Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Introduction to the Blog

I intentionally gave this blog a conspicuous name, hoping that when I die someone in my family will remember that I did write something down in a blog (for what it’s worth) and perhaps try to find it. This blog is something of a memoir and collection of life lessons, so the reader will indulge me, please, if I write something that is self-aggrandizing and boastful. I have many thoughts that I want to write down but I am in no hurry. I will write when I feel like it.

Any visitor to this blog may feel free to make comments on any post, not just current ones.

The other day Natalie (daughter) and I were alone in my bedroom (Fall 2010). She was looking at my bookshelves when she noticed I had gathered about 20 pink highlighters out of my books (I use them as bookmarks), and she asked me why I highlight my books. She said it would be nice if I would write down what I was thinking when I highlighted my books. I could sense that she understood that although she could not yet understand the books I read, someday she would want to read them and understand what I was thinking when I highlighted them. This blog is, in part, a response to Natalie and the rest of my family.

This blog is a means of sorting out my own position on issues and then purging them from my mind to free up some of my working memory.

In this blog I will make my little contribution toward answering the perennial question, “What is truth?”

Some blog postings will take up Mormon issues or else express a passing thought, but I have no intention of writing Mormon apologetics, nor insensitive criticism.

Some postings will be disconnected, random thoughts and memories.

In short, Spinoza [think of Todd Hansink with tongue in cheek] is not to be read, he is to be studied; you must approach him as you would approach Euclid, recognizing that in these brief... pages a man has written down his lifetime's thought with stoic sculptury of everything superfluous. Do not think to find its core by running over it rapidly; never in a work of philosophy was there so little that could be skipped without loss. Every part depends upon preceding parts; some obvious and apparently needless proposition turns out to be the cornerstone of an imposing development of logic. You will not understand any important section thoroughly till you have read and pondered the whole...

-Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, p.218

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