Tonight

I can't sleep, and I know I thought of something witty to put here sometime over the past two days at work, but I can't remember it. Tonight was an awesome night, being that it was the first time in I can't remember how long that the entire group got to hang out. And who knows how long it will be until the next time.

Our house looks weird because the carpets are getting cleaned tomorrow and that means all furniture must be on non-carpted surfaces. Its amazing how you don't notice something until you have something else to compare it to. Like you can't really notice how bad dirty carpets are until you have an unblemished part to compare it to. I guess that's kind of like life, where you don't realize how un-green your grass is until you see your neighbor's lush lawn and can compare the two. Or at least what you percieve as lush.

Using that train of thought as a spring board, lately I've been thinking a lot about distinction. A lot of philosopher talk about distinction, especially as pertains to universals and language. A lot of people will argue that you can't describe something except by pointing out what it isn't. Some people will actually say that is the only way you can percieve the world. By making distinctions through colors and shapes.

Anyways, thinking about distinctions lead me to think about universals as the pertain to humans. What exactly is in human nature, and what about nature is different between men and women, yound and old, and even just between individual people (stupid feminists, making me take some of what they say seriously!). Ockham says, "There is no distinction without a difference," which makes me think if there can ever be a difference without a distinction. I think distinction is the cause of social injustice (ie racism and sexism and other isms), but does that mean that any differences is necessarily going to cause injustice. I think of Harrison Buegeron (not sure about the spelling), and how they tried to solve social injustice by getting rid of all differences. But its not the differences, its the percieved difference that these differences make to other people. If differences didn't matter, in other words if differences didn't cause distinctions, there wouldn't be a problem.

Just so you know, yes stuff like this is what occupies my mind at 2 in the morning while I try to sleep. As I said to Amy earlier this evening, "My mind has a mind of its own when its left to its own devices, and its scary what it can come up with." And now I've shared some of that with you. Thus endeth the rant.