I've been reading and listening to lots of history, as well as ESTJ having found Nausea by Sartre, which I have so far enjoyed.
Here are some of my collected thoughts from last night and this morning.
Nausea - Jean-Paul Sartre
Very identifiable novel: few people write quite in this manner; or think in such a way, it seems. Nonetheless, fewer people communicate this style of thinking than experience it; or so logic would seem to dictate at first draft.
The main relatable elements are the style of thinking, the style of writing, the nature and focus of the concerns, the profession of the author and their specialism (both fictional and meta)... This proliferates exponentially in terms of every sentence being the cause of further deep thought.
Reading non-fiction books (or works with non-fiction meta purposes) causes my mind to feel like an engine going to work at finding the key mechanisms of the book, the style of writing and the mind of its author. This is usually discernable within the first few pages, if not the first chapter. Hence why I don't tend to read anywhere the entirety of non-fiction works (or fictional works with non-fictional meta purposes). Incidentally, the necessity of creating an entirely new qualification category for Nausea is.... I forget the word I used. Cumbersome, perhaps. Inconvenient may be more likely.
Sartre has a lot of concisely made, salient insights to make about the subconscious, thought and the experiencing of life; particularly as a thinker, and to a penetrating depth. Many of them are implicit and it would be difficult to highlight them simply through quotation.
The best thing would be to write down everything that happens from day to day. To keep a diary in order to understand. To neglect no nuances or little details, even if they seem unimportant, and above all to classify them. I must say how I see this table, the street, people, my packet of tobacco, since these are the things which have changed. I must fix the exact extent and nature of this change.
I mustn't put strangeness where there's nothing. I think that is the danger of keeping a diary: you exaggerate everything, you are on the look-out, and you continually stretch the truth. On the other hand, it is certain that from one moment to the next ... I may recapture this impression of the day before yesterday. I must always be prepared, or else it might slip through my fingers again. I must never ---- anything but note down carefully and in the greatest detail everything that happens.
I can no longer write anything definite about that business on Saturday and the day before yesterday - I am already too far away from it ... .
What happened inside me didn't leave any clear traces.
The peculiar feelings I had the other week strike me as quite ridiculous today : I can no longer enter into them.
Something has happened to me ... It installed itself cunningly, little by little I felt a little strange, a little awkward, and that was all. Once it was established, it didn't move anymore, it lay low and I was able to persuade myself that there was nothing wrong with me, that it was a false alarm. And now it has started blossoming.
So a change has taken place in the course of these last few weeks. But where? It's an abstract change which settles on nothing.
I think it's I who has changed : that's the simplest solution, also the most unpleasant. But I have to admit that I am subject to these sudden transformations. The thing is that I very rarely thing; consequently a host of little metamorphoses accumulate in me without my noticing it, and then, one fine day, a positive revolution takes place. That is what has given my life this halting, incoherent aspect.
I'm afraid of what is going to be born and take hold of me and carry me off - I wonder where? Shall I have to go away again, leaving everything behind - my research, my book? Shall I awake in a few months, a few years, exhausted, disappointed, in the midst of fresh ruins? I should like to understand myself properly before it is too late.
In order to exist, they too have to join with others.
I for my part live alone, entirely alone. I never speak to anybody, I receive nothing, I give nothing.
Now, I don't think about anybody anymore; I don't even bother to look for words. It flows through me, more or less quickly, and I don't fix anything, I just let it go. Most of the time, because of their failure to fasten on to words, my thoughts remain misty and nebulous. They assume vague, amusing shapes and are then swallowed up: I promptly forget them.
When you live alone ... plausibility disappears at the same time as friends. You let events flow by too: you suddenly see people appear who speak and then go away; you plunge into stories of which you can't make head or tail: you'd make a terrible witness.
It takes me so long to perfectly formulate sentences sometimes.
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Guns n' Roses - Appetite for Destruction
There is so much depth to the experience of listening to Appetite for Destruction for me now. I can never again just listen to it as music. It has too much meaning; too much integration with my self-development and my past; too much nostalgia. I know every part of every song on it so well; it is all so intimately familiar. It is quite impossible to put that music on casually. This has the odd consequence of a hard rock album causing a state of pensiveness.
I always found the lyrics of Anything Goes incredibly uncomfortable and over the top, but it's Guns N' Roses and I enjoy the instrumental layers of the track, so I still listen to it. Most songs have some issues with this, but this one is particularly bad. Is its point of view really experienced to some degree by most people? Despite making allowances, I continue to be surprised at the extent to which people get into these things.
I suppose that to some extent it's interesting that an album with this kind of song on it played (no pun intended) the role it did in my life.
I always preferred the live version of Rocket Queen. It doesn't have that really awkward recording over the top.
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The History of Byzantium - The Final War
Heraclius and the final Byzantium-Sassanid war. That podcast took me several attempts to complete. It was a clear example of the way in which attention can wane, by indicating what is missed and at which point one is no longer engaging. It is reminiscent of the time when I watched Blade Runner and kept falling asleep, when Dad kept winding it back.
It really would make a very good film, that.
I was wondering how things would resolve, given that the final conquest of Africa was by Islam and that the Byzantine empire was supposed to last another seven hundred years or so.
The war was an interesting demonstration of why the two empires never really went to war. They were too evenly matched. The factors which led to victory were always circumstantial: weather; morale; higher proportions of experienced soldiers.
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History of Philosophy - Philosophy of History - Ibn Khaldun
Ibn Khaldun - philosophical theory of history:
That there is a cycle of rise and fall based around a sense of group solidarity, in accordance with "human nature". It involves five stages. First, conquest in a mood of solidarity, then the emergence of a single ruler, followed by a period of wise rule, then a period of overconfidence and luxury as rule passes to a new generation, then a collapse and period of decline as a new group seizes control.
The sense of group solidarity leads to an 'indomitable spirit'.
This works to an extent, at different levels, but provided that a new good ruler can take control before the period of decline takes too strong a hold, the civilisation can continue. This is also able to happen several rulers later, provided that they have far enough to fall, allowing a capable ruler to come to light before the end.
Perhaps more of a natural philosophy? 'Anatomising' history with an 'empirical eye'.
Ibn Khaldun's judgement of other things can be understood when contextualised within this theory. He admires those who are rising and dislikes those who are falling, given that they must have fallen into decadence.
He also makes allowances for the limits of his theory, but in the form of recognising miraculous history, such as that associated with the rise of Islam.
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Some of this - particularly parts not on Guns N' Roses or the bullet-pointed parts in the Sartre section - are paraphrased from podcasts, etc.
