The Start of EXCOGITATIONS

I am going to start a new series of posts on this blog about my life. I intend to label these ruminative posts “Excogitations.” I will keep these posts short, only about 250 words. I am a thinking person who has read and still reads a lot, for good or ill. Much of my adult life has been spent reading books and pondering intellectual issues. I have thought about the economics of life a lot recently and down the years (a book on the notion was recently published, entitled The Logic of Life). I realized that if you were to judge how much I value particular activities by how much time I spend doing them, you would conclude that I value reading and thinking above just about all else besides immediate family.

I have no agenda in writing these posts, though I do believe it is possible that an agenda could develop for one reason or another. But, for now, I’m just going to write casually about what I’ve been thinking about lately, which is usually inspired or motivated by what I’m reading (or writing in other areas). Also, I am going to tack on an art photo when I feel moved to do so. The one posted here is a shot of a power pole near some tall pines. I have many intellectual interests, so I can’t say exactly what might come up. Nonetheless, here’s a short list of some general topics that will surely come under consideration, wide regions into which my mind often moseys:

1. God -– I have always wanted to find out whether he/she/it exists, whether she/it/he can be known, and how I can know her/him/it.

2. Religion -- If we can figure out who God is, what he might want of me -- or all of us -- if anything.

3. Film -- I have been tinkering with a book of film criticism for a number of years.

4. Evil (the human variety) -- I have long brooded on its causes and cures.

5. War -- I ponder this, probably, because there are so many war films.

6. History -- I have been a history buff and interested in the philosophical theory of history for decades. Many eras, from the U.S. to ancient Rome, interest me. But my specialties are probably New Testament Palestine, Constantinian Rome, Reformation Europe, and the U.S. Civil War. (Why these four? Well, there's a subject for an excogitation, no?)

7. Human Behavior -- I am always wondering why people do what they do and think what they think -- why I do and think what I do, for that matter.

8. Strange Beliefs -- I have long ruminated on why people adopt oddball beliefs, true or untrue (does oddballness make a belief untrue?).

9. Literature -- I have read a lot, mostly the standard greats that Humanities major tend to favor or really well-written books. But sometimes a well-turned work of literary entertainment can keep me thinking for weeks.

These are areas of thought I regularly visit during my life. The list is not exhaustive, but it gives a good idea about the areas I might jump into in this series of EXCOGITATIONS.

Who am I writing this series for? I don’t know. For I don’t really know who reads this blog. But I have long aspired to be a writer, and so I am using this blog to write about what I am thinking about, which is usually what I want to write about. That hardly needed saying, did it?