Email to Mark Wilkerson
Kill the Killers
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20120916               Epistemology               War
I lost the email transmittal record for this email sent probably September 16, 2012 (maybe I never sent it)

Mark,
This one is a new style for me. I am skipping the journal, and going directly to One Note, Microsoft's great idea organizer, where I am beginning to pull together whatever I have transcribed by topics, cross referenced, of course, in this day of hyperlinks. Logical flow is no longer as imperative for recording or perhaps communicating ideas; technological hyperlinks in our computer "brains" (personal and "cloud") sort of mimic our own "hyperlinked" thought processes, and so can provide a deeper, or at least different, perspective of one's, my, self and thoughts than a logical, ordered "argument". But this entry, and the new thing for me here, is more along such traditional logical lines. But first, a "deconstructed" narrative of how I got there, there being to my new style.

War: Kill the Killers
I was reading the paper and noticed a contradiction in values as I often do, this time "kill to end the killing" (Americans were killed in Muslim countries for some silly "proximal" reason, a film by an American insulting to Muslims, but just a trigger of release, I suspect, for deep, deep, deep-seated antagonism and resentment to "western" imperialism, including, legal, economic, cultural, and "religious" imperialism, if you, include in the term "religion" the modern western Enlightenment values of "democracy, freedom, and human rights" (especially, now, women's rights, and of course the in vogue fellow traveler, gay rights), as I do. These values of "common human decency and respect" ISTMRN, lead many to believe they over-ride "religious" and "traditional" values, at least from a very prevalent western political viewpoint. The paper today includes columns by both liberals and conservatives calling for "justice", each suggesting the proper instrument of justice would be drone-launched missi les to "take out" (the same words in both columns) or "kill the killers".

Epistemology
Anyway, (-) following my "thought hyperlinks"
Thoughts of contradiction lead (hyperlink) to thoughts of Jacques Derrida (+), the French "deconstructionist" about whom I just watched a DVD documentary (hyperlink) over the last several days. My "TV" time (hyperlink) is usually limited to less than an hour a day, and then only for DVD's I have selected from Netflix (hyperlink) or purchased as lectures from the Learning Company. So several days a week are usually spent viewing 90 to 120 minute films or, commonly, documentaries (footnote 1). That (hyperlink back to (+) led to pulling out the "text" book that goes along with the "course" (hyperlink) for us retired folk I took a couple of years ago at the local junior college titled (hyperlink) "Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition" (eighty-three 45 minute lectures from Plato to Derrida (hyperlink back to a previous bifurcation node of thought, see (+) above). Back to the narrative, when I consulted the biographical entry for Derrida, it said Derrida "ushered Americans into the er a of post-structuralism". Well, I am an American so I thought (hyperlink) I would review what Derrida "evolved from" or is "different than", so I looked up the chapter on Structuralism (hyperlink), a "modern school of thought" according to the text. As I started reading, thoughts (hyperlink) about what I read occurred to me, and, violating one of my deepest values (hyperlink) to NOT deface texts, I noted my comments in the margin, as I do often with newspaper articles (hyperlink) intending someday, mañana, to use (hyperlink) these marginal notes as idea fodder to write something else. So to "preserve" textbooks by not defacing them, I thought (hyperlink) why not go directly to digital? So, that hyperlinked discussion (hyperlink back to (-)) leads to this entry, which begins following the footnote, and hyperlinks back to the first sentence of this email.

Footnotes: the "old" hyperlinks
(1) I have in the past often selected on-line 100 or more Netflix "films" in a single "session" of about half hour or so, scramble the order, Netflix allows that, because as I "drill down" into "topics" I tend to select films on similar subjects together. Netflix sends the films in the order selected unless you rearrange the queue, which I do to "randomize" the list. Then each day a "surprise" new film arrives magically at my door, a surprise because I quickly forget what I selected or how I ordered them.