To the things themselves!

My name's Chris. This blog was meant to function as a repository for my most personal thoughts and thoughts not appropriate for public disclosure. Beyond that, there is no structure, no form, no intention.

[existentialatheist]

Loving you at first

Was fiery, like an interplay of flames.

The hotter and brighter one of us burned,

The more fierce we both were.

And at the time,

There was unlimited fuel

And a ready source of ignition

But, like all flames,

Our love settled,

Metamorphosis

Into embers,

Into whatever the fuck it was.

Pavlovian conditioning

Love was our shared habit

Held Together?

By the genuine

Desire to continuously spark and ignite

Like we once did

By the human desire

To not burn alone

To not suffocate alone

This was only nominally love

And even then only liminally

Fire cannot be sustained by

The nostalgia for an idyllic beginning that never was

A felt inability to cope with being alone

To cope with grief and mourning and suffering

To cope with the inevitability of fucking dying alone

Fumes.

And up in smoke two years went.

This was never fucking love.

Desperation

Does not, cannot

Beget or sustain love.

Thank you for teaching me that.

[existentialatheist]

What Do We Owe Each Other Pt. II

In the last post, I tried to give a provisional framework for the kinds of questions I’m thinking about. At the end of the post, I suggested one possible universal obligations to others: to always act in good faith. Let’s bracket that for now. I think maybe the process of elimination may be helpful. Perhaps we can generalize from the obligations to one another we don’t have to general principles regarding obligations we DON’T have and maybe that will give us a way into the sorts of obligations we do have to others.

Since love has been on my mind as of late, let’s start there:

We don’t have an obligation to (and these are but a few of our non-obligations):

(i) love any particular person

(ii) reciprocate feelings one has for us that we don’t have for them

(iii) give all of our time to one, or all of our, relationship or to the person we love.

(iv) stay with someone, whatever the reason.

(v) accept mistreatment in the name of love

What about friendship?

We don’t have an obligation to:

(i) treat one friendship as exclusive, unless otherwise agreed upon.

(ii) give all of our time and attention to a particular friend/friendship/group of friends.

(iii) prioritize a friend/group of friends/friendship over all other priorities in our life.

(iv) have the same read on the friendship that our friend does and vice versa.

(v) invite your friend to everything you do.

Alright, so we have an albeit small and tenuous sample of non-obligations here (we haven’t explored lots of different kinds of relationships, a salient one being familial).

Can we generalize anything from the non-obligations listed above? Admittedly, the examples may be cherrypicked because they’re on my mind as of late, but I think there is nonetheless something here.

At the core of all these non-obligations seems to be a principle of self-care or self-preservation. Some may call it “asserting boundaries,” while others may call it a reasonable orientation to any relationship. Perhaps all of the above applies. At the core of all these non-obligations to others seems to lie an obligation to oneself, to preserve oneself, to allow oneself to grow and flourish, to not be exhausted by one’s relationship, to allow oneself the opportunity to be an individual. And more than a mere absence of obligation, rather than merely being optional, the above seem to be apparent extensions of a fundamental obligation to oneself. They seem, more orginarily, like negative obligations to not do such and such rather than non-obligations, or ethically optional or supererogatory, that is, not having to do such and such.

If there is a truth in any of the above, and admittedly the above is a very tenuous line of reasoning, if among possibly many fundamental obligations, we find this duty of self-care, what might this say about our duties to others? If we have an ethical obligation to ourselves to allow ourselves to flourish as individuals, to survive and thrive, what might our obligations to others look like?

Do we have an analogous duty of care to others? If we do, is this duty of care to others to be fleshed out legalistically, purely formally, and rather contentless, perhaps like a contractualist might posit, or purely dependent on context, on the idiosyncracies of the social and ethical landscape one finds oneself in? How might our duty of self-care and duties to others interact?

To be continued.

Late note: might this duty of self-care entail fostering relationships and being open to others?

I want to stress, though, that we avoid the trap of perverting self-care into a self-indulgent spectacle and actively work against the narcissistic temptation to turn a question about our obligations to others into a question of what we are owed. Of course to say that I have such and such an obligation to you in virtue of this or that consideration entails that you have this obligation to me in virtue of this or that consideration. But the question is not about what others owe us and as long as our intention in this inquiry is ultimately to be able to justify our demands on others, we will not have made any real progress.

[existentialatheist]

What Do We Owe Each Other? Pt. I

After my first breakup with my long term partner, and making the classic mistake of trying to fill the hole she left in my heart with a new interest, and to top it off trying to find that person through dating apps, I’m confronted by a few questions. While they are initially motivated by the individualist streak in the dating world, I think these questions are generalizable, and really not about dating per se, but about our modern orientation to others.

It’s a rather common sentiment in the current dating world that no one owes another person anything. While it’s not unreasonable to assert boundaries, particularly when a new person approaches (surely, we owe ourselves a duty of care), can we in good faith claim that we owe each other nothing? A more particular question: is it fair to another to have expectations for another person, particular one with whom we have no established rapport?

What are our most basic obligations to one another? What do we owe one another, if anything? Are there any obligations that have a claim to universality, the applicability of which isn’t contextual? If we do have some set of fundamental obligations to one another, that underlie every interaction we have, what might those look like?

After a salient get together with some friends a few weeks ago, and some thinking, one basic obligation we might propose is that we owe it to one another to act always in good faith.

To be continued.

[existentialatheist]

Return

I’m back.

It’s been too long since writing, writing for my own benefit, writing at all. Someone close to me, or rather, various people close to me, have led me to the revelation that I make sense of things by externalizing them, so this is where I will do that.

This won’t be my soapbox. In fact, the purpose of this space will be to draw connections, spurious and otherwise, to publicly think through issues with some measure of accountability, to take questions seriously. Unlike some of my peers, I struggle with writer’s paralysis. I do not have the capacity to reasonably track my own flow of thoughts on paper, partially because my stream of consciousness largely consists of racing, excited thoughts, and because I suffer from, and I believe this is probably the case, a sensori-motor delay.

I don’t yet know what’s to come in this space, or in any space really. Stay tuned.

[existentialatheist]

The average Joe approaches me at the gym--Paul, is his name. We strike up a conversation about business, the economy, saving money, etc. He recalls wild tales of his investment portfolio. “Buy low, sell high!” How dull! After noting my spectacular lack of self-esteem, he tells me, “Don’t wait for opportunity; create it.” What pseudointellectual hogwash! Create opportunity? Had I let the conversation linger on, I’m sure he would have advised creating my own luck. Paul, the annoying philistine, articulated a half-truth: opportunities don’t seize themselves. The other half of the truth is this: opportunity is not borne of a subject. All we can do is try to chart the trajectory of opportunity and cling to its winds and tides, lest it blow us over and drown us.

[existentialatheist]

Whence does passion come?

From the spontaneity of the soul

Or from the impingement of the external world

Or from the accidental contingencies of embodied life?

To whom or to what do I owe this current aimlessness?

I am drowning in shallow water

“Get up,” they say

But how?

[existentialatheist]

I’m tired

I want to sleep

Perhaps forever

If forever would only arrive sooner

I could be happy again

Or for once

Truly happy

[existentialatheist]

We fought today,

Again

Your words,

“Leave me alone”

A glancing blow

I parry,

“I will”

...

Our tumultuous love

Fossilized

Etched and inscribed

Into our eardrums,

Our eyes,

Blood, skin, and bones

For what?

[existentialatheist]

Old, soiled  gym shirts

Moth-made holes

from days and nights drying in the summer heat

Like the gaps in our relationships

When is the shirt no longer worth repair?

When it is more hole than shirt?

[existentialatheist]

Commit

Submit to fate

forks in the road

infinite

the sun sets over the horizon

paralyzed

quick, decide

or be lost

in the undifferentiated nexus of possibility

as the world passes you by

or rather,

drags you along with it

Renouncing freedom

is the ultimate deception

feign denial of

necessity of contingency

[heteroglossia]

I notice you never write about your personal life, your relationships. Why?

The answer is quite banal, I suppose; despite the negative connotations that might come with the term “private,” I am and have always been a rather private person. This seemingly anonymous archive is one of my most intimate spaces. I also think that, as a poet / theorist, one’s gaze is more helpful and interesting when directed externally rather than internally, since everything is always already impossibly personal. One might aim to trace the larger visual field and the experience of the other, but it’s  inevitably distilled through the diminutive lens of the I. Aesthetically, ontologically, and politically, the I-looking-outward is far more interesting and discursive than the mimetic expression of a double mirror. If you can get your hands on a copy, I recently read an essay by Jed Rasula, “Poetry’s Voice-Over,” and he does a better job than I ever could in his implicit criticism of what you might call the “confessional poetry” of the 20th century, but yes, I find many aspects of the term and its associations myopic. Everything is confessional anyway, in the sense of there being a speaker (even if the speaker is simply the language of the poem itself and not the traditional “I”) offering something previously unknown or unrevealed to a reader, and yes, I understand why a poem wherein a person walks down the city street to get a sandwich might be just as illuminating as a wheelbarrow or field poem; the crux here hinges on an attention to language as Othering. Even if the poem is directed inward, it can be done in such a way that still externalizes. The text must other itself.

[existentialatheist]

There’s interesting insight here. One might add that the literal content of one’s self-reflection is not the most telling aspect of a text. What’s more, since the self is already outside itself, talk of an I directed outward doesn’t tell us a whole lot about its object. When the particular, empirical I has to reckon with itself and/or its existentiality, we learn a lot about the ways we can and do relate to ourselves.

[existentialatheist]

Who is happiest?--One who admires another's merit, And enjoys another's pleasure as much as his own.

Goethe

[existentialatheist]

They really annoy me, the masses, Supporting first this and then that, And thinking they somehow matter Because they hate the aristocrat.

Goethe

[existentialatheist]

1 Year Progress

As of July 1st, it will have been one year since I started lifting. At the end I’ll list all my numbers. If that’s why you’re here, skip to the end. I don’t want to write a post where I blather on about the struggle of being fat or being a grad student or whatever. No, I want to share some things I’ve learned They are not in any order.

Observations

1. When it comes to exercise, half the battle is just starting. If you can start, the odds you’ll continue are decent.

2. If you want to increase your odds of continuing to exercise, pick a training program. Most training programs, whether for conditioning, endurance, or strength, are better than none. Try it for a month. If you don’t see progress or you just don’t like it, try another out. There are tons of free training programs on the web. I recommend the novice strength training program, Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe.

3. Set goals. Set lots of goals. Set long-term and intermediate, determinate, short-term goals. If you have lofty fitness/health goals, it’s imperative you recognize that they are lofty.

4. Record everything you do in the gym (as much as can reasonably be tracked). Even if it’s just by memory after you get home, the more info you have about your training session, the better. Include obvious things like the exercises and warmups you did, but you might also consider how you felt. Was it particularly difficult or easy? Did you feel tired or fatigued? Were you under a lot of stress that day/week/month? I use a spreadsheet on my pc to record my numbers and leave myself notes, and it works pretty well, but you can use a notebook or your phone.

5. If, for whatever reason, you miss a workout, don’t sweat it. Regroup and assess your options. If you miss a workout, go the next day, or just skip that day. The point is to enrich, not constrain, your life.

6. If you miss a fitness goal, don’t sweat it. Regroup and assess your options. Was it a reasonable goal? Did you give yourself enough time? Were there mitigating factors you didn’t account for? What can you change about your training, diet, and lifestyle, if you need to change anything, to reach your goal?  Remember: not hitting a goal in a specified amount of time doesn’t mean you can’t or won’t reach it.

7. If you get injured either in our outside the gym, training does not have to stop. With most injuries, though obviously not all, there are modifications you can make to your training program such that you can continue training. It may not be ideal, but it can be done.

8. Food and rest are your friends. Get lots of both. Your diet will vary according to your training goals, but eat plenty and often. However many hours you sleep to wake up well-rested, try to get that much sleep every night, or at least the night before going to the gym.

9. Unless you have very specific weight goals, don’t worry about the exact amount of calories you consume. Live a little! It’s great to know the exact calories you’re consuming, but if you have to devote limited mental energy anywhere, it’s better to devote it to life things, to relationships, to training, and to stress management than to calorie counting.

10. Training is about enriching your life and self-improvement. The moment training starts trending away from self-improvement, stop to consider and re-evaluate your desires and commitments.

11. Guilt and shame are inevitable for most people, but they are not very often conducive to progress. A more productive way to handle unmet expectations is to analyze the training and lifestyle data you’ve been collecting. Remember, training is about making your life better. If it causes you excessive guilt and shame, you can refuse it.

12. Focus on more immediate training goals--like increased functionality, increased strength, endurance in some activity--than abstract and ambitious goals like weight loss. The idea is to structure your training program and diet in service of long term goals such that you don’t have constantly track your progress toward some long term goal. So instead of trying to track your progress toward some long term goal, like weight loss, workout to workout, focus on hitting those more manageable intermediate goals. If, for example, you’re doing a strength training program, focus on increasing your squat 10 lbs, which for most novices is achievable in the course of a week, or increasing your bench press by 5 lbs.

I’ll add more as they come to me, but this seems like a pretty good start.

Numbers

Bench Press: 3x5@135lbs --- 4RM@225lbs

Squat: 3x5@115lbs ------------- 6RM@355lbs/1RM@385lbs

Deadlift: 1x5@135lbs ---------- 5RM@405lbs/1RM@465lbs

Press: 3x5@80lbs -------------- 1RM@190lbs

Pendlay Row: 5x3@65lbs ---- 5RM@225lbs

Body Mass: 400 lbs ------------ 370 lbs

[heteroglossia]

What is the most important question to ask ourselves?

The only question is the impossible question.

I try to ask myself daily if I am existing in such a way as to cause the least amount of possible harm to all peoples and things, myself included. Always, I have answered no. So becoming happens after the answer.

[existentialatheist]

The most important question to ask is not, “Am I minimizing harm?”, though it is an important one, and surely not asking this question is a sort of epistemic violence. However, I think that the most basic question, one which is covered over by our everyday goings-on and in so doing already provide us an answer, is the ontological-ethical question of how to live.

Everything one does, and does not do, is an answer, albeit incomplete, to this question.

Speculative aside, needs development: Perhaps we should eschew concerns about particular choices and instead think about the style or spirit of our lives. This is roughly equivalent, in ethics, of switching from a consequentialism or deontology to a virtue ethics approach.

[existentialatheist]

“ Don't let liberal anti-racist discourse fool you -- this is not just about remembering and healing. It's about fighting. It's about turning your pain into resistance. If you can't (or won't) do that, you aren't standing in solidarity or making a space "safer" for the most disposable.”

This is exactly the sort of shit I always talk about. A singular vision of revolution. A singular vision of revolutionary activity. A singular vision of how to effect social change. A paternalism about how to cope with violence, what we should do in the face of tragedy. And, on top of all that, ableist.

[existentialatheist]

It's interesting to note that while anti-oppressive movements encourage us to see the ways oppression is systemic, that is, totalizing, the discussions happening about moral responsibility and blameworthiness are still more often than not centered around privileged individuals who are either (a) not motivated by the interests of the oppressed and thus not interested in doing anything or (b) are members of some other oppressed group, which inevitably takes a back seat to their membership in a privileged group (at least when assigning duties and blame), and motivated by similar concerns, but are posited as other and excluded from full participation, if they are permitted any at all.

Before anyone misinterprets me, I earnestly believe that anti-oppressive movements are necessary and that there is tons of rage, frustration, and sadness. I also understand the need for safe spaces where marginalized voices have the opportunity to be heard and not delegitimized. I am also not suggesting that there aren't false allies and shitty people who do shitty things. I suppose I just don't really see the utility for any end of assigning blame and responsibility