Unloveable.

[ryanw1785]

Today NPR featured a story about how some bloggers are attracting corporate advertisement. At my present rate, I realized, I was never going to get to that level, so I decided I need to rescue this page from what aspen suggests is it apparent impending death (although, to clarify, it does not matter to him

Comments

[mumu1210]

What's your conclusion? Is love an emotion, a decision...or perhaps, most logically, both?

shyam is right

[ryanw1785]

Just to suggest why this is probably so, consider the claim that emotions have rationality. When I fear a bear because it is big and angry, it follows that I will fear any bear that is just as big and just as angry. This seems to be the case of emotions generally. This isn't a great example, but imagine you knew I was afraid of large and angry bears, if one day walking together we encountered a large, angry bear and I kept walking normally. Why were you not afraid? you might ask. It would be odd for me to simply say "because I chose not to be." Self-help rhetoric notwithstanding, I think if something is an emotion in a normal sense, it is not a sensation that we choose to experience.

I will say though that your other criticism--the one you don't include here--is devastating. Namely that my stories have no terminal impacts.

yeah....

[ryanw1785]

I noticed that. At first I thought it was going to be just right, but then rereading this, it seems to have devolved from a story about being critisized by classmates to one about how other people fail to think very clearly. This is much less novel, of course. But not entirely off target, I would maintain. For example, isn't a signfiicant component of the typical angst-experience the self-doubt that creeps in when others perplexingly fail to recognize the ineffable superiority of oneself?

[anonymous]

honestly Ryan, I need a response to my comment about Mackie, as every time I see your livejournal and look to see if you responded I die a little bit inside. ACKNOWLEDGE ME, or I will do something absurd that you and probably I will end up regretting.

-Dylan