About Me

Growing up in the small town of Menominee was pleasant, boring at times, sedentary, familiar, racially/ethnically/culturally homogeneous, woodsy, sporty, beautiful, and family orientated. I was obsessed with sports, especially basketball. After falling out of love with that (because the adults had ruined it), I fell in love with religion, reading, and philosophy. I was influenced early on by the New Testament, Karl Jung, Plato, Hermann Hesse, and Emerson. The Matrix was the single most important catalyst in my philosophic turn. I was fascinated about the problems involved in perceiving the external world. In college I devoured philosophy, especially the early modern philosophers Descartes, Berkeley, and Kant. For a few years I engulfed myself in Berkeley's theory of visual perception and tried to publish a paper on it.

My life has focused on two simple concepts. I have one tattoo which represents the two greatest things in my life, the two greatest concepts in the world (to me) and the two greatest ideals closest to my heart: truth (Greek) and love (Aramaic).

Great men were obsessed with simple things. If my life represents anything at all, I hope it represents truth and love. By truth I mean knowledge and honesty. I mean discovering the depths of yourself and the world around you. It represents Socrates, the "Jesus of Truth," who lived it and died for it, who represents the ancient Greek philosophical tradition, the birth of Western philosophy and science. Science is knowledge, but truth is larger than that. The search for truth, no matter where it leads, is philosophy, and the goal of philosophy is wisdom, which I define as knowledge mixed with compassion. The wise person is both knowledgeable and loving. Love represents Jesus, who also lived it and died for it but never wrote anything down (like Socrates). That means something. Truth as lived. Jesus is the greatest example of love I have come across, whose teachings on love reach the highest levels: love your enemies. If my life represents anything at all, I hope it represents love. Truth and love is all I desire for myself and for the world. The only reason I started this blog was to spread truth and love, in proportion to the small amount that I have.

I also have a blog about brewing beer: https://onepotbrewing.wordpress.com/