Agnoiologist

Packing Day.

Tomorrow, I’ll be in California. See you then.

I just finished my last final. I completed the test a bit early, so I had to sit there. He said we could draw, so I drew some dinosaurs with party hats on the back of the test. I think my professor will be confused because I didn’t have time to draw the party.

Clinton has won big in West Virginia, and it could be a 2:1 margin of victory. Still, she’ll get maybe a 10 or 11 delegate advantage. To put that in perspective, Obama has won 27 superdelegates since the North Carolina and Indiana primaries a week ago. That’s astonishing. That’s a flood. At this rate, it’ll take Obama half a week to wipe her victory out.

A Clinton victory can’t depress me like it used to. Obama has the nomination wrapped up. Moreover, we are going to dominate in November. New voters are going to create battlegrounds in new states. A cash-strapped McCain, compared to the Obama fundraising juggernaut, will not be able to defend everywhere. I am very fortunate to go to school in Maryland, which is close to Virginia, a state which I think Obama can turn blue. I know I will do whatever I can to make that happen.

I still think Clinton should stay in the race. Her last speech, the victory speech in West Virginia, refrained from negative, personal attacks on Obama. She says she will work hard for whoever is the nominee. I don’t think she’s dividing the party right now. Her speech was boring for me, aside from anecdote about the dying woman who cast her absentee ballot for Clinton. That woman was born before women had the right to vote and now she could cast a vote for a woman running for president. It really tugs on the heartstrings. Give them their symbolic vote. We will unite and win in November.

Brevity! In both words and action.

I was reading a book on the couch. My friend, who was over, noted, “Shh. He’s studying.” I was indignant, “No, this isn’t for class. This is The Art of Worldly Wisdom.” My friend then proceeded to point out that I had inserted post-it notes all throughout the book; it looked as if I was studying it. I had to concede that. Indeed, I was studying the book, but not for class. I was studying in order to gain wisdom.

She was confused that I would read a book for fun and study it, but I think this reading is a thousand times more useful than almost every reading I’ve done for any class. When I study for class, I study to forget. It goes to short-term memory. I study; I take the test; I forget. Unfortunately, school does not teach you how to be virtuous. You can only learn that from other people and from books.

I’ve just finished the book, and almost all of it is useful. The Art of Worldly Wisdom is a collection of aphorisms by Baltasar Gracian. I’ll soon be posting a list of the passages that stuck out most for me at this time. I’m sure when I re-read the book in the years to come, different passages will stand out as important. I’m not posting that yet because I don’t quite have the time (finals season at my university).

I do want to write down one piece of hard-won knowledge. It is a synthesis of what I read from that book, and what I’ve learned from Machiavelli and other political philosophers. It’s a rough draft, but it means something to me, for now.

Govern thyself with virtue. Just as society must be ordered by laws, you must order yourself. Without laws, a people is ruled by its passions. They are torn apart by war and weakened by corruption. Likewise, without the iron chains of virtue, one is a slave to one’s passions. Freedom is only possible when laws create order for society; so too for a person, to be free you must first be governed by virtues.

Required reading:

On the uptick in deaths in Anbar: The Anbar Problem No One is Talking About. The deaths further reveal the Sisyphean nature of our task in Iraq.

The consequences of our reliance on mercenaries: Iraq Contractor in Shooting Case Makes Comeback. Last year, Blackwater massacred Iraqi civilians. Now, they’re back in business without so much as a slap on the wrist. The reason they got their contract renewed was that we had no other choice. We have a dangerous reliance on mercenaries. This needs to end.

Truce in Sadr City?: Outlines of a Truce for Sadr City. The thing that pisses me off is that fighting has been going on for over a month, and yet this has not dominated the news cycle. Of course, this is not surprising given that our media has become a propaganda factory for the US government.

Glenn Greenwald is sharp, as usual, detailing and criticizing the Pentagon’s illegal domestic propaganda program and how our media is complicit in all this. Read both this entry, CNN, the Pentagon’s “military analyst program” and Gitmo, and this entry, How the military analyst program controlled news coverage: in the Pentagon’s own words.

I don’t plan on doing one thing all my life. During one phase of my life, I will devote myself to politics. After politics, I want to devote my life to science.

I have a job for the summer. I’m going to be self-employed. I’m going to be working on The Chalkboard Manifesto full-time. I’ll be able to redesign the site (including overhauling the archives), add merchandise, increase updates to 5x a week, and build a community of readers around my comic.

I’m really excited about this!

I don’t foresee making as much money as last summer. However, this will not only be more fun than my last job, but it will be more fulfilling. It will be a project based on my own initiative. The project will require much self-discipline, which is one of the most important skills to have. Having my own business venture is a goal of mine. This will not only fulfill that goal but be good practice for the next big thing.

The best part, though, will not be the merchandise, but the community. I’ve rediscovered the notion of self-concordant goals and realized that what keeps me going is connection to my readers. My goal is to develop relationships with them. Furthermore, I want to associate TCM with my political writing. I don’t know if my views will turn off some fans, but I think it’s better to have more ardent fans than many, many fairweather fans. They’re the ones who buy the merchandise anyway, and they’re the ones e-mailing me, anyway. They’re the important fans.

I don’t know how well this whole thing will go. But I plan on spending my entire summer working on this. The merchandise will come after the increase in readership, of course. I’m not nearly prepared enough to build a business venture, but I should have enough hours to prepare myself. This’ll be a lot of fun.

Senator Clinton, if your base is broader than Senator Obama’s, then why are you losing?

“It is the curse of the universal man, that in trying to be everything, he is nothing.” — Baltasar Gracian, The Art of Worldly Wisdom