my history of my own philosophy

ages 2-4 I become vaguely aware that I am at church once a week

ages 5-6
I become aware that my father owns a large collection of books that fill an entire room in our house.  I begin singing in the church youth choir, something that I will do until I graduate high school.  I have vague ideas about god only caring if we live good lives; looking back on this I am nostalgic that I could believe in god but not have any caveats.

age 8
I tell Samantha Roberts' mom (who was volunteering as an assistant in the computer lab at the local elementary school) that I didn't have to listen to what she has to say, "because my dad has a PHD" (earned at Akron U. in history sometime during the 1970s, he now teaches at a Jesuit high school, in my hometown, that I would later attend).  I was scolded very much by my parents when the principal called them.   Also around this year I got in trouble for getting in a fight in the hallways and I was also accused of defacating on the school's outdoor walls at recess, which led to a compounded scolding/grounding.  Vague thoughts about public-private dynamic.  I learn that my mom comes from an evangelical-Methodist background and my dad from a secular-Presbyterian tradition.  I believe at this time I began to be conscious of self-centered nature, although the word "narcissism" would not have had any meaning to me.

ages 9-12
I become aware that most of these books deal with history, be it biographies, textbooks, close studies of particular eras, intellectual histories, etc (also around that time the word 'et cetera' entered my vocabulary.  I got in big trouble when I was 11 because I wrote a journal/diary called "The Julia Pages" about my various attractions to various girls in the midst of the onset of puberty, and then I showed it to one of my friends and we printed out dozens of copies on his computer and sold them for five dollar's a piece at recess until we got caught.  The fact that the rule we broke was kind of vague angered me.  Also around that age I began to talk on the phone a lot, and sometimes did deceiving three-way calls where we figured out who someone "liked."  Truth or dare was also important.  I abandoned these mostly after a while because my parents were mad that my grades were declining at I didn't want to get yelled at anymore.  Philosophical sentiments were brewing but there was very little structure to them.

ages 13-15
I discover the words "ethics" and "philosophy" during an english class but didn't really care too specifically untill a dude at a basketball camp use the word "philosophy" to describe another team's poor gameplan, and I thought that perhaps ethics would have been a better word (I was wrong).  Also around this time my political ideas began to change from my parent's more libertarian-conservative bent towards a more left-liberal bent.  I remember thinking durng the 2000 election that Gore was going to steal it from Bush, and then I also remember by the time of the 2004 election I hated him with an extreme passion.  Become very much into "punk" music around this time.  I begin to read Noam Chomsky, but only really love his interviews that were compiled under the name "9-11" because they were all about his immediate reactions to 9-11.  I find him kind of poetically political and politically poetic and antipoetic and antipolitical in those interviews.  I learn the word "plethora."

ages 16-18
I read a lot of the works by the lost generation writers.  I begin to discover different philosophers as a result of a biography of Jim Morrison I read.  I look up On the Road, and then eventually Nietzsche.  I read a lot about Nietzsche but am not really able to understand his works themselves without help from other sources.  I also begin reading Marx a lot, but also don't understand him completely without referring to other sources.  Read "siddartha"; vague awareness of eastern thought/philosophy.  My main academic interests are history and government and literature, but I don't quite understand that other part of the humanities called philosophy.  I take calculus but don't really care for math, and especially don't care for sceince.  My conception of philosophy as more of a hard humanities rather than a math/science is solidified at this point.  Vaguely understand Lockes and Hobbes.  I begin using recreational drugs.  My self-conscious relation to the self-centered, bipolar presentation I believe others see when they looked at me becomes problematic, or something like that.

ages 19-20/21
I begin attending Bard College, but am forced to dropout before the end of my freshmen year.  I continue using durgs, but more.  Become officially and indefinitely atheist/agnostic.  Learn more about eastern philosophy/spirtuality.  I enroll at Kent State for my sophomore year.  I read a long ass interview on tao lin's blog with noah cicero.  I begin to read noah cicero's blog a lot.  In various courses during the first two years of college I am introduced to Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Machiavelli, Diderot, Descrates, Rousseau, Kant, Mill, Hegel, and several other philosophers as well as a plethora of writers and artists from various places and times and whatnot.   Start using the word "absurd" more.  I begin to become vaguely interested in existentialism.

ages 21/22-23
I return to Bard College for my thrid year.  I become immersed in tragedy, absurdism, existentialism, postmodernism, logic, ethics, and aesthetics but find these problematic concepts/schools/trends/structures.  My favorite philosophers are Plato, Kierkegaard, Marx, Nietzsche, Sartre, Camus, De Beauvoir, Barthes, and Rorty.  I love when one of my profs talks about opposing how anglo-american philo snobs sometimes dont want to consider eastern thought as actual "philosophy", because they don't think it involves the same logic-wisdom-science dynamic that philo should actually have. Talk to my friend Joe Vechio about philo alot.  I take a one-on-one course on Camus with a prof.  I attempt to write a senior thesis on Hemingway and existentialism, and succeed it finishing it but not in developing my ideas completely.  I graduate from college.  I move to New York City.  I write this.






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