What else do you like?

[Philoctetes]

What about astrophysics and maths that I can't pronounce?! 

[Ataraxia]

Expand, if you would.

Genre fiction: fantasy, science fiction, horror, mystery. The reading and writing of it.

Eastern philosophy: Mostly Buddhism. It's what gets me through, you could say. Changed my life. Blah blah blah. 

[Philoctetes]

Genre fiction: fantasy, science fiction, horror, mystery. The reading and writing of it.

Eastern philosophy: Mostly Buddhism. It's what gets me through, you could say. Changed my life. Blah blah blah. 

Thanks.

Changed your life in what manner?

[Todd]

Could you expand or do you just mean in general?

In general.  I'm not an academic, so it's all very non-technical, though I do tend toward somewhat less popular areas (Great Man bios aside) - economic history and development, changes in international order and potential future developments, etc.

[Ataraxia]

Changed your life in what manner?

It gave me better control over it, over my emotions. The minute I started reading a book on zen, everything clicked; epiphany city, bam bam bam. Since then (around 1990), I haven't looked back and I feel I'm a MUCH better person because of it.  0:)

[Philoctetes]

In general.  I'm not an academic, so it's all very non-technical, though I do tend toward somewhat less popular areas (Great Man bios aside) - economic history and development, changes in international order and potential future developments, etc.

Thanks for that, Todd.

It gave me better control over it, over my emotions. The minute I started reading a book on zen, everything clicked; epiphany city, bam bam bam. Since then (around 1990), I haven't looked back and I feel I'm a MUCH better person because of it.  0:)

Thanks for that, Ataraxia.

[DavidW]

What about astrophysics and maths that I can't pronounce?! 

The old research area in grad school was gravitational wave physics.  I don't do that anymore though.  I'm interested in fluid dynamics as applied to gas planets like Jupiter.  I would like to learn more about that and possibly publish in that field someday.  But it stands as a hobby now that I barely have time for.

[Philoctetes]

The old research area in grad school was gravitational wave physics.  I don't do that anymore though.  I'm interested in fluid dynamics as applied to gas planets like Jupiter.  I would like to learn more about that and possibly publish in that field someday.  But it stands as a hobby now that I barely have time for.

I'll freely admit that all sounds awesome, and yet, I don't know what any of it really means, but it sounds really heady and important. 

[eyeresist]

Screw-ups, fuck-ups, rejects, perpetual victims, the mentally ill. The people for whom every day is a struggle for sanity and a glimmer of happiness.
Also, from the above, the moral problems of the individual vs. society. These are what drive my thinking and my writing.

[Philoctetes]

Screw-ups, fuck-ups, rejects, perpetual victims. The people for whom every day is a struggle for sanity and a glimmer of happiness.
Also, from the above, the moral problems of the individual vs. society. These are what drive my thinking and my writing.

Very cool. I'm also interested in oppression and its kith and kin. Thanks for sharing.

[eyeresist]

Very cool. I'm also interested in oppression and its kith and kin. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks. I added "the mentally ill" to my list. I guess the difference between our approaches would be that you are into systemic analysis, whereas I am more into simply delineating the emotional experience. Figures - I'm a drop-out!

[Philoctetes]

Thanks. I added "the mentally ill" to my list. I guess the difference between our approaches would be that you are into systemic analysis, whereas I am more into simply delineating the emotional experience. Figures - I'm a drop-out!

I don't know if it has to do with educational levels. You just have to go where your mind fits. I'm not good on that sort of level. Really anything to do with emotions, I'm piss poor at. I would wager that the kind of things that you write compared to the kind of things I might write, are read with much more frequency. I note this only because, when I check out my books for researching, and you see the stamp card nearly empty or sometimes non-existent, you realize that you have to press forth only because you find it interesting.

[classicalgeek]

Very interesting!  Here are a few of mine:

American History Especially from perspectives not often heard (women, minorities, the working class.)  Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States has been revelatory.
Computer Programming  This ties in to my job in software QA.  I'm specifically working on honing my C# coding skills, but anything related to technology fascinates me.
Natural Living My wife and I are working on this together - learning lifestyle choices that are sustainable and friendly to the planet.
Cooking I've always loved food - I went through a big 'foodie' phase about 10 years ago.  Now our focus is on healthy eating and food allergies - we currently eat mostly vegetarian, with some seafood mixed in.  No red meat or poultry, though I do love to barbecue.  And my wife is allergic to soy and dairy, so that presents a few more wrinkles to our diet!
Baseball and American Football As I grew up in New Hampshire, I'm a devoted follower of the New England teams (Red Sox and Patriots); as I now live in the Northwest, I'm a devoted follower of the Seattle teams (Mariners and Seahawks), though I'll watch any game, especially an NFL one!
Parenting With two young kids, this is only natural!  We try for a gentle, positive approach based on the Attachment Parenting model.  Also, our 6-year-old daughter has Asperger's, so we're learning as much about that as we can so we can give her the support she needs.
Travel Mostly we just fantasize about where we'll go since travel in our situation is a luxury.  Hopefully when we're retired we'll be able to fulfill some of these fantasies!  We are looking forward to 10 days in Maui this coming July, though... 

Oh... did I mention classical music? 

[Philoctetes]

American History Especially from perspectives not often heard (women, minorities, the working class.)  Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States has been revelatory.

Thanks for sharing. What exactly is interesting to you about those perspectives?

[Brian]

That sounds like a wicked neat thesis. What exactly were their influences, in short, if you could?

I wanted to understand where the 'Enlightenment' ideal of man as a reasoning, sympathetic animal came from. e.g., Adam Smith saw man in Theory of Moral Sentiments as a creature whose moral judgments were naturally guided by forces like sympathy, compassion, and imagination. It's all very different from the traditional theological view of sin, inherent tendencies toward vice and evil, etc. What I found was that from about 1620-1650 we started seeing various English clerics and average-joe clergymen arguing against the sterner continental breeds of Protestantism by suggesting that for all his sinful tendencies man has good tendencies too. Then, when Hobbes published Leviathan, members of the Church tried to take it down by disproving the 'nasty, brutish, and short' natural life of man - inadvertently suggesting for the first time that moral behavior and good deeds could be a natural tendency rather than a product of piety.

[Philoctetes]

I wanted to understand where the 'Enlightenment' ideal of man as a reasoning, sympathetic animal came from. e.g., Adam Smith saw man in Theory of Moral Sentiments as a creature whose moral judgments were naturally guided by forces like sympathy, compassion, and imagination. It's all very different from the traditional theological view of sin, inherent tendencies toward vice and evil, etc. What I found was that from about 1620-1650 we started seeing various English clerics and average-joe clergymen arguing against the sterner continental breeds of Protestantism by suggesting that for all his sinful tendencies man has good tendencies too. Then, when Hobbes published Leviathan, members of the Church tried to take it down by disproving the 'nasty, brutish, and short' natural life of man - inadvertently suggesting for the first time that moral behavior and good deeds could be a natural tendency rather than a product of piety.

Thanks for that summation. That sounds like a really interesting thesis. How did you come to choose this as your subject, rather than something else?

[eyeresist]

I don't know if it has to do with educational levels. You just have to go where your mind fits. I'm not good on that sort of level. Really anything to do with emotions, I'm piss poor at. I would wager that the kind of things that you write compared to the kind of things I might write, are read with much more frequency. I note this only because, when I check out my books for researching, and you see the stamp card nearly empty or sometimes non-existent, you realize that you have to press forth only because you find it interesting.

When I mentioned I was a drop-out, I meant not that I'm uneducated but that I have an outsider perspective. I also don't really have the discipline for academic work (I couldn't stand doing all that undergraduate work on stuff that interested me not at all), but am a fair to good thinker in the narrow corners that interest me. I'm a much better thinker than I used to be, thanks in large part to 10+years of following Arts & Letters Daily (admittedly I used to be terribly stupid, so the improvement is definitely only relative).

Re emotions, I think I'm generally regarded by people IRL as being relatively cold, but my experience is there's no practical benefit to allowing yourself to get worked up about things. Strong emotions are best partaken of only at 3rd hand.

Keep pushing with your research! I like the idea of being part of a great knowledge-building enterprise.

[Philoctetes]

When I mentioned I was a drop-out, I meant not that I'm uneducated but that I have an outsider perspective. I also don't really have the discipline for academic work (I couldn't stand doing all that undergraduate work on stuff that interested me not at all), but am a fair to good thinker in the narrow corners that interest me. I'm a much better thinker than I used to be, thanks in large part to 10+years of following Arts & Letters Daily (admittedly I used to be terribly stupid, so the improvement is definitely only relative).

Re emotions, I think I'm generally regarded by people IRL as being relatively cold, but my experience is there's no practical benefit to allowing yourself to get worked up about things. Strong emotions are best partaken of only at 3rd hand.

Keep pushing with your research! I like the idea of being part of a great knowledge-building enterprise.

Ah! Sorry for the misunderstanding on my end. Thanks for clarifying it. Have you written anything that's been published or that I could see?

I feel you on the emotion issue.

Thanks. I'm hopeful that one day I can make some sort of contribution.

[coffee]

I'm another history guy, though my interest in that is only about 6 or 7 years old, so I've barely started. I can't narrow it down much; I can't think of any part of the history that doesn't interest me, but I must be most interested in intellectual history, cultural history, economics, technology and especially military technology, and the dynamics of state power.

I'm as interested in science as anyone - biology, geology, physics, astronomy, chemistry, materials science, computing. One thing I want to learn a lot more about in the relatively near future is 18th century science.

I used to have a big interest in philosophy, and even majored in it for 5 semesters before changing to religion. Now what interests me in philosophy isn't so much the details of someone's thought or whether we can criticize it, but just understanding what it was about that thinker's world that he or she was responding to, and how he or she influenced later people. I still read the occasional book, but for the most part contemporary philosophy doesn't grab me.

Before I got into history, my biggest interest was in religion. A sort of systematic interest; I'm not only interested in theology or sacred texts or ritual or music or whatever, but in all of it, how it holds together, how it works psychologically, and how it works politically. Unlike most English-speaking people, I'm as interested in Hinduism and Chinese religion and ancient Mesopotamian religion and new religious movements as I am interested in Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, and Islam. Also, I'm more interested in religion in practice than in religion in theory. In fact, to me, religion in theory (theology and so on) is interesting to me as a sort of practice: theology as performance.

I used to be interested in politics, but I fear that freedom and democracy are probably doomed, and that resistance to the emerging oligarchy is not only futile but self-destructive. I just hope I'm allowed to go on listening to music, reading books, and to save enough money to travel extensively before I die.

I have some interest in famous fiction, mostly because of its relation to history. But reading alertly is one of my strengths, and had my interests lied in that direction I think I could've been a critic or an editor. In my attempts to write fiction, I fail at dialogue. Very hard thing to do well.

[Philoctetes]

Also, I'm more interested in religion in practice than in religion in theory. In fact, to me, religion in theory (theology and so on) is interesting to me as a sort of practice: theology as performance.

Thanks a lot for that post. Could you perhaps expand a bit more on this idea above, I found it pretty interesting.