Hi all – decided to try wordpress, partly in annoyance at some of the things Facebook has been doing to my page there, and partly because for a while I’ve been intending to start some sort of site for philosophy, mainly, with politics / sociology as a subsidiary interest. I have other sites and blogs, custom built, or on Google’s blogspot, which I’m happy with, but thought I’d give wordpress a spin.
Just dabbling for now; the posts are at the moment close to being “dummies”, but give some indication of what I plan.
UPDATE 20/02/2013 – They haven’t been dummies for a while, but nevertheless, I’ve still got my work cut out for me.
I’ve given a little bit more perspective on the three place-holder posts today 3/6/10.
Done some work on Aesthetics today and added Informal Logical Fallacies a few weeks back 17/5/11.
Slightly more on Aesthetics today 10/4/12
Added the below, today, 20 / 04 / 11 (originally a Facebook Note but now an independent limb / auxiliary) -
Thumthing Of Mythelf
David Ruaune
is
Under Construction
This is instead of a profile done the usual Facebook way – As a Nietzschean Superman, I was very unhappy with the way Facebook took what I had put some time and effort into constructing and composing, in accordance with the available format, but then shredded it into adverts for the more high-profile likes, and just deleted what they couldn’t use. I accept that advertising is the price to be paid for lots of stuff they do quite well, but the way they did this was disrespectful and, to be honest comrade, cheap - and I don’t like people tampering with my actual work / words.
Favourite books, films, etc., is something of a fictional construct itself, but that said, here goes -
Interests -
Thinking, Reading and Writing -
Philosophy, Poetics, Literary Theory, Rhetoric, Semiotics, Russian Formalism, Philosophy of Mind and Neuroscience, Cognitive Psychology, Ontology, Systems Theory, Cybernetics, Complexity “Theory”,
My computer folders and files,
My websites, links to which are on my Info page around here,
Getting a bit squiffy (red wine, dark beers, Guinness, scrumpy cider, whiskey&cola even though it’s horrible, G&T when on jolly-hollies), and taking extremely high-powered mind-bending psychedelic drugs, (e.g. Salvia Divinorum) often but not always mescaline based,
Yapping with friends about all the sort of stuff on here,
Messing with the parrot,
Films – mainly on telly or DVD, but occasionally cinema. Mainly american. I’m not arty or precious about movies. See below.
Philosophers –
Aristotle, Spinoza, Hegel, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein.
Poetry –
Reading -
Donne, Blake, Keats, Eliot, Mitchell, J.C.Clarke and everyone else!
Writing and performing my own poetry. There’s a link around here for a sample of my work, mainly serious, but the stuff I perform tends to be humorous and light.
Fiction -
Tristram Shandy – Laurence Sterne, Short Stories of Franz Kafka, Lanark – Alasdair Gray, The Silmarillion – J. R. R. Tolkien, Darkness Visible – William Golding, Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Lives of the Monster Dogs – Kirsten Bakis, Billy Liar – Keith Waterhouse, The Snow Queen – Hans Christian Andersen, Noctuary – Thomas Ligotti, Northern Lights – Philip Pullman, Brave New World – Aldous Huxley, P.K.Dick, and God and Buddha bless Jack Kerouac, initiator of the ongoing World Revolution.
Holiday reading / Light –
Clive Barker but I dun ‘im in, Iain M. Banks, Anne Rice’s vampire stuff.
Current studies -
Front-burner – The founding fathers of sociology; I’m trying to plug a gap in my knowledge (one of many I hear you say), and given that I am unavoidably alas a political critter, and want to present some proper political theory, including directions for concretisation / praxis, sometime soon, I’m doing the basics now. I’m studying Durkheim at the moment after briefly reading about Parsons, and heading onto Weber and some political considerations of market economics after that (Marx I already know) – unless something else commandeers my attention in the meantime;
UPDATE 29/08/2011 : Studies of Durkheim and Weber completed. I now intend to shift to a full focus on poetics.
UPDATE 07/09/2011: Deep study of Russian Formalism already underway.
UPDATE 10/04/2012: Study of Russian Formalism completed a few months back.
Geoffrey Leech – A Linguistic Guide to Poetry as part of an ongoing engagement with rhetoric etc., which is a brilliant book I’ve read most of and am closely annotating but got pushed onto a back-burner by sociology and the wonders of my new ebook reader;
UPDATE 27/01/2012: Leech back to the front.
UPDATE 10/04/2012: Finished it the other day. It is one of the best books I’ve ever read.
Front-burner – I’ve been systematising the informal logical fallacies for the last week or two (see the state of the art on this site);
UPDATE 10/04/2012: Informal Logical Fallacies very much on the back burner now.
Re-reading the Gospels and studying the historical Jesus on a real back burner;
Hegel’s (Encyclopedia) Logic going well, as part of a developing engagement with Ontology.
UPDATE 21/06/2012 – Two thirds through the logic, and two thirds through Rosen’s Hegel’s Dialectic and its Criticism. After this, never again.
UPDATE 12/12/2012 – Hegel’s Logic finished yesterday, and Rosen finished a while back.
Lined up – proper re-reading and analyses of Arthur Koestler, Morse Peckham and other stuff with regard to theories of creativity and rhetoric.
UPDATE 20/02/2013 – Study of Koestler initiated (Janus, to be followed by The Act Of Creation and The Ghost In The Machine).
UPDATE 07/03/2013 – Study of Koestler going extremely well.
Collecting –
Different English translations of The Bible, and Tolkien books. I’m hoping to put up some photos or even LIVE FILM ACTION!!! of my swanking off with my amazing collections soon. So lock yer daughters up.
Other Fetishes –
Board Games – Chess, Go, Hex, Shogi (Japanese Chess), Xianqi (Chinese Chess), Backgammon; - sometimes playing them but more usually fondling the gear;
Diagrams, Taxonomies.
Stationery and Office Equipment, especially high-quality Pencils and Notepads, Paper, Stapling Machines, etc.
Religion –
All and none (I opted not to answer on the recent census) (A systematic derangement of the census) -
From the pre-modern / Rennaisance era – the Western Occult Tradition – if I had to self-identify maybe that’s what I’d say – which is sort of sideways-on to Christianity, roughly through Giordano Bruno to William Blake and beyond;
From the modern era – Panpsychism / pantheism – something like Spinoza and / or Peirce;
Transhumanist hopes;
Generally – Hermeticism, Alchemy, Gnosticism, Sufism, Lurianic Kabbalah … You get the idea.
Politics -
Ex-marxist.
Music -
The Beatles, The Kinks, Bob Dylan, The Velvet Underground, The Doors, T. Rex, David Bowie, Elvis Costello, The Stranglers, The Smiths.
Generally, the 60s English Psychedelic sound and the 80s New Wave.
The Television Personalities, The Only Ones, Phil Ochs, Syd Barrett, Julian Cope, The Poison Girls, Gammer and his Familiars.
Hymns -
To Be A Pilgrim, Hills of the North Rejoice.
Films -
American Beauty, The Wizard of Oz, Wise Blood, The Fisher King, My Fair Lady, 28 Days Later, Hard Candy, The Terminator, Se7en, The Last Temptation of Christ, George of the Jungle, Where The Wild Things Are.
Television -
Lexx, Brass (coz it’s grim up north), The Day Today, Father Ted, Doctor Who, Columbo, Sherlock Holmes, The Ladies’ and Gentlemen’s Knicker Elastic Show, Star Trek Voyager, A Game of Thrones.
Quotations -
“When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below, and when you make the male and the female one and the same, so that the male not be male nor the female female; and when you fashion eyes in the place of an eye, and a hand in place of a hand, and a foot in place of a foot, and a likeness in the place of a likeness; then will you enter the Kingdom.”
The Gospel of Thomas – verse 22 (There was only one verse, and that was verse 22)
“The eagle never lost so much time, as when he submitted to learn of the crow.”
William Blake – The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
“Madness is rare in individuals – but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule.”
Nietzsche – Beyond Good and Evil
“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”
Oscar Wilde
“All I know is I’m not a marxist.”
Karl Marx
“We are all in the same boat in a stormy sea, and we owe one another a terrible loyalty.”
G. K. Chesterton
“I work eight hours a day, but I’m not writing all that time. I’m thinking, editing, looking something up. Thinking is what I do a lot of.”
Barbara Taylor Bradford
…
David Ruaune
