Models for Keeping Purpose with Intellectual Openness

Now that the Christmas season is over, I can write again, since I haven't written anything since around Thanksgiving. Amidst all of that unordered time that makes it exceptionally challenging to maintain consistency in, and perhaps before then, I have been thinking about how one maintains one's bearings; how one remembers the purposes they are striving towards. These purposes for me are usually encapsulated in a concept or idea that is multilayered and complicated. Since purposes are held within these, how does go about remembering all that is held within? And so, a debate I often come to, and have come to considerably more because of the holiday season, is how to keep aware of these; how not to lose oneself in all the other concepts and ideas floating around that can also be made part of the purposes one is pursuing.

The problem one is avoiding by keeping aware, I feel, for idea-minded people, can be one of the most difficult problems to avoid. Many cases have been voiced of people, who when exposed to too many ideas and too much information, turn to apathy due to an inability to keep track of everything that has been thrust at them. The apathy in turn causes them to determine life as more meaningless than they thought (a form of intellectual nihilism) and this then breeds improper acceptance of all ideas and all emotions.

In my time of considering how to manage this; how to keep one's mind on the purposes one has while being intellectually open, a few models have presented themselves. These can be called in short the following: the Symbolic Encapsulation, a method involving periodic revisit of each purpose's details in the full, a method involving people who remind, interactively, of these purposes, and a careful use of over-information techniques to make thoughts bend toward each purpose without necessarily conscious awareness.

Symbolic Encapsulation, as it is written, is a way to present information such that it references to greater things and thus, upon remembering or seeing the symbol, one remembers the reference to such greater things. Personally, I have not investigated this method much, so I will not comment on how it might be used here. My reasons for avoiding it are likely because there are sufficient examples of people who lose themselves in symbols rather than what the symbol was made to accomplish; a reference to the greater thing, and so in such a state, they derive more greater things from the symbol than the symbol was made to hold. Symbolic stories or symbolic objects are by definition limited conveyors of information; they exist only as referential devices that help objectify in a limited manner, the whole. Another reason for avoiding Symbolic Encapsulation is that it tends to make one more materially dependent, which may just be by bias, I admit. This method, again, I have not pursued due to its potential problems, but it may prove to be a good way of remaining in one's purposes while keeping intellectual openness.

Periodically revisiting the details and layers of one's purposes is a method that I have given some time to. But before delving into my experience and thoughts, one should understand in more detail what this method is. Essentially, one periodically goes back to remembering and thoroughly considering all of the facets that make up the concept. I have tended to do this by revisiting over time large sets of writings which make up the concept's details. In the process of this, one compares one's current life with the purposes outlined in the concepts. It is easy after that point, then to map out one's progress, make potential changes to re-align to the purpose, or to even change the purpose some amount to accommodate new factors (though this is different than really what we're talking about; retention of ideas). From my experience with this method, it has proved to be more time consuming than the Symbolic Encapsulation method, but better as a way to remain free of those symbolic entanglements noted. Another disadvantage aside from requiring more time, is that this method can constrict one to thinking too fixedly through the number of details presented. The Symbolic Encapsulation method does seem more freeing, but only because of potential ambiguity in remembering the correct details that the symbol is referring to. Another potential disadvantage is that this method can make one unable to plan well or utilize memory well; they find themselves getting off course / forgetting so often that they spend far too much time referring back to the details to re-adjust / re-fresh.

Interactively reminding oneself through human relationships is another model that is used, typically by more social intellectuals, it seems. A few periods in my past, experimenting has been done with this, and they seemed largely effectively, but perhaps only due to my personal attachments to anything socially stimulating. Any conservative intellectual will note that this method is dangerous for two reasons that seem apparent to me: dependency on humans that may not hold integrity to the concepts one is relying upon them to remind them of, and that one can too harshly limit the intellectual sharing these people can do outside of the bounds one has set up in order to foster being reminded of one's purposes interactively. Another potential disadvantage is that the humans used to remind oneself of these concepts may become in themselves symbols of the concepts, relating this potential effect to what can occur when using Symbolic Encapsulation.

Over-information was referred to as a catalyst to Nihilism. This is true for many, but not necessarily related by cause. A few times, I have tried to use this model, but have found some difficulty, and so my understanding of it is limited. The way this is typically done, is that exposure to detailed information is highly controlled but used in abundance. The hope in this methodology is to keep one on track in purposes and capable of modification by what seems to be nearly embedding the details into the subconscious; creating a sort of memory that exists out of emotional-pattern retrieval. I realize that my description is quite ambiguous, but I have little understanding of why the model is utilized, though it is apparent that people are using it. Examples, if not aware, seem to exist in what can be seen among college students; the children of the Information Age who seem to be constantly wired to their Internet and music feeds.

In considering what I have personally used in the past, the following list shows what I have used most to what I have used least:
1. Periodic detail revisit
2. Interactive reminding through human relationships
3. Over-information carefully controlled
4. Symbolic Encapsulation

In considering what I have used recently, the following list shows what I have used most recently to what I have used least recently:
1. Periodic detail revisit
2. Over-information carefully controlled
3. Symbolic Encapsulation
4. Interactive reminding through human relationships

The Blog That Won't Die

Greetings to any of you who haven't read this blog in a while, or read it at all before. The above title isn't meant to be arrogant or boastful, but something I hope to keep based on what I've learned in the past about keeping a blog going. Originally, this blog died off during the college years due to a number of aspects I have tried to address.

Now, I say tried, because this blog in its current incarnation is not new; I've been blogging for about two months. I did this so as to not make any promises that I couldn't keep.

When I first started this blog in college, I did it mostly as a way to express thoughts through writing to the public. There were two large problems with this. First, my motivation to keep going was highly dependent upon people reading the blog. Blogging, as well as Facebook, are applications where people can perform actions without being noticed by anyone. As such, it seems that most people, even if they did read, didn't do anything to mark their passage. Since I was dependent on knowing that people actually valued what I did, the blog shut down. Now, I've tried to make this blog with less dependence upon needing others to read it; I write because I need to, and because I feel that it would be good to have it available to the public although I'm not dependent upon that factor very much. The second main problem with the original blog, was that I didn't have much free time in college outside of what I already had commitments to. Now, especially since I'm living far from most of everyone I know from college and early life, I feel that keeping such a portal of deep thoughts is important.

Now that this blog is going, and I hope it go on for a long time, I'm excited for what's coming up. Aside from content, which is mostly centered on cultural, sociological, and identity analysis, I've been working through some thoughts about how to better keep track and thereby understand the ideas I write about. One has been through keeping visual maps of what ideas I consistently think about. These maps would essentially link different articles to articles by association of what the articles talk about, so that I can form a visual representation of where my thoughts are going and what the different facets appear to be. The creation of these "idea maps" will allow me to review and reflect upon what I've thought about before; very useful if somehow I've gotten off track or forgotten some of my central purposes. To anyone who has tried to keep journals, it should make rummaging through them to remember what they were about substantially easier.

So that's where things are going. Again, I encourage you, if you are going to read this blog consistently, to comment with your own thoughts or drop me a line; it should help each of us to understand each other better, and I look forward to any furthering of that.

Characteristics, Limitations, and Heritage in the Political Leader

I've been thinking some about how might a person become a political leader. This has been on my mind due in large part to trying to further understand my tendency towards holding a dynamic that balances strong leadership and strong deep relationships. These two, in my mind, tend to be at odds with one another. If one is to be a political leader, it seems by necessity that their relationships must be less deep than that of a person who desires not political leadership. This is justified by the fact that a leader really must understand the people they are leading. If the person is leading millions, such as with a senator or president, then they need to know what the people are thinking. This task is impossible without using representatives that give the leader insight into what the people think.

Now, one could say that deep relationships could then exist with the representatives, but that seems unlikely if the representatives main role is to relay accurate information. Sure, this could be done in a manner respective to one's humanity in that it would be more than simply information relay, but the relationship between the leader and the representative would not be of the form of what could be between a non-leader citizen and his fellow non-leader citizen friends, where the relationship would be defined by sharing what is more individually-personal with one another. The representative and the leader would have a relationship based on talking about and understanding the populace they are representing; individually-personal information would be rarely spoken of.

And so, I seem to define "deep relationships" as being those in which two people share their individually-personal thoughts with one another; thoughts that do not hinge on others, but entirely on themselves.

Many balk towards leading politically if it necessitates an absence of such "deep relationships," but that topic, which involves the origins of emotions, is for another time.

Now that a basic understanding of the relational dynamics of political leaders has been set in place, I will go back to the original question: how might a person become a political leader? Well, in my thoughts, I believe that it takes at least a couple of things. The first, is one's mindset. Leaders tend to have mindsets in the following ways: strong awareness towards systems, unemotional (in the pop-culture sense of the word), analytical leanings toward broadly-arching patterns. The second seems to be from one's heritage. It is very difficult for one to differ from the way one was brought up. Children tend to reflect their parents, and so if they are of political leaders, then they are prone to have qualities that predispose them also towards political leadership in the future.

I've thought a lot about mindsets in the past, so it is little news to me about what my mindsets are. Considering heritage, I decided to come back to what could be seen as strengths for future pursuits.

Ancestral Traits / Dynamics:

• Dynamic: Reason and Emotion
  
  • Strong in depth of reason
  • Weak in depth of emotion
• Strong System Awareness
  
  • Strong general understanding of groups of at least ~100 people\
  • Strong analytical ability of organizational matters / issues
• Political Intelligence
  
  • Ability to represent groups of at least ~100 people
  • Ability to track political dynamics of small groups
• Dynamic: Above the People (impersonal) and With the People (personal)
  
  • Strong in being above the people
  • Moderate in being with the people
    
    

After considering these, I came to realize that what inhibits me from being able to lead greater numbers of people, is likely the desire to maintain the dynamic of being above the people I am leading, while with them at the same time. Human brain capacity can only hold so much. Time is also not eternal. Increasing the number of people one is personal with will only lead to noticing generalities, and time will limit the number of people one can get to know on a personal level. This will all be very important in understanding potentials for future pursuits.

Between God and Truth

I cannot think of as much to write in this post as the last one. Fear not, this isn't because I'm getting used to the blog; it's because for the past week, I've been with my family here, which has a way of unsettling one's discipline and focus of mind. So now, I return to write again with regularity.

A prominent thought on my mind of late, has been of purpose. That sounds general, so to narrow it down, it could be said that I've been thinking about what God has for me here. His direct purpose for me is something I strongly desire. However, this is not pursued easily because right now it is competing with a desire to know God personally. These two conflict because purpose is typically associated with knowing a truth or fact; something one can take and run with without looking back. Relationship is associated with not being independent of God in any circumstance. This example of relationship seems a bit in the wrong however, as it seems that God wants some level of independence. Yet, in something so important as one's purpose, I would imagine that being independent of God in that would be wrong. And so the issue remains: I desire purpose, but my definition of purpose is a truth that allows oneself act towards that truth without ties to the original source of that truth.

Existentialistic thought is very prominent throughout popular Western culture, and I am no exception. This is not to say that all of the individualistic traits of existentialism are wrong, but they do create this point of tension; especially in light of how I have lived and thought according to mindsets that support a view of existence that allows and even holds up (indirectly) a separation between God and man. This indirect allowance and holding up is perhaps what keeps parts of the church so tied to the issues that stem from this perspective.

Mostly, the indirect force seems to come from the belief that God is Truth, that man has been separated from God, and that this Truth should be pursued above all else. The issue with this is that Truth is almost always associated with Concept / Idea and not Being. Concept and Ideas are objects that exist in the Western mindset as something within the mind of an individual and therefore isolated. Therefore, it's not easy to stretch that internal construct to another being via a relationship. Furthermore, ideas according to this mindset are often ruled by logic and reason, which according to Western thought are also void of external connections.

And so, I wage war between these concepts; to find God hopefully along the way.