assistance to the suffering

More e-mail continues to suggest that this blog functions as an oasis for the tortured, suffering graduate student population. So I guess I should encourage them even more often. Much of the advice found here will probably be contained and developed in book form in a co-authored work in the near future, but I’ll save the details for later.

But I heard a good maxim this week: “surround yourself with people who have projects.”

You must continue to avoid another class of person, as a matter of life and death: the endless sniping procrastinator, always attempting to sabotage those who are moving forward, while appealing to the alibi of some great Masterwork they are putting together that will reduce the work of others to dust. A good number of masterworks happen to have been written under contract or career pressure (Being and Time, The Phenomenology of Spirit) and if you’ve been working for 18 or 19 years on a supposed masterwork, then it probably isn’t one.

Just figure out what you have to say, and say it. And avoid those who avoid this procedure.

Philosophy is not made up of “arguments”, it’s made up of specific philosophical works, usually written ones. Arguments are one ingredient in those works. The people who sit around refuting everything you do aren’t worth listening to; listening to them is complicity in their blood-sucking anti-libido.

There’s a small part in each of us that is susceptible to corruption by such forces, and it’s your task to conquer that part of yourself.

Remember, you’ll be dead soon. Sorry to be so grim, but it’s the best motivation to not waste your precious years sitting around making up excuses for why you couldn’t develop your ideas. If you don’t develop those ideas, we are all a bit poorer for it.