Jan
06

Blog Posts Via Email

So one of my friends, who I am actually going to go see play in a couple of weeks (more info in Facebook if you are interested on the local heavy metal scene) asked me to subscribe him to the blog via e-mail. I replied RSS YO! and I think I lost him.

My blog posts used to posted to facebook, I am toying with the idea of adding them to google+; what I had never considered is that people would be interested on subscribing by e-mail.

I looked for some pluggins and there are plenty of them out there, but none that did what I really wanted to, so I settled for feedburner. (which is now done by google)

Subscribe to – Logtar’s Blog – by Email

At first I thought it was kid of going backwards to subscribe to something like a blog using kind of a newsletter model, then I saw some potential on it. Google plus already does something similar with circles. When I share something there I think of the audience and use my circles to post to them. That adds a lot of flexibility and reduces the noise produced.

A blog is a lot more passive in that respect. Once in a great while I write something that I want someone to read and I shoot them an e-mail, but for the most part this is here for people to consume on their own time. I even provide the full post via RSS so people can simply just read from there.

I want to continue to create content, but the blog format seems to be outdated in some ways. I want all conversations to be centralized and not fragmented like they are now. You get some interaction on facebook, some in g+.

Hopefully in the future we will have more centralized collaboration and participation in discussions… it seems like a pipe dream.

Jan
03

Logos

When people hear the term Philosophy they often think of either a course they didn’t ever want to take, or that blow-off subject about a bunch of old dudes. What most don’t realize is that they are being fed philosophy in many ways, even by pop culture.

I hope I can safely assume that everyone has heard the word Logic. That word comes from another one, Logos, which has many meanings through history but the one that I want to discuss today is the one that Aristotle gave it.

Before I lose you, did you know that the film The Matrix models Plato’s Allegory of the cave? Aristotle was Plato’s student, and The Republic has given a lot to pop culture, from dystopias to utopias. If you read The Hunger Games, the idea of a society divided by what their people produce or do for a living is right out of The Republic.

Rhetoric has become even a bad word in modern politics. I think a lot of the people that use the word don’t even understand where it came from.

Aristotle wrote the treatise on rhetoric. So before I am accused of using long words that I don’t understand, treatise is like an essay but more in depth; think of writing a thesis. So Aristotle is the dude who wrote the handbook on how to bullshit!

Rhetoric is the art of discourse, an art that aims to improve the facility of speakers or writers who attempt to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations.

While all of this has in some ways been tainted by our negative connotation of politics, it is not just about that. You can pretty much argue about anything, and the ancient philosophers used to. We don’t do that enough. We almost sit complacent on the thought that everything has been figured out for us. But, logos is what puts humans above the other animals.

So what the heck is Logos?

Well, on his bullshit handbook, Aristotle talked about the modes of persuasion: Logos, pathos and ethos.

Every single time you are trying to convince someone of something using language you are using logos. When you tell your spouse that you should eat at closest and cheapest restaurant you are using speech laced with logic.

When you try to convince someone that you have high moral character (or know more than they do, LOL) you are using ethos. So this is kind of what preachers or a college professor. We listen to them because they should know better than us, that is how they persuade us.

Pathos is when you try to appeal to someone’s emotions. Trying to put someone in an specific state of mind. I think this one is the one that has given politics a bad name, because you can use fear to drive your point home. Any human emotion really, so even a comedian is using a form of persuasion.

I often use pathos and metaphors when talking about a subject. Being able to relate is something that makes others able to understand the message you are trying to convey. That said, nothing beats logic. I don’t think that until you have an argument and simmer it down to pure logic is it really resolved or put to rest.

A lot of my conversations with my friends lately have been all about the logos. And there is a post about faith and worship coming up thanks to one of those conversations. Hopefully this post can help frame some things to come. Maybe it just shows to my teacher that at least I was not sleeping during my entire philosophy class.

Jan
03

New Year New Direction

Small people talk about other people.

Average people talk about things.

Great people talk about ideas.

I found the quote above thanks to one of my latest finds, Wogan May circled me via G+ and I have been having a blast reading through his blog. While there are a lot more ideas for topics that reading him have sparked, this one has been brewing in my own head for a while. The quote just happened to be a good springboard for the post.

This blog has taken many turns over the years. I have wanted to chronicle several things, but it seems to not serve that purpose all that well. One constant is that it does see to make people think. The posts that seem to start conversations with my friends are the ones that I enjoy the most. That and the ones about Movies I watch. As much as I would love to mess with XO and say I am turning this blog into a foodie blog, I think this year I am going to move to talking about ideas a little more.

Lets go back to the quote and look at it from a psychology point of view. I have touched on maturity before and joked about my varying degrees of it. Most people get stuck on the gossip world of, lets talk about other people and let that be the subject. Others step onto talking about the things they see, what surrounds them. Only a few get to the level where they want to explore ideas and understand why it is that they think the way they do.

Again, I often regress to talking about other people, its easy because it is part of human interaction. However I enjoy conversations about ideas the most. I have been lucky enough to have lots of those lately and that is probably one of the only good side effects of the economy tanking. Once you get beyond the politics and economics you move onto talking about ideas and in the end what is really important.

I want to do that with this blog, I want to hopefully show people a different point of view. Who knows, if I am lucky enough maybe even spark an idea like others do when I read them. I have often fantasized that blogs will change the world in a very real way just because of how we are sharing thoughts. So I am going back to posting quotes and what comes to my brain when I read them.

That said, I am glad that 2012 has started. 2011 was not a year I can call one of the best… I do want to call 2012 one if them. Happy New Year!

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