Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

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Monday, January 29. 2007

"Why do I exist?"

It might be a bit chewy for a Monday morning, but Bob at One Cosmos has the answer. You know you want it, as the beer man says at Yankee Stadium.

He does get into Schopenhauer a bit:

"If I take away the thinking subject, the whole material world must vanish, as this world is nothing but the phenomenal appearance in the sensibility of our own subject, and is a species of the subject's representations."

I think I exist to drink wine and to wonder why I exist, after work. After a few wines, one wonders whether one does exist at all, and whether "I" is an illusion. Sometimes, I wonder why other things, like ham sandwiches, exist. The cosmos itself just gives me vertigo.

Image: From the Hubbell scope

Posted by Bird Dog in Our Essays, Religion at 07:16 | Comments (10) | Trackbacks (0)

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"Solipsism! Git yer solipsism rat cheer!"
#1 buddy larsen on 2007-01-29 09:16 (Reply)
If I take away the sandwich, the cold cuts must vanish, as a deli is nothing but a phenomenal appearance in the sensibility of its own savory deliciousness, and is a menu variation of the sandwich's representations.
#2 Eat Yer Slaw Boy on 2007-01-29 09:30 (Reply)
Now thats a queer thing. A sandwich as the subject. In a way, the deli counter is a kind of panopticon, imposing the violence of its numbering systems on indigenous customers.
#3 Pa Why Dont You Make ME on 2007-01-29 09:35 (Reply)
The Deli is rife with the epistemes of the day. How do we know pimento loaf, honey ham and bologna? How do we know the egg salad, let alone the exploitative patriarchal "Grandma's Potato Salad.

If it seems off base, consider the regimented and militant response to impassioned and charitable inquiries made to any slave behind the counter: you will be jeered and accosted for imagining items beyond what the order of things selects.

And who makes this selection? Who chooses the salamis and the pastrami? Not only the meats but the brands? Who decides which firm gets to profit and which firm must grind away moneyless but for the moral reward of curing ham?

I have a dream, a psychedelic dream where Freedom Riders take to the drive-throughs and the supermarkets and burn down the inventory and the menus and the decorative birthday crowns and destroy the feeble epistemes of an age in order for their to be new growth, new menus and new deals!

Soprasatta Calabrese is the perfume of heroism...
#4 Boy I Will Unmake You and Make Me Another on 2007-01-29 09:45 (Reply)
I must say, Gagdad Bob is the Charleston Chew of blog philosophers. He is as welcome on a Monday as space heater alms are to the destitute nudes in winter.
#5 Sure, Pa, right after we b'ry mamma and git you new teeth on 2007-01-29 09:48 (Reply)
IMHO, the sandwich paradigm is especially poignant, being a Mayonnaise ex-addict saved by the good doctors at the Mayo Clinic.
#6 buddy larsen on 2007-01-29 09:51 (Reply)
"Who decides which firm gets to profit and which firm must grind away moneyless but for the moral reward of curing ham?"

Dude, that is SO righteous.
#7 buddy larsen on 2007-01-29 10:00 (Reply)
Gimme an episteme with lettuce on rye, hold the paradigm.
#8 Pippington Pappington Pop, lll on 2007-01-29 12:22 (Reply)
Why do we exists? Hot babes dude, like what else?

http://www.uglypeople.com/uploaded/110975/newpic28.JPG

Babe-o-licious

http://aycu20.webshots.com/image/219/1555842976313075961_rs.jpg
#9 P.G.T. von Unkraut on 2007-01-29 14:45 (Reply)
what you guys dont understand is how deepfrying falsity does not add veracity to it. it may give you more presentation points on iron chef. what it wont give you is the satisfaction of of your voice echoing in the halls of power, its walls quivering from your extolled truth.

if you do not become your own liberty bell, you will ding dong to the tune of the majority.
#10 Listen man on 2007-01-29 15:19 (Reply)

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