Sunday 2 March 2008

Abstraction

As the dictates of fate would have it in the chronicles of an SMU student who doesn't have a laptop, I am, for the 5th time this week, in the school library pimping off the free-access computer terminals trying to get my work done and generally keeping in line with life on the virtual side. I wouldn't consider this bearing the brunt of a fatal dependency on technology yet, but I'm seeing how close it can get.

Angie's here too because her laptop, pet-named The Immortal, is ironically dying, and I was momentarily entertained by Rahul Sagar's email demanding that she type out her political science midterm paper as her writing was the only one that was so illegible he couldn't read. I'm surprised I got let off the hook here.

Trying to get my AS essay done but I'm moving slow. I wouldn't say it's because I'm stuck or uninspired, but when you're someone who really appreciates the philosophy behind the papers we're doing here, you can really get carried away. I'm still trying to decide between doing The Conscience of Huckleberry Finn by Jonathan Bennett or Famine, Affluence and Morality by Peter Singer, but time and again I keep diverting my attention away from finding out the illogic's of their arguments towards being enthralled by the points of philosophy themselves; there really is a beauty and artform in such work.

I particularly like The Conscience of Huckleberry Finn because of the way Bennett argues about the nature of sympathy and morality, and the good use of examples in Heinrich Himmler and Jonathan Edwards, but for that precise reason I cannot really choose to work on it because I will then tend to find less fault with it and come up with a sub-par convincing critique.




The first sign of a nervous breakdown is when you start thinking your work is terribly important.

Audio Candy:
Three Days Grace - Gone Forever

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