Raison d'Etre

Wow, that was portentous. Or, perhaps I should say, that was pretentious? Whichever, what I wanted to do now was take a moment and introduce myself and explain what I am trying to do here.

Blogs are, I think, very much a vanity thing. To imagine that one's own natterings are somehow of interest to the world at large is, I think, a very functional definition of vanity. The counter to that is just because it is vanity does not preclude it being useful. Politics is perhaps the perfect expression of vanity: imagining that one's ideas are not only interesting, but are capable of leading people to a better life, whether that is in a school district or a nation is unbelievable vain. Yet we rarely view politicians as vain men, at least when it comes to their ideas. Their obsession with their "legacy" is another matter entirely. So, while I am indulging my ego with this project, I would ask that you look beyond the stroking of my ego to the thoughts I share as having some value.

I have found over the past year or so, news stories have set me into a frame of mind that encourages philosophical thoughts. Whether these stories are on my NPR affiliate, on one of the many websites I like to keep up with (see partial list on the right), or just in conversation with friends, I find that I am turning these thoughts over with an eye toward how they make me feel, and more importantly, what is the reason they make me feel this way. For example, the previous entry was inspired in part by reading Riverbend's blog about life in wartime Iraq, as well as various stories that boil down to the premise that one's material wealth has some relationship to the value of one's life. In my way, then, I am trying to reject that premise and to also commiserate with Riverbend, a person who I have a great deal of admiration and sympathy for. I also believe I am a liberal, though not without a pragmatic streak, and even on occasion, flat out hypocrisy in my thinking.

This blog rises from those things. I wanted to share these musings with people to see if I am representative of anything in my thinking. I also wanted to record these philosophical ramblings to help me spot my own hypocrisies, or, to put it more nicely, to encourage me to maintain some semblance of continuity in my own thinking. Finally, and perhaps most vain of all, I wanted to record my thoughts so that I could show them to my girls some day and hopefully provide some idea of what their dad was blathering on about.

Oh yes, one other thing - the name of the blog. It's pretty simple - the philosophical bases for my thinking are things that I think are universal truths (or at least they should be in my arrogant mind). They should be self-evident. As in "We hold these truths to be self evident . . . ".