12/14: statements and logic

assuming that your not in law school or are studying philosophy...

have you ever come across practical logic?

maybe it was in a book you were reading or someone was telling you all the crazy stuff they learned the other day from their philosophy teacher.

so practical logic...it usually sounds funny, looks funny, makes no sense- basically it goes against everything modern english has shoved into our brains, but...there's something about it that pretty much boils down to the truth.

but not just any truth- "logical" truth.

i took an argumentation class once. it was suppose to fulfill one of my gen-eds, but apparently it didn't count for a qualitative and formal reasoning credit, so i had to take logic of arithmetic, which was pretty much the same thing.

two times learning that shit and guess what...i still don't get it.

so i wont be here to tell you logical truth, what assumptions are, if p actually equals q, or what really makes a good or bad argument. pheww.

i guess the reason why i never understood this whole "logic" idea is because there are some things that just cannot be defined by logic, they can only be defined by what you make of them (and because p certainly DOES NOT equal q)

in my argumentation class junior year and i got to this statement in my book. i seriously don't remember the entire sentence, but it read.....something, something..."figure it out and ask for it"

apparently the rest of the sentence was a huge red flag for fallacies but i missed it.

i probably messed with that sentence for an hour- mixing the words around until the sentence was "logical"

on hour 2 i said fuck it and came up with this...

[sentence]..."figure out what you want, and learn how to ask for it"

funny- the statement itself seems logical. not word part specific or whatever, but actually real life practical. logic?

go figure, i get it wrong- only to find out that exact same sentence was in a movie i was watching this past weekend. so im telling myself that if it's in a reese witherspoon movie then its fine.

that statement wasn't all that logically wrong. maybe not to the qualifications of my argumentation theory teacher- but that statement has practical, real life logic.

im almost certain that you've heard this statement before...let the chips fall where they may?

well, seems to me that lately the people i know- not excluding myself on this one at all...they're chips seem to be hurled into space. they don't fall, but they don't land. 

un-logical?

you know what the problem with people in these situations is?

they don't know what they want.

-even if they did know what they wanted, they don't know how to ask for it.

it seems so logical that if you figure out what you want and you learn how to ask for it- things in life would be ten times easier, right?

so why is it that people don't do it?

i wish i knew.

last night i owned up to this little bit of logic that i think to be correct. i knew what i wanted. it wasn't something big, not necessarily small either (hell- it could have been a candy bar) but i knew what i wanted. step one complete. then i asked for it.

here the logical red flag im sure that goes off in your head...how to ask for it?

tricky. this is where most people fail. and when i mean fail, they fail miserably.

obviously every situation, person, event, candy bar is different- so asking for it will vary. do you take a subtle approach? vigorous? caring? hostile? do you ask it in a letter? an email? in person? a text? face to face? over the phone? is it direct? or is it obscure?

nonetheless, you find a way to get what you want. if whatever it is doesn't come to you right away, or down the road...you know what you want and you are trying to find ways to get it.

but what if you cant do anything about it? well, that's not an option.

of course you can. eventually you have to learn to surrender to this unknown chain of events that happen in life.  if you don't you become one of the cowards of the world who will leave it at knowing exactly what they want and not doing anything about it.

if asking for what you want scares you- don't let it. its unnecessary to play down your eccentricities. you set your own expectations, so what people expect shouldn't be a reason.

i wish my teacher could see that little bit of logic i had in figuring out what you want and learning how to ask for it. because if you know what you want and you find a way to ask for it- then you are likely speaking the truth.

you don't beat around the bush and there are no fallacies. its simply just the truth. (logic- eh!)

figure out what you want and learn how to ask for it.

that's my C+ average logical advice to all those people out there with floating chips in space, for those truth-seekers and those people who are still trying to bridge the gap of asking for what it is they want.

do it and see what happens. the big things in life will iron themselves out eventually. that is all.