Working on setting up the "ENTRIES" menu for now. It'll take a bit of time.

In the Meanwhile

Actually I haven't done much work on the "ENTRIES" section today. Just the most recent entries. Work has actually kept somewhat busy. Go figure.

I've spent some time on the Web, however, as things have gotten odd w/ our connection. Wanted to do some of my own, but no trouble has appeared. Oh well. Always a good thing when trouble doesn't strike.

While doing some surfing, though, I found an interesting article, titled The Rise of the Creative Class by Richard Florida. I haven't read the whole thing. So far, though, Richard has come up "The Creative Index", wh/ rates cities on the degree of creativity they foster; and he also notes th/ corporations conform themselves around the creative prospective & current employees. It has grabbed my attention so far, & I look forward to learning how creativity in cities contribute to their health.

Crazy. Reading the article & totally identifying w/ it. Guess I can count myself as part of the creative class.

Still Climbing th/ Hump

1st off, just want to say th/ article I've mentioned rocks. It gave me some great ideas for my thesis & such. Nothing I can use directly, but the ideas mentioned in the article got me thinking in some good tagents.

Moving on, though: I printed out the entry from yesterday so as to have bttr "navigation" ability. Kinda interesting to think how paper, itself, works bttr for navigating & browsing through text for me; whilst editing over the computer allows for speed & general efficacy, at least if the editor has a windows-type interface. But I digress.

I have to admit, I've got some urge to procastinate, wh/ I guess I somewhat by continuing to type abt procrastinating. Guess I just have a fear of it taking another two years or so to write a 7 - 10 page paper. It took th/ long to write the 1st paper. But now I've got th/ disclosure out of the way.

Now I need to figure out what to do w/ all the ideas & themes th/ I wrote down yesterday. I guess I could start by pointing out some similarities & contrasts th/ The Dispossessed has w/ The Handmaid's Tale. For one, they both address power relations & the place an individual has in society & how much power th/ society has over the individual.

Contrasts lie w/in these similarities, though: Offred knew th/ she had absolutely no power, & the power th/ she had came from the information she gathered from around here & the kind of bare influence she could "convince" to come out of other people. It had some basis of "game theory"/rationality to it even if the society itself had gotten based in some very irrational ideas. The ideas had some horrible base to them th/ if thought abt, made horrible sense while the day-to-day ways to "corrupt" the citizenry of the Republic & gain power had something of a rational basis to once someone had gained the right kind of information.

Shevek, on the other hand, had a certain kind of power b/c he had theoretical information or at least potential theoretical information. He lacked the kind of information & ability th/ Offred possessed, however. In a sense he had power from this kind of ignorance b/c he could come up w/ different ideas, not fear as his fellow citizens did, & desire growth to a certain extent. Even as he could gain knowledge & create new information, he hadn't the wisdom to implement it in the way th/ he would have liked. This part here doesn't make total sense to me, either. I think it will start making some sense when I write a ton, though, & sort through it.

Shevek gains much wisdom throughout the novel. The novel pretty much surveys the first 50 yrs of his life, w/ most of the survey style happening on his home planet/moon while the novel uses a more focused, detailed narrative for his year or so on the other planet, wh/ his home planet orbits.

Both narratives have something of an upside down bell shape to them. He starts off pretty naive of the situation, w/o much information abt the social situation, thus not having much wisdom abt it. As he experiences more, he gains more wisdom, becomes disillusioned, acts throughout the whole time -- both trying to learn more, fulfill old needs, then finding himself somewhere wholly new, finding himself w/ something of an identity th/ almost formed itself, then leaves himself in a position in wh/ he can only act in certain points, dependent on the decisions & acts he did in the past, wh/ further gets influenced by the other people, the society, the history of the worlds, wh/ can exponentially affect to the nth degree, depending on how much these factors affect other people & to a certain degree, the kind of willpower th/ these other people have to remain themselves -- wh/ some have probably argued th/ they don't really have such willpower b/c their environment makes them who they are, but I don't really want to get into th/ one b/c I don't believe a person can get defined w/ "is"s & "are"s & so forth. People act, they don't exist as some sort of infinite being.

Well. . .crap. I think I've started to make some progress in this rambling, even if it works in a circle @ the moment. Sometimes history works th/ way, maybe in th/ Rousseauian fashion, the individual juggling of ideas does the same. =)

W/ th/ above topic of the upside down bell shape, my mind moved to another one of the themes (or maybe 2 of the themes), the existential suffering but deserving the world of joy & pleasure, & also the idea th/ individuals should do what they love & find a way for it to benefit society but also do drudgery for the survival of society. If a person survives both, pleasure & suffering can act to develop & mature a person, build character, fill them w/ joy, provide prospective, while also bettering society. Shevek, himself, demonstrates this fact, the one th/ if one challenges oneself & pushes for introspective & extrospective then one can grow, understand more, & gain "power"/joy through the further wisdom. & like in the upside down bell where so many factors came together to create a situation of identity in wh/ all the factors in th/ situation grew so large th/ it became incalculable & powerful, this introspective/extrospective choice th/ everyone could make would do the same, but in a way th/ increases the growth, understanding, wisdom, & "power"/joy th/ everyone in a given society would possess.

& so the CD ends. As such, this entry of ecstasy will end, too.