Another Day Shot

+ Woke up late, at around 11 or 12.

+ Didn't feel energetic when I woke up.

+ Went for a facial at 2:30 after lieing (the right word?) around, doing small amount of reading and thinking more about the stuff I thought about until 3 in the morning "last night."

+ First facial felt interesting and good. It'll probably do my skin some good, even though it didn't relax me as much as I think it does other people.

During facial, thought about shallowness and superficiality get in the way of utopia and can cause dystopia because of the way it isolates people, the shallow and superficial people along with the "deeper" people. Unfortunately, I haven't really gotten anywhere with that thinking other than the feeling that I need to do more research and thinking on the topic.

Some people may think that thinking these thoughts while getting a facial or massage may cause the stress. I felt the tension in my shoulders and neck the moment I had lain down, and it didn't increase during the session.

Often during massages and yoga, I allow my mind to think about this stuff. Sometimes the thinking has a more linear projection while, at other times, my thoughts jump around a lot. With the linear ones for which I need an answer, I allow myself to dwell. When I know dwelling won't help or have random thoughts that pop up out of nowhere, I usually just accept them then let them go. Obviously, today, I had the linear thought track happening.

Nonetheless, this thinking usually has some use. I can often reach a useful conclusion or something. For one, I decided to check out bookstores for books by David Korten. I found one at Borders but didn't buy it because I thought some other, more local, bookstore might have it.

Unfortunately, they didn't, so I may just buy it tonight when the fiancee and I go out to see some movie she wants to see. It has Stephen Colbert in it, so it should have at least one or two funny spots to it.

BTW, on the way to the salon, I saw a pretty funny bumper sticker:

STEWART/COLBERT '08.

Actually took me a couple seconds to remember Jon Stewart and his connection with Stephen Colbert. When I did, though, I had a nice smirk.

Wow. I'm having something of a manic ADHD moment right now, huh?

Back to David Korten, though. I read the beginning to The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community. He provided a small biography about his growing up as a pretty stereotypical white conservative in the Northwestern US to a white conservative who hates not only big government but also big government. This guy really cares about the little guy, and he really does have something of a realizable utopia in mind.

I read an article or a chapter by Korten while taking a class at Marlboro College. The guy blew me away with his great ideas that not only sounded like a great place to live but also realizable. Even the pig headed conservative kid in class who took the attitude that he was always right and didn't really respect other people all that much loved Korten. Honestly, if you care about making the world a better place, you need to read some Korten.

+ Picked up the dry cleaning.

+ Haven't really eaten that much.

+ Haven't really accomplished a bunch that I wanted to do during the day.

+ In an hour or so, the fiancee will come home. We will then go to a movie in a couple hours.

+ I have a full day of work tomorrow.

+ My mind has become a jumble of disorganized information and frustrated effort at putting it together, mostly about my bachelors thesis. The whole shallowness and superficiality thing seems like a good central attack to take for the project. I really need to figure out how these create isolation in a country, society or community, though, and I don't want just some kind argument that correlates these vices to downfalls of civilization and empires.

Started The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom. So far, I can stomach about 1/2 to 3/4 of what he writes. The other 1/4 feels very much like logical leaps that beg a lot of questions. Nonetheless, he does approach the problems in today's society in a way that address shallowness and superficiality. If anything, this book will set me on a track to understanding the archetype held by our society about the importance of philosophy and the humanities in our society, rather than just accepting it as a simple truth.

Right, now onto it!