thoughts on a good post

once in a while you come across something which you think is so good you want to share it with everybody. (never mind the fact that everybody who reads this blog probably have already read it).

this is a good post.

i'm kinda busy right now (that's why never blog mah) and i don't even have time to read the new good stuff which is appearing on IS and SA (i'm very excited that kitana submitted to SA), but this one link on IS made me pause to read it. and i'm glad i did.

but why do i like this post so much?

if it is not obvious to most folks by now, i am have some training and background in philosophy. philosophy to me is not just an academic discipline, but has generally entrenched itself in my outlook on life and my thinking process. it's something which has taken over such a large part of my intellectual self that its hard for me to actually think outside the perspective of analytic philosophy. (i'm not saying i'm very good at it lah) in fact, i think this can be seen through most of my posts.

but there is one thing which i find very disappointing of being a "philosopher". and that is, a philosopher (in the analytic tradition, which i am trained in) focuses on being objective, and filtering out distracting factors so that he can focus on the "core issues". at the end of the day, analytic philosophers deal with deductive logic, axioms, definitions, cold cut logic. that's excellent when we want to talk about social, political, ethical issues which applies to everybody.

but sometimes, i hope to be a human before a philosopher. i hope that ultimately to me, the people around me and the issues which affect me as a person are more important, and more worth my time thinking about, than issues which affect society, the human race, or the universe. i think that's what it takes to be human. being human is subjective, is messy, but there is an inherent beauty in being an individual and spending time thinking about and working on personal dreams and ambitions, friends and family, human relationships which are important. sometimes i think, when i become too much of a "philosopher", or when i read or write stuff on the blogosphere, i lose more and more of that each day.

that is until i come across something like what Trisha has written. the stuff written at SA, most of the time, is high quality intellectual stuff. the stuff written by xenoboy (most of the time) is amazing beauty through pure sophistry. even the stuff written by mollymeek, i consider to be a works of art. but none of them provides the sheer beauty of having a living breathing human and individual perspective, like what Trisha has provided here.

and the amazing thing is, for all the clearly formulated philosophical arguments we "philosophers" do, (i think lah), it pales in comparison to the power of a simple narrative of a real life, like what Trisha has shown, in terms of persuasiveness and impact. at the end of the day, we are individuals, we are human, no matter what mask we put on when we blog.