ignorant human

Yesterday I experienced a migraine headache for the first time in two months. I have deviated from my diet a few times lately. Each of these deviations is a potential contributing factor.

1. I started eating Ezekiel bread (hummus sandwiches) about a week ago. This bread is not 100% gluten-free, but it is an extremely healthy sprouted live grain and a lot of otherwise gluten-intolerant people are able to handle it. I think (and hope) that this is probably not a major contributing factor, but that is primarily wishful thinking. If the migraines persist, then I will go back to a 100% gluten-free diet.
2. On Sunday, I had a Thai tea with no milk and no ice. Yes, that’s right, I had some caffeine (not to mention a shitload of sugar). It was actually the second Thai tea that I have consumed since I quit using caffeine on a daily basis. I was experiencing such a strong psychological craving for caffeine that I actually went to Cafe Louisa to order a soy mocha. But, fortunately, they were out of soy milk, so I just went to AlaThai and got a Thai tea instead.
3. On Sunday night I had a Virgil’s cream soda. No caffeine, but lots of sugar.
4. On Monday morning I had a Virgil’s root beer. No caffeine, but lots of sugar.
5. On Tuesday I had a discussion about migraine headaches while eating a hummus flat-bread sandwich on bread that was not gluten-free.
6. On Tuesday night I ate a package of Welch’s fruit snacks, which contained an inordinate amount of artificial chemicals.
7. On Wednesday, the day on which I had the migraine, I had been drinking tap water for about a week. (I have been drinking deionized water for six months now, so my body is not accustomed to the toxic levels of chlorine and fluoride found in tap water.)

I recently started playing Deus Ex: Human Revolution, which just came out. I will never forget playing the first Deus Ex game when I was 11 or 12 years old. At that young age, I did not fully comprehend the profundity of the references to conspiracy theories, but I have always had a severe distaste for and mistrust of authority, so the references nonetheless appealed to me. These games are breathtaking and mind-blowing. They are so intellectually stimulating. They take place in the not-too-distant future, a time when human beings have the option of being nanotechnologically augmented with cybernetics. I cannot wait until this becomes a reality. I want to be one with the machine.

I just got a netbook: an HP Mini 100. I plan to use it primarily to take notes in class. I am still getting used to the small keyboard.

I have now been free of caffeine addiction for about a month and a half. I have not had a migraine headache during that time. I believe that caffeine may have been one of the primary factors that contributed to my migraines. After a month of being without caffeine, I started to experience psychological withdrawals. Echoes of craving persist long after the last pangs of physical withdrawal are endured. The mind longs for the habitual, patterned experience to which it has become so accustomed. In my case, the longing for freedom prevails. Through freedom of will, the individual can choose to transcend.

I had been looking forward to God and Morality, the philosophy class that I’m taking, ever since I signed up for it last semester. At the first class meeting, however, the professor revealed some information about himself that instantly annihilated my enthusiasm: he is a Christian.

In my eyes, philosophy and Christianity are fairly incompatible. These two “fields” (I use the term loosely, for Christianity is obviously not an academic discipline) were once united in what is referred to as the medieval synthesis. But then the Renaissance came along, and people started to use reason to think for themselves rather than having faith in the empty promises of religious authorities. In comparison to philosophy, Christianity is a joke. Rather than teaching people how to think critically, it tells them what to believe and how to live.

During the lecture, the professor briefly mentioned relativism. Despite having said previously that he always makes an effort to be “fair and balanced,” he defined relativism from an absolutist’s point of view, and then hastily moved on. This elicited a silent rage within me that has now been boiling for about three days.

This is what the professor had to say about relativism (this is a paraphrase, not an exact quote):

At first, relativism might sound kinda cool, and it seems like we could all call ourselves relativists. It makes it seem like we can all just get along. Maybe, as a Christian, I can hang out with my Muslim friends and we won’t argue about whose religion is right. But then, when you take relativism a little farther, most people realize that they’re not really relativists, and relativism is actually pretty hard to defend.

Here’s what I mean: According to relativism, truth is relative. So it is true for a theist that God exists and it is true for an atheist that God does not exist. But these two beliefs contradict each other. So how could they both be true at the same time?

This question is not fair and balanced due to its heavy reliance on:

1. Aristotelian logic.
2. An absolutist definition of truth.

Aristotle’s law of noncontradiction states that it is impossible for two contradictory things to be true at the same time. Aristotelian logic is the dominant form of logic in the West, so it’s easy to take it for granted. In fact, Aristotle’s laws seem to be stating some pretty common sense things that you don’t have to be a philosopher to figure out. But the only reason these things are so “common sense” to us is that Aristotle had a profound and lasting impact on the development of Western culture.

Of course, there is no single system of logic that is agreed by all to be correct. In order to make fair and balanced statements, therefore, one cannot assume the validity of a particular form of logic and use it as a criterion for determining the worth of various philosophical orientations. Another prevalent form of logic, used primarily in Eastern culture, is called paradoxical logic. As its name implies, it holds that it is possible for two contradictory things to be true at the same time.

According to the absolutist definition, to say that theism is true is to say that God really exists out there in objective reality. Truth is seen as an absolute. It is true for all people everywhere, regardless of their subjective point of view. Like Aristotelian logic, the absolutist definition of truth is also an essential aspect of the Western worldview.

Absolutism is not the only way of viewing truth. According to the relativistic definition, when an individual proclaims, in speech or writing, that theism is true, what this means is that this individual has the subjective experience of being entirely convinced that God exists. The same is true for the atheist, who has the subjective experience of being entirely convinced that God does not exist. In this view, truth is seen as a subjective experience, so it is entirely possible for two contradictory beliefs to be true at the same time.

If we reread the professor’s question with the absolutist definition of truth in mind, we will see how strange the structure of that argument is. By assuming that it’s impossible for both theism and atheism to be true, it assumes not only the validity of Aristotelian logic but also the absolutist definition of truth:

“If truth is relative, then both theism and atheism are true. But how can they both be true, if truth is absolute?”

Absolutism is considered the opposite of relativism. It is not fair and balanced, then, to define and judge relativism in terms of absolutism!

My last semester of undergraduate school begins tomorrow. I am taking a philosophy class called God and Morality. The professor emailed all students enrolled in the course a couple of days ago, instructing us to start reading one of the five required texts: Fact, Value, and God. He wants us read the first seven chapters by the first day of class. This means that I have until 6:20 PM on Tuesday night.

In reading the first three chapters, already I have been disturbed. Actually, my postmodern sensibilities were offended by the end of the second paragraph of the preface. In the first paragraph, Holmes writes:

…Richard Rorty declared this a post-metaphysical culture; the claim that truth is somehow objective, “out there,” is the unusable legacy of an age that saw the world as created by God. Historicism, Rorty claimed, frees us from theology and metaphysics and unchanging truth.

These words really caught my attention. I first learned of Richard Rorty last semester while reading Psychological Concepts and Biological Psychiatry by Dr. Peter Zachar (who also teaches the Physiological Psychology class that I’m taking this semester). After reading that book I began to study postmodernism intensively. I agree with Rorty that there is no such thing as objective truth, or rather that there is no truth “out there.” But the word objective actually means nothing more than inter-subjective. Objectivity occurs when different people have a similar enough subjective experience. But people are social animals with a need to conform, and they are pressured by their respective societies to view the world in a certain way. The sheer number of people who hold an idea to be objectively true, therefore, is far from enough to prove its truth to more skeptical minds.

Holmes, however, does not agree with Rorty. In the second paragraph, he reveals:

This book began as an attempt to explore historical ways of grounding moral values objectively in the nature of reality . . . Rorty is in measure right. But the claim that values are somehow objective, “out there,” is the legacy on which we still need to draw.

The idea of moral values being grounded “objectively” in reality is ridiculous, even if one assumes that there is some objective truth in the universe. If morals are objective, then why is ethics a branch of philosophy, and not a branch of physical science? If morals are ever studied in such a context, then it will be in the realm of psychology, where scientists may look for correlations between morality and other variables. For example, they might attempt to explain, in terms of neurochemistry, why Bob considers abortion to be amoral while Bill does not.

Different people have different ideas about what constitutes morality. Any attempt to objectify morals is a vain and selfish attempt to prove the correctness of one’s own system of morality. This technique is used primarily by religious authorities to maintain their power over a population. But also it is common for the very people who are thus subjugated to attempt to justify the moral systems that have been imposed upon them. Christians make a good example. They have been taught to believe that they will be subjected to eternal damnation if they do not believe in the Bible. Those who are unable to transcend this psychospiritual feedback loop are therefore extremely motivated to defend the Christian worldview (its system of morality included) at all costs.

Of course, Holmes offers no support for his assertion that we must continue to draw on “the claim that values are somehow objective.” That’s probably because the only reasons that he could offer are purely subjective. It is clear from his work that he is a Christian. He has a personal interest in defending the notion of objective values: he wants to believe that Christian morals were formulated not by human beings but rather by an omniscient God. Only then will he be able to rest assured that Christianity is not just an arbitrary system of beliefs like every other organized religion.

At the end of the first chapter, Holmes writes disapprovingly of the Sophists:

. . . Thrasymachus is reported to have said that justice is simply the advantage of the stronger, making it relative to whoever wields the power. No cosmology, no knowledge of divine beings, and no cosmic justice. The dissolution of that vision of reality is complete. It fell to Socrates to recall Athens to the quest for knowledge, rather than settling for appearances and convention.

Neither I nor anyone alive today can claim to know exactly what Thrasymachus meant in regard to his definition of justice. But I know what the statement means to me. “Justice is the advantage of the stronger” means that the stronger get to decide what is just and what is unjust. If the species that are regularly slaughtered and devoured by humans were somehow able to speak out against the injustices that they suffer, it would make no difference. Humans are in control. Humans want to eat animals. So humans eat animals. Some higher, objective, cosmic justice is nowhere to be found. Justice is an intellectual abstraction created by human beings, and as such it exists within the minds of human beings.

Let’s briefly explore the idea that Socrates saved the day from the relativism of those pesky Sophists. This is laughable when you consider that one of the most famous Socratic quotes is, “All I know is that I know nothing.” One begins to wonder whether Holmes, a distinguished professor of philosophy, ever had the chance to read Plato’s Apology. Or perhaps it is just that, given the subjective nature of human beings, we see what we want to see and believe what we want to believe. The Socrates that I read about got into trouble by telling powerful men who thought they knew everything that they knew nothing. This sounds strikingly similar to the doubts raised by the Sophists as to whether humans are capable of knowing the ultimate nature of reality. And yet, Holmes somehow sees it fit to turn Socrates into a champion of absolutism who saves Athens from the agnosticism of the Sophists.

I have not consumed caffeine since the night of Saturday, July 16, 2011. It is amazing how much better I feel: I have more energy during the day and I am actually able to sleep at night. Of course, this really should not surprise me, because this is not the first time that I have quit using caffeine. Hopefully it will be the last time, though.

Rather than relying on wishful thinking to ensure that I do not fall back into the dark depths of caffeine dependency, perhaps I can use my brain to analyze my memories of the past for any clue as to what functions as my relapse trigger. I think it usually happens on a Sunday. I got into the unfortunate habit of going to Cafe Louisa and ordering a soy mocha every Sunday morning. So, when Sunday rolls around, it feels like it’s time to go to Cafe Louisa and get some coffee. The strange thing is that this feeling can occur even if I have not consumed caffeine in months. This means that I am dealing less with physiological addiction and more with psychological addiction, as it only takes three to seven days to get past caffeine withdrawals.

When I get that Sunday morning urge, it’s really not so much the coffee that I am craving. What I really crave is the otherworldly, romantic experience of going to a cafe. When I think of cafes, I think of Europe (particularly France), intellectualism, and art. These are all things that are far from characteristic of the town in which I live. Going to the cafe on a Sunday morning gives me a brief escape from the cultural depravity of my hometown.

The next time that I get a Sunday morning urge, I am simply going to remind myself that, although superficially it may seem that going to the cafe and drinking coffee would give me a romantic escape from this culture, it actually would be a regression into consumerist corporate capitalism.

Caffeine is a stimulant. The average American worker uses coffee every morning to give him that extra boost he needs to drag himself out of bed and report for duty at that dreary dungeon referred to so affectionately as the workplace. Caffeine is addictive. The American worker finds that he begins to require coffee in order to start his day. (Hence the McDonald’s commercial: “Not until I’ve had my coffee.”) Then, he begins to find that he needs to drink soda, tea, or an energy drink around midday. (Hence the 5-hour ENERGY commercial: “No 2 o’clock feeling later.”) So, the poor American worker is a complete wage slave. He slaves away for the corporate machine, and what little money he is given in compensation must go right back to the corporate machine, whether through satisfying the caffeine addiction by paying Starbucks or Coca-Cola, paying electricity bills when we’ve had the technology for free wireless electricity since the 1800′s, paying for gasoline when we could have electric cars, etc.

If I can successfully build a psychological association between caffeine and the wretched social structure that I have just described, then I will be enormously successful in never consuming caffeine again.

My paternal grandfather, James Berry Tisdale, Jr., was an amazing individual. I know that probably everyone says that about their grandfather. I know that I also say that about my other grandfather. But Randaddy, as we affectionately called him, was amazing even as far as grandfathers go.

What was so amazing about him? He was a “larger than life” kind of person. During WW2, while suffering from malaria in a hospital bed in the Philippines, he had a life-changing mystical experience. Just as he had reached the conclusion that he was surely going to die before he ever made it back home to the United States, a pervasive white light filled the room and basically informed him that he had been living only half-consciously. From that point on, though, he was wide awake. His friends jokingly told him that they couldn’t bunk with him anymore because he had become too strange. He would often wake up in the middle of the night laughing as hard as he could because he was so happy to be alive. He began setting goals for himself and achieving those goals with lightning speed and efficiency. For example, he decided that he would like to interview the President of the Philippines. It happened; I still own a piece of the President’s official stationary. Then the war ended, and he decided that he wanted to go to Japan to check it out. His commanding officer told him that there was no way in Hell he was going to Japan. It’s not that he wouldn’t permit it, it’s just that there wasn’t any transportation available. My grandfather confidently told him to be patient, that he was indeed going to Japan, one way or another. Within the next couple of days, the commanding officer summoned my grandfather. “Well, Tisdale, it looks like you’re going to Japan after all.” Some big general up in Japan needed a shipment delivered there! And of course you can guess who they picked for the job. My grandfather was the first American, the first person of European blood, to set foot in many parts of Japan. While there, he was able to acquire the contents of virtually an entire Japanese arsenal, including samurai swords and gas masks for horses, but he gambled them all away in the years to come.

Now, when I first met my grandfather, of course, he already had the appearance of a wise old man. He owned an insane amount of books. He had visited every continent on the planet, including Antarctica, and the souvenirs that he had brought back from his travels were lining every wall of his house. I was simply amazed. He was like Gandalf, a wizard. There was just something magical about him. He knew things you didn’t know. He had seen things you had never even imagined. Gazing through those large spectacles into his eyes gave you a glimpse into the mysterious unknown. But by no means did he allow his intelligence to inflate his ego. He did not suffer from an exaggerated sense of self-importance. He would bounce me up and down on his knee, bumping his head into mine, and call me a wee little billy goat.

Randaddy passed away in late 2001, not long after the 9/11 attacks. Now that you have an understanding of how I feel about my grandfather, you hopefully will not be too surprised by the magnitude of my disgust when I recently learned that his children were planning to sell all of his old things. Of course, I really don’t know why I was so surprised. I believe that my cousin Shannon and I are the only ones who even come close to giving the memory of our grandfather the appreciation that it deserves. I was at least able to rescue the vast majority of his book collection, and a few souvenirs from his travels, but many beautiful paintings and statuettes from Asia and the Middle East were lost to the greed of a disgustingly fat estate sale planner. When this hideous woman saw that I was taking all of the books, she subtly tried to protest to my parents, but to no avail. When it came time for the estate sale, she unloaded carts and carts of books out of her vehicle. Apparently, whenever there is an estate sale in which not all of the books are sold, she takes them all for herself! No wonder she didn’t want me to have them. How disgusting: to make a living by capitalizing on the deaths of loved ones!

All of the books that I rescued are stacked up in a corner of my room. This morning, one of them caught my eye, and I retrieved it. It is an old self-help book by David Dunn, originally published in 1947, called Try Giving Yourself Away. I think that the following passage from this book is incredibly relevant to the whole ordeal of the redistribution of my grandfather’s possessions:

“I made the important discovery that anything which makes one glow with pleasure is beyond money calculation, in this humdrum world where there is altogether too much grubbing and too little glowing.”

Holding a book that my grandfather once held, wondering what thoughts must have occurred to him as he read the same words, beholding the relics of his glorious adventures: These are things which make me glow with pleasure. There is no amount of money in the world that could have made selling these books worthwhile.

I’ll never forget the first time that I saw a Mortal Kombat “fatality” (finishing move). I was only about ten years old. When I, at that tender young age, witnessed Scorpion uppercut his opponent’s head (spinal cord still attached) right off of his body, I was profoundly disturbed.

But since then, the Mortal Kombat games seem to have lost some of their shock value. Up until now, that is. The latest game in the series, Mortal Kombat 9, is pretty disturbing in a lot of ways.

To begin with, there are a lot of messed up things going on in the background. In one level, you see a man suspended by chains being lowered into a pool of acid. A few moments later, his mostly decomposed corpse is brought back up into view.

In another level, you are in Hell. There are these strange structures in the background that are basically composed of a bunch of damned souls. You can see some of their heads and arms sticking out.

And while all of these messed up things are going on in the background, the kombat in the foreground is equally intense. There are now “X-ray attacks,” special moves that do massive amounts of damage in very painful looking ways. They are called X-ray attacks because, when Jax is breaking your back over his knee for example, the camera goes into X-ray mode so that you can actually witness your spine snapping.

When you fight in Shao Kahn’s stage, you witness what I consider to be most disturbing (and sexy) of all. On either side of his throne, you see that he has slaves. These two slaves are Skarlet and Katana, both of whom are playable characters in the game.

When Shao Kahn himself defeats you, you are forced to watch him stand there in a victory pose while another, unidentified slave girl crawls up to him in worship.

In searching for the above pictures, I discovered that there is a Facebook page called “I want to be one of Shao Kahn’s slave girls.” For some reason, only 3 people have liked it so far.

Yesterday I played chess with my friend Mickey Barka at Cafe Louisa. It was fun; I want to play chess more often.

Speaking of chess, I highly recommend the movie Revolver. It was written and directed by Guy Ritchie, the creator of Snatch and Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels. The main character spends seven years in solitary confinement. The guy in the cell on one side of his cell is an expert conman, and the guy in the cell on the other side is an expert chess player, played by none other than Andre 3000 of Outkast. There are a lot of awesome quotes from the movie, but one of my favorites comes from chess: “The only way to get better is to play a smarter opponent.”

I had a migraine headache today. I began to feel the “aura” only a couple of hours after I woke up. It’s funny, because I was just thinking the other day that it’s been so long since I’ve had one. I have been having migraines periodically for over five years now. I know that they are related to food allergies, but I haven’t been able to identify the exact cause. In addition to being lactose-intolerant, I am also gluten-intolerant. I think that caffeine might also be a contributing factor. I did have a soy mocha yesterday while playing chess. Unfortunately, no one really knows what causes migraines, or what to do to stop them.

In researching physical exercise for my previous post, I was reminded that many bodybuilders recommend eating anywhere from 1 to 2 grams of protein per pound of body weight. For example, I weigh about 160 pounds, so according to the recommendations, I should be consuming anywhere from 160 to 320 grams of protein everyday, as compared to the 56 grams that is recommended by the FDA. Not everyone agrees that you should consume 1 to 2 grams of protein per body weight, as too much protein can be bad for you. I am going to experiment with 1 gram per body weight and see how that works out.

Yesterday, after taking a few days off from the gym, I began experimenting with Hunter’s weightlifting recommendations (see this post for details). I did a total of 10 sets. I started out with 100 pounds and lifted that as many times as I could, which turned out to be 18 times. I rested for a minute and a half, then repeated, although obviously I wasn’t able to do 18 reps again. After about 4 sets of 100 pounds, I moved down to 75 lbs, and after a few sets of that, 50 pounds.

Today was Day 2. I got on the bench and started lifting the bar to warm up, but it just didn’t feel right. My muscles felt beyond sore. I stopped and decided that this program just wasn’t for me. I need a good 24-48 hours of rest before working the same muscles. So I got on the exercise bike (I am still unable to jog because of my left foot!) for about 30 minutes, then did some ab and leg work. Then, for some reason, I decided to try the bench press again. I loaded 100 pounds and this time I was able to do 20 reps, which is 2 more than yesterday.

But then I got home and started doing some research. Now, the information that is available on physical exercise is not exactly straightforward. I think that there are two primary reasons for this:

1. Everyone’s body is different, so what works for you won’t necessarily work for me.
2. Unfortunately, there is a dichotomy in our society between “brains and brawn.” Most people who are intelligent neglect physical exercise, and most people who are athletic neglect intellectual exercise. A lot of the information on physical exercise was written by big dumb brutes who never really put much thought into what they were doing. Their work reads as follows: “Me big and strong. Me eat steaks. Me pick up big things.”

So, here I am, trying to sort through all of this mess. I am using this post to help myself understand the difference between different types of weightlifting programs. As I find new information, I will enter it into this post.

I think that the following table from Wikipedia’s strength training article would make an excellent starting point:

*1RM = One Rep Maximum.

As you can see from this table, there are at least four different types of weightlifting programs:

1. Strength: being able to lift heavier objects.
2. Power: being able to do more work in a given amount of time.
3. Hypertrophy: having larger muscles.
4. Endurance: being able to do work for a longer period of time.

If you’re like me, then you are somewhat surprised to learn that increasing muscle size and increasing muscle strength are not necessarily the same!

I am personally more interested in hypertrophy than I am in strength, power, or endurance. The reason for this is that, as I mentioned in a previous post, I am an ectomorph. I have the body type that does not store fat or build muscle easily. This means that I am extremely thin. That fact that I am tall does not help. Basically, my weightlifting goal is to build enough muscle so that my ribs don’t poke out. Armed with the information presented in this post, I feel extremely confident that I will soon reach my goal!

But we’re not finished yet. Now that I know which type of weightlifting program I want to pursue, I need to study it a little more thoroughly. The following information comes mostly from Wikipedia’s article on muscle hypertrophy.

Ok, so we know that hypertrophy means bigger muscles. But we can be more specific than that. Hypertrophy refers to an increase in the size of your muscle cells. This is opposed to an increase in the number of your muscle cells, which is referred to as hyperplasia.

There are two different kinds of hypertrophy: sacroplasmic and myofibrillar.

• Sacroplasm is to muscle fiber as cytoplasm is to cell. In sacroplasmic hypertrophy, the sacroplasm increases in volume, but there is no increase in strength. This kind of hypertrophy results in muscles that are typical of bodybuilders.
• The myofibril is the fundamental unit of muscle. Myofibrils are long and thin, and composed of the proteins actin, myosin, and titin, among others. During myofibrillar hypertrophy, the number of actin and myosin proteins increases, resulting in an increase in muscle strength plus a small increase in muscle size. This kind of hypertrophy results in muscles that are typical of Olympic weightlifters.

The question is: How does one control which type of hypertrophy one’s muscles are undergoing?

• If you want more myofibrillar hypertrophy, do 80 to 90% of your max for 2–6 reps.
• If you want more sacroplasmic hypertrophy, do more reps and less weight.

I want to be a polymath (an expert in many fields). For example, Leonardo da Vinci was a(n):

• anatomist,
• architect,
• botanist,
• cartographer (mapmaker),
• engineer,
• geologist,
• inventor,
• mathematician,
• musician,
• painter,
• scientist,
• sculptor,
• writer.

It seems quite impressive that da Vinci was able to accomplish so much, considering the time during which he lived. He did not have the aid of advanced technology. But he didn’t have the distractions of advanced technology either. Today, it is much easier than ever to be a polymath, if you can steer clear of the distractions. For example, check out Wikiversity. Virtually all of the information in the world is at your fingertips! The only reason people go to college is to earn a degree from an accredited university so that they can get a job. If, on the other hand, you are learning for the sake of learning, then there is no need to pay a university. If you are an autodidact (self-directed learner), then you all you need is an Internet connection.

I was thinking about experimenting with the following schedule of study:

I am also going to:

• learn new languages, starting with Mandarin Chinese, using technology such as Rosetta Stone and Shared Talk,
• make music,
• make art.