it's only your life

(taken from 'Socrates to Sartre', Samuel Enoch Stumpf)

".... James argues that certain kinds of truths become possible only when we put ourselves in the position for the truth fully to materialize itself. If we fail to make ourselves 'available', we risk losing the truth. Suppose a young man wants to know whether a certain young lady loves him. Let us also suppose that objectively it is a fact that she loves him but he does not know it. If he assumes that she does not, if, that is, he does not will to believe that she loves him, his doubt will prevent him from saying or doing what would cause her to reveal her love. In this case, he would 'lose the truth'. His will to believe would not necessarily create the love: that is already there. Belief has the effect of making what is already there come full circle. If the young man required evidence before he could know the truth, he would never know it, because the evidence he is looking for can become available only after he willed to believe it is true. In this case, the will to believe would have discovered a fact that already existed. (William) James did not want to argue that the will to believe would 'create' the existence of God as the product of a mere wish. He rather thought that the truth of religion and the power of God in human experience is the discovery, through the will to believe, of what is in fact (already) "there". Some truths forever escape us until we plunge into the stream of experience."

Oh, Pragmatism. William James to be exact. I tried to explain this to Dante last night at 3 am. We agreed that it was a better example if the girl was dead instead of alive.

Here's a painting.

bands that have made july promising -

right away, great captain

made out of babies

coldplay

ray lamontagne

and also the movie 'the assassination of jesse james by yada yada yada'