I’ve lost my focus with this blog. When I started, I had imagined collecting and refining my ideas about a general theory of mind and its intersection with culture. That has been the principal intellectual preoccupation of my adulthood. Although I don’t have college degrees in the usual disciplines that most researchers and philosophers on the subject have (psychology and historical psychology, anthropology, neurology and brain surgery, cognitive and learning theory, and philosophy), I’ve synthesized a lot of information that comes from these disciplines. Indeed, to even begin requires a formidable interdisciplinary breadth. In a certain respect, I’m wholly unqualified to tackle the subject, but in other respects, I’m precisely the sort of person to do so. Regrettably, other things got in the way, such as earning a living. And besides, consciousness is a moving target, which is one of my points.
Almost from the inception of this blog I’ve been delaying discussions about and further investigation of consciousness and the mind in favor of dire predictions of The Collapse stemming from overpopulation, environmental degradation, global warming and climate change, the end of oil, etc. What could be more significant that humanity’s demise at its own hand? There are no links there because maybe half my blog entries have been about those topics. Interspersed are observations about the culture at large and a few lighter, more humorous posts about a variety of nonsense.
I’ve also adopted a conspicuously dense though abbreviated form for most entries. I rarely blog over 3 or 4 paragraphs. That’s partly out of a desire not to bore my few readers or to write excessively long, scholarly tomes on a blog. I can’t say whether that choice has been successful, as there is little discussion going on in the comments. I have only two, maybe three faithful commentators and not very many more visitors. So perhaps longer, more self-indulgent entries might appear with fuller explications of my themes.