way I have is having several blogs, using several bookmarking services etc, channeling these feeds to specific FF levels of prominence. In my case, I’d channel this blog to the least level of prominence, and gorm.wordpress.com to the second of three. Tagging something as most prominent would be too seldom an event to have a separate blog for that function, so I’d just do that via the FF interface. Likewise with other kinds of feeds that I don’t use so often, like posting videos to youtube.
On the reader side, I’d like to be able to filter all tabs according to prominence requirement by clicking a colored dot. If it’s green, it’s most lenient, and shows everything. Yellow, only 1st and 2nd tier. Red, the censure is strict.
Issue 2: Blog entries are reduced to a title with a link
FF has a smalltalk focus. Blogs posts disappear in the crowd. And I don’t understand why! It should be really easy to include a 255 char snippet or excerpt of the entry, and that would pretty much resolve this issue.
The same solution would be nice for reader shared entries as well, but there’s not the same urgency there.
Issue 3: Aspects of my FF friends I don’t care about
This might be either an alternative to or a supplement to my suggestion for how to resolve issue 1: Give posters the possibility of defining “aspect feeds”. Some are interested in just my philosophy-related postings, others would like to see just the non-philosophy-related postings. Others again would like to see everything. I’d love to be able to define aspects like this, and to see other people doing it as well, so that I’m spared all the trivial stuff I don’t care about. It’s a big waste of time reading things just to ignore them. Intelligent search and filtering isn’t good enough. We need a new FF order. If it complicates things for new users, hide the function, so they discover it only after a while. And make some “FF in Plain English”-videos to explain the features.
