My Blog: A Rebirth
My original purpose for this blog was to try and combat the extreme polarization I saw unfolding at a rapid rate in this country. Everywhere I looked I saw increasing judgment over compassion, outrage over curiosity and simply an overall heaping dose of naiveness. I believed everyone needed more intellectual skepticism and self-education instead of cognitive-bias based cynicism and group validation. My plan was to use this blog as a space for me to practice the very values I believed would help with lessening the polarization and hoped anyone who happens to stumble across my blog or click on my link would see the work I’m trying to do and may be inspired to take part in their own way, shape or form. I chose a more passive approach because even people who may have the most absurd ideas or understandings probably isn’t going to have their mind changed by someone attacking them directly behind a keyboard. I’m also sympathetic to how I may come across (especially with the goal I’m trying to achieve) because from the outside looking in, I also sometimes seen in myself moments where to the wrong person I may appear to come off pompous and/or high horsey. I promise that is never my intention of course and I want to more share my story as to how I came to even want to write about larger philosophical and cultural issues and hope to change even one life as I’ve changed my own.
I’ve never considered myself a writer before starting this blog nor was I a person who wanted to ponder bigger questions about the world than just that of my subjective experience but here I am. My journey of self-discovery began when I ran into and reconnected with an old friend and when we started hanging out, I learned he was studying philosophy at the University of Oregon. When I first started going over to his house we’d get into conversations about all sorts of different topics and the more I came over the more complex topics started to be brought up and we moved into territories well out of my range of understanding. I started looking things up to keep up with where the conversations were going. I find it interesting to take a dive into how I came to be the very person typing this sentence and I come to realize that initially, I had no prior interests in all the broad topics we covered at first. Politics, economics, philosophy, and a variety of the sciences where all just topics all linked together by the one fact: I’ve always had a passion for conversation. Yes, I’m happy to admit that a majority of discoveries made in my life in regard to my likes and dislikes comes from wanting to be able to have some knowledge to hold a conversation. In this case, I happened to reconnect with an old friend who’s found a strong passion for philosophy and thinking deeper about the world and I just hitched myself along for the ride. The more books I started introducing to myself to articles and podcasts I would consume, combined with frequent conversations I started to learn more and more and have come to really enjoy self-education through all the topics we’d find ourselves talking about. I now give myself more homework on my own accord than I ever did during my time in public education. I was inspired by all these people who have gone out and thought deeply about the world and essentially just monologued how they were thinking and hundreds of years later we still continue to read and attempt to expand on these thoughts. My friend and I decided that we wanted to start a podcast at first to almost document our conversations and try to expand both of our intellectual minds and now being almost a year and a half into our podcast, it has morphed into a podcast promoting all the very things I value most: self-education, deep conversation, intellectual skepticism and critical thinking.
In the beginning, my blog was my space to write essays and the more I wrote the more professional I wanted to have them be. However, as Ian (my old friend and podcast partner) and I decided to start a podcast I became more and more devoted to using my time to work on our podcast and left my blog to the wayside. Even as my blog sat in idle I continued to have urges of wanting to make sure I spend some time on my blog and worked to continue to write (because as they say practice makes perfect), but I realized that I’m doing the best I can to make sure my podcast was professional and I was doing proper research and notes for episode topics and I began to come to the conclusion that my blog wasn’t going to be formal. Hell, the odds of anybody else reading this are slim and I don’t mean to say that in a self-deprecating way, but more of putting myself in the headspace to write freely about my experience in the world, write out how I’m thinking in an open free thought space and who knows maybe one day my words will live on past me, but for now it’s a matter of continuing to put pen to paper (digitally of course) and focuses on sharing my thoughts as I learn more and more through my podcast. From this post on I intent to be more active on my blog for my sake and hope for others as well. For those of you who read my blog already, I can’t begin to thank you enough. I hope some enjoyment comes out of this blog and more importantly I hope to inspire; but then again, I may just be the only one.
I’ve never considered myself a writer before starting this blog nor was I a person who wanted to ponder bigger questions about the world than just that of my subjective experience but here I am. My journey of self-discovery began when I ran into and reconnected with an old friend and when we started hanging out, I learned he was studying philosophy at the University of Oregon. When I first started going over to his house we’d get into conversations about all sorts of different topics and the more I came over the more complex topics started to be brought up and we moved into territories well out of my range of understanding. I started looking things up to keep up with where the conversations were going. I find it interesting to take a dive into how I came to be the very person typing this sentence and I come to realize that initially, I had no prior interests in all the broad topics we covered at first. Politics, economics, philosophy, and a variety of the sciences where all just topics all linked together by the one fact: I’ve always had a passion for conversation. Yes, I’m happy to admit that a majority of discoveries made in my life in regard to my likes and dislikes comes from wanting to be able to have some knowledge to hold a conversation. In this case, I happened to reconnect with an old friend who’s found a strong passion for philosophy and thinking deeper about the world and I just hitched myself along for the ride. The more books I started introducing to myself to articles and podcasts I would consume, combined with frequent conversations I started to learn more and more and have come to really enjoy self-education through all the topics we’d find ourselves talking about. I now give myself more homework on my own accord than I ever did during my time in public education. I was inspired by all these people who have gone out and thought deeply about the world and essentially just monologued how they were thinking and hundreds of years later we still continue to read and attempt to expand on these thoughts. My friend and I decided that we wanted to start a podcast at first to almost document our conversations and try to expand both of our intellectual minds and now being almost a year and a half into our podcast, it has morphed into a podcast promoting all the very things I value most: self-education, deep conversation, intellectual skepticism and critical thinking.
In the beginning, my blog was my space to write essays and the more I wrote the more professional I wanted to have them be. However, as Ian (my old friend and podcast partner) and I decided to start a podcast I became more and more devoted to using my time to work on our podcast and left my blog to the wayside. Even as my blog sat in idle I continued to have urges of wanting to make sure I spend some time on my blog and worked to continue to write (because as they say practice makes perfect), but I realized that I’m doing the best I can to make sure my podcast was professional and I was doing proper research and notes for episode topics and I began to come to the conclusion that my blog wasn’t going to be formal. Hell, the odds of anybody else reading this are slim and I don’t mean to say that in a self-deprecating way, but more of putting myself in the headspace to write freely about my experience in the world, write out how I’m thinking in an open free thought space and who knows maybe one day my words will live on past me, but for now it’s a matter of continuing to put pen to paper (digitally of course) and focuses on sharing my thoughts as I learn more and more through my podcast. From this post on I intent to be more active on my blog for my sake and hope for others as well. For those of you who read my blog already, I can’t begin to thank you enough. I hope some enjoyment comes out of this blog and more importantly I hope to inspire; but then again, I may just be the only one.
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