doing a lot better lately.

it seems i can repeat my own advice to others but cannot follow it myself.

you cannot force emotional or personal catharsis--it more or less dawns on you like an epiphany.

in my case i stress myself out so much that i am under such great tension that i become very very upset--sometimes to the point of serious mental illness.

i think the results of my month-long research into the blog posts i want to produce are now mature. they form a loosely related triptych:

1. an investigation of the internals of abrahamic religions--judaism, christianity, and islam. i approach the topic from a philosophical perspective, not an historical one.

2. an investigation of the coincidence between religion and social and political power. putting aside the internal coherence of religion, i want to know: why do people turn to the supernatural in order to ground their sense of social belonging?

3. finally: a nice, rigorous treatment on 'platonism'. when i was in grad school, i had no choice but to study in the tradition of anglo-american analytic philosophy, where everyone is scrambling to be the loudest and most devout enemy of 'platonism'. so the unwritten/unspoken convention dictates, you had better praise david hume, skeptical empiricism, or give up on an academic career altogether. a bizarre, lobotomised form of kant is as radical or exotic as one is allowed to get. frankly, i am disgusted by these attitudes and i don't care who hears it.

hope you're all well 🙏