Confessions; or, crapping on about me

I guess this is a little over due. I’ve been meaning to write the “About” page for some time but was never really sure as to what I should write. Do I actually write about me, or do I write about what I want to do with this blog, or both? Anyhow…

My name is Nathan, I’m married (coming up 9 yrs) with two children (9 y.o boy, 7 y.o girl), and I’m fast approaching my 30th birthday (23rd August). I guess the reason why most people read or come to this blog is because of the philosophical content, broadly construed. Truth be told, I’m a second year undergraduate, studying externally (meaning I study online) and part-time out of Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. (I study part-time and externally purely because of the fact that I have to work full-time at a shitty job to help provide for my family – I know, you’ve heard this story before, right?) I came to my tertiary study a little later than most, I thought I was going to be a professional baseball player.

As a teenager I played baseball for Australia for a number of years. I travelled through the U.S and the eastern parts of Cananda in large part in pursuit of my dreams. I was awarded a scholarship to play baseball for a Div. 1 college and was shown some interest by the Minnesota Twins and the Atlanta Braves. My choice would definitely have been the Braves, my hero as a kid was Greg Maddox. Unfortunately while finishing my final year in high school I had injured my elbow pitching in the World Youth Series in Canada. I lost my scholarship and my chance of playing both college and professional baseball. After all, who wants to have an injured 18 y.o playing for you when you have more (healthier) kids playing baseball in the state of California than people actually living in the whole of Australia? Regardless, I finished highschool, had the necessary surgery to repair my elbow (I had an elbow reconstruction) and found a job labouring at a cabinet-makers factory.

About a year after I began my labouring job I decided to take on an apprenticeship as a woodmachinist for the company I was working for. I completed my apprenticeship with the second highest marks in the state. During my apprenticeship I got married, and by my fourth year as an apprentice, I had two children. All the time earning very little money. At this point I guess I really was the philosopher’s poor.

It was about this time, now my mid-twenties, that I started to gain a real interest in philosophy. I had always been very inquisitive, discovering that I was an atheist at the age of 6, though obviously not knowing what the term meant, that simply I was incredulous to the belief in God or anything outside of this world. I knew the world wasn’t always as it seemed to be. I began reading texts by Nietzsche and Camus, though to no surprise, I had no idea what the hell these guys were on about. I hadn’t done the usual philosophy 101 courses that most had done by the time they get to Nietzsche and Camus. Nevertheless, I kept borrowing the limited amount philosophy books from my local library to feed my new found hunger for knowledge and to naïvely answer all those burning questions I had: why am I here? what is the purpose of life? etc, etc. Unfortunately, I found now answers, only more questions. Tired of not understanding what the hell I was reading (which is funny, cause I still have no idea what the hell I’m reading half the time), in 2006 I decide to undertake university study in philosophy.

In the four short years I have been studying philosophy at a university level, my interests have varied from the more analytic inclined fields of A.I, philosophy of science, philosophy of language to the more ‘continental’ inclined fields of political theory, film theory, philosophy of religion, animal rights, philosophy of language, and critical theory. While my interest in philosophy and my philosophical interests grow, I still lack overall direction. It is hard to know where to begin with well over 2000 years of philosophical thought to cover and try to ingest. With baseball it was easy; for those who know anythign about baseball I was a closer, my job was to go in there and get outs. I knew how to do that and I was good at it. The problem I face now is that I feel as though I’ve entered into this a little too late to get where I want to be. There is always someone younger, smarter, more capable, and who have the time to understand the intricate systems of thought presented by those who come before us. (I feel at this point like the wife of 25 years who is trying to justify why her husband has cheated on her for his younger, sexier secretary.) Nevertheless, the one thing that studying philosophy at uni has taught me is that philosophy is nothing like the self-indulgent, public jerkfest academic philosophy seems to present itself as. Philosophy is a way of life, exactly the way the Greeks understood philosophy to be. Philosophy is for the people.

With all that said, the one thing I hope I can do with this blog and with philosophy more generally, is present thoughts, and  ideas not just of my own, but of those within field of philosophy and make them accessible to everyone. Knowledge should be free, and free for everyone to learn.