Commentary

So what happens is, if you make a comment here, is that it gets delivered to my Yahoo account. I get some curious stuff. I mean, I make the odd mention about reading Foucault in the original Greek, and the next thing you know I'm getting messages from someone who indeed does that very thing, and not only that, he tells me where to get off on the subject of Eastern European philosophers. Jeesh. Just try to make a joke around here. No doubt my anonymous commenter would prefer I talk about things I know something about, but that would make for a pretty bleak and empty canvas, and I would have packed up and gone home a long time ago.

My problem with philosophy may be that I don't believe in it. It's another game. If it's an attempt to understand existence, it A) is running a poor second at best to studying science, B) is usually written by people who seem to be viciously intent on not being understood, C) is usually only applicable to the culture in which it is written, making it a subjective product of society and not an objective analysis of reality, and D) very distracting from my true interest, which is women's professional hockey.

Most of that is true (but please, don't send me any messages about women's professional hockey). If you want to understand how the mind works in 2006, a consilient approach to studying organic chemistry while dabbling in the humanities may be your best bet, that is, science with a bit of thought-study thrown in. Philosophers, in their attempt to understand whatever it is they are trying to understand, have few tools at their disposal. They have empirical evidence of their own senses, which they may or may not accept, they have intuition, which they may or may not accept, and they have logic, the skill set of objective presentation which they have no choice but to accept if they wish to extrapolate anything from their empirical or intuitive experiences. The end result is a schema through which one can explain things as compared to an actual, objective explanation of things. Philosophers lay out a schema, an approach, and overlay it on stuff, and hope that the schema explains the stuff. The more limited the stuff, the easier it is to explain, but the more limited the stuff, the less need there is to explain it. People have BIG questions that need answers. That's why philosophers earn the big bucks, by addressing the big questions. But the more philosophers attempt to answer those big questions, the more the schema fails.

None of which is a reason not to study philosophy. Far from it. Philosophy makes us think, because it attempts to explain reality to us. We just need to keep in mind that, at the core, it does not and can not ever actually succeed in the attempt.

From this, you ought be be able to deduce that I am not a student of philosophy myself, or at least of ontological and epistemological studies. I am vastly impressed by those who are. People on hellinahandbasket.com are always throwing around stuff that is way over my head. This may raise the question, what exactly am I a student of. Well, I tend more toward figuring out ethics, right and wrong, and I have a little background in antrophology so I like studying cultures and cultural studies and I'm attracted to sociology. So I'll like someone like Mill who wrote about the rights of the individual and rights of women and the conflict of rights vs rights, and wrote well in the bargain (I do like a good writer; I mean, I cried at the end of Charlotte's Web and all that). I am intrigued by Rawls right up until he rolls out the blackboard and starts doing the math; as soon as A*B is the square root of Theta, I'm out of here trying to find out if there's anything good on the golf channel. But when he's trying to figure out, in a vacuum, how to construct the most fair society possible, I'm intrigued. I'm a sucker for the Putnams of the world (Bowling Alone), attempts at modern analysis of society. I enjoy the old Baudleroo because he's a total whack writing on subjects I often read from other perspectives, like Disney and media and architecture. I guess, when all is said and done, I'm more practical than philosophical. At the end of the day (as people who always say "at the end of the day" say), I want something to happen. I want to do something. I want action. (Unless, of course, there's something good on the golf channel.)

Obviously, I'm a dilettante. A dabbler. A flaneur. But I'm not here to analyze myself; I'm here to report on what happens on the coachean side of debate life. In fact, I'm not even me. I am actually Richard Sodikow pretending to be me. (Okay, that's a lie. I'm actually Mango Chutney, pretending to be O'C, pretending to be Soddy, pretending to be Menick. Menick doesn't even have a blog. Menick can't even write. He works all day. Whaddya think, he hires illegal aliens on the way to the office to do his Reader's Digest editing while he spends all of his time writing this?)

My philosopher friend is not my only commenter, of course. Termite keeps insisting that he should have a different name, and even goes so far as to refer to himself as the Mite, which of course he isn't, because the Nostrumite is the Mite, and Termite is, well, Termite. If he were to stop insisting that he should have a different name, he might have a ghost of a chance of getting one. Not bloody likely. What are the odds he'll try again with a comment here? Another nail in the termitarium... The Nostrumite never comments, because he's too busy raising the Nostrumette and coaching Tennessee Williams High School and giving me advice on the readings of Nostrum. He had to kill his own team's blog, so he's highly unlikely to get too involved with this one.

Mango Chutney, known familiarly to his team as Bubba Chut, is also a frequent commenter, but then again, he's also a frequent subject. He represents so many things. The Bronks. Vassar. Long Island. Hellinahandbasket. He's sort of a one-size-fits-all reference whenever I need one. Without Bubba Chut, I'd be out of business.

HoraceMan TSWAS, pops up occasionally. And Emcee. Kt. CLG. Burgers. The odd coach or two (I mean, they'd have to be odd, 1, to read this and, 2, to post to it). Fortunately the spalpeen keeps his nasty little mouth shut, but then again, he probably knows that if I could track him down I'd be coming to his house with a lawn mower, a budgerigar, and a missal blessed by Cardinal Sin. I know that it wasn't that long ago when I was whining that I was a lone voice crying in the wilderness, and since then I've come to the conclusion that I am in fact the leader of the vast coachean army, second in size only to North Korea's, only hungrier and with better internet service. Then again, show me Kim Jong-il's blog. I may not know a lot about philosophy, but damn, I know for a fact that, if nothing else, I'm a funnier guy than he is. I'm probably even a better philosopher. I'll take him on any day, soldier for soldier, epistemology for epistemology, wry comment for wry comment.

You know, come to think of it, the debate season really must be over. Otherwise, why am I going on like this, and worse, why are you still reading it?