Disneyland Closes At 35

Disneyland in Paperback

Disneyland will be available from Amazon.com by the end of this month in paperback. Some of my philosophy students, as well as friends and relatives, have asked what purpose I had in writing and publishing the book. These questions led me to question myself and my motives in writing the novel. It is not the first novel I have written.

Long ago, perhaps as many as 30 years ago, I wrote a book entitled Reel to Reel. I really never attempted publication as the novel was autobiographical for the most part. I wrote it for me, to assist me in sorting out the experiences of high school, a brief stint in college, and 8 years in the Army. I believe Reel to Reel has found its final resting place in a trunk, a trunk in storage halfway across town.

The second novel was entitled After the Eclipse. I never attempted publication of that novel either, and I don't remember why I wrote it at all. I don't even know where the manuscript might now be found. Both of the aforementioned novels were written on an old portable typewriter.

Later, when I returned to graduate school, I had several short stories published in literary journals. I would someday like to compile those stories into a book of stories and attempt publication.

One of my professors in graduate school was Robert Nelsen, a very fine writer and teacher out of the University of Chicago. He is the author of many wonderful short stories and other works. He worked for years on his own novel and had, I believe, come very close to publication on several occasions. He was then the Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Texas at Dallas. His classes were always full and he was revered by his students. I asked him once what purpose he had in writing his novel and attempting to publish. He told me that a novelist with a purpose is not really a novelist, but a business man. The authors of how to books have a purpose. A true novelist has no purpose, he said. She simply writes because she must.

I had a purpose in writing Disneyland, so perhaps I am not a true novelist. My purpose was really to tell a story that I wanted to share. I did not have to write the book. I wanted to write the book. I can't wait to complete Disneyland's sequel.

I am new to blogging. I'm not quite sure how anyone manages to stumble across my blog, but they do. My statistical page indicates that more than 400 persons have read parts of my blog. I wish some of them, or all of them, would post a comment. At the moment I feel as if I am broadcasting into space hoping that some day a reply will come back out of the void.

I hope people with read my book. I want to know what they think of my story,

I hope people will read this blog. I want to know what they think of my posts. I want to know what I think of their posts. In short, I would like some dialogue. Tell me how to improve the blog. Engage me in conversation or controversy.

Do you have a blog? Tell me how to get to yours.

Understanding Hobbes

I had a comment from Baldemar. Thanks, I appreciate your views, but do find some inconsistency in your logic. It is obviously your view that human beings are not the basically non altruistic individuals that Hobbes believed them to be. I would ask that you provide some documentation of your belief in the ay that Hobbes documented his belief. What is it in your experience that causes you to believe that humans will band together to help other human beings in any substantive manner, particularly in times of crisis. Quite the opposite is true, at least if one turns to the historical record.

It would also be interesting for you to provide any evidence of Hobbes' muddleheadedness. Most philosophers have found his thinking to be extremely logical and precise. Life in a state of nature is short, nasty and brutish, or so says Hobbes. In modern history he might point to the following:

In the last 40 years alone we have witnessed the carnage in the former Yugoslavia, in Somalia, in Rwanda, in the Sudan, in Darfur, in Cambodia and Laos and across the globe. Freedom from persecution of person or property is all that Hobbes hoped to gain from the Social Contract, not universal health insurance, a free college education, or the myriad  other things you seem to believe constitute what the Sovereign owes the nation.

Who do we contract with? We can start by not renewing contracts we have made with our local, state and national representatives by removing them from office. It might be in order for the Sovereign to ensure the criminal prosecution of corporations that have robbed and stolen the pensions of millions of Americans. The Sovereign is responsible to safeguard our property and person. The French and American revolutions were based on the principle that civil disobedience is called for when the Sovereign fails to keep the contract.

I am certainly not calling for revolution, rebellion or civil disobedience. If you read my last post the only substantive claim made was that I hear a number of individuals who are not happy with the current state of the social contract and would like to see the document revisited. I never made 90% of the claims your that your post employs.

Thanks for your post. Look forward to hearing from you again.

Thomas Hobbes Rolls Over in his Grave

The novels, short stories and essays that I write all have to do with the human condition, with human nature, and attempt to analyze and explicate all that it means to be human. I spent 8 years in the Army, 30 more as a Criminal Justice Administrator, and now 9 years as an adjunct professor of philosophy at various colleges.

The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes was also a student of human nature. He pictured a time in the long ago past of human kind in which every human had a right to anything that could be begged, borrowed, or stolen. He said that to live in such a State of Nature was to live a life that was short, nasty and brutish. Hobbes believed that human beings are by nature selfish and self interested, and that as such they came to realize that it was in their own interest to cooperate with others in order to have peace and security. In short, people decided to contract with one another in order to secure this peace and security; however, Hobbes knew that some would not honor the contract.

The contract would have to be enforced by some form of Sovereign, be it a King, Queen, Aristocracy or Legislative body. So long, Hobbes said, as the Sovereign provided an atmosphere of peace and security the Sovereign must be obeyed. When and if the time came that peace and security were no longer being provided civil disobedience, even rebellion and revolution, was in order.We see much of Hobbes in justification of the American Revolution and ensuing Constitution ( or contract).

I did not sign the social contract under which I have lived all my life, but I did spend many years working for the sovereign to enforce that contract, both in the military and in government. None of us actually signed the social contract, other than by not breaking the rules of the contract.

It seems to me that in this time of economic turmoil, corporate greed and imcompetence, disappearing jobs and pensions, and rampant government regulatory failure, that I am beginning to hear many voices which in reality are calling for a new contract. Has our Sovereign failed? Is there peace and security? How are we now to define what it means to be at peace and secure? It seems to me that we are neither at this point. We are everywhere at war and no one is secure.