I know that it may be strange to have “Zettlekasten” link to “Determining a Soul,” but I associate the idea of a person to be a critical avenue for determining the usefulness of the method itself. If we can decide for ourselves what it is we are finding even as we do come with pre-existing incentives, drives, feelings, and personal interests, then it would be much more productive, especially since we are dealing not with the logic of text itself as an automated, intuitive process, but with the idea of text as text and not merely as the consumed, a dialectics with the text as interpretable mechanic and not merely as a content-holder (like “placeholder”). It is a machine-gun that sparks and whirs as it goes about its business, which is why the logistics that are assumed in the development of the gun itself before mass-production is part of the use case itself, metaphorically, in our given case of words, wording, writing, methods of permanence, and all sorts of concerns, contemplations, and other personalizations with which we are forced to struggle in the pursuit of any pragmatic goal, even as we do practicalize based on our pre-existing “instincts” and “by-ways”1.
This passage itself is not to construct an argument on the determination of a soul, but in the idea of the determining a soul in relation to the process of the Zettelkasten itself. It is a construction of a construction.
One may argue that I contemplate too much the system2, writing, permanence methodology (i.e., Zettelkasten), and epistemology as its own concept themselves. But this is necessary when taking on any analytical approach, as that is what I did when I started writing my autobiography-journal in the first place: doubting not only the word choices and syntax, but the philosophy of writing3 and methodology itself 4 too.
One particular change that will have a drastic impact on (1) the way that I write itself, (2) how I express myself, (3) how I form my thoughts, and (4) how I am is the use of footnotes, as I have relied stylistically noticeably on the use of parentheses to hold all of my extensive, footnote-level elaborations.
Given that this is only initially happening, expect to see meta conversation being the norm for the first several months. When you “hate” a system so much that you’ve rigorously attacked it, you become very precise and effective at it, which is the same with a friend with whom one is very rigorous and honest. I have an “irregular warfare” kind of history against Zettelkasten and atomization as a whole, so this is total war now that I am speaking in its native tongue and living within its borders as opposed to my Switzerland’s.
Plus, if you didn’t notice, the way that you speak reveals who you are as a person. So whatever I’m saying here is me. I don’t have to say my age. That means everything and nothing at the same time, because people are not number-tagged horses.
Why did they use “Determining a Soul” even if that’s not what the note is about? Is this related to the total war?
So they’re attacking it by using their full self within its native tongue. It’s like, “Can you handle my associativeness? My complication? My metaphoric use of terms in this damning atomized world? Can you cope with me using Switzerland as a metaphor and not linking it immediately to Switzerland as in the actual country? Can you handle my incinerating true self?”
so it’s not analysis paralysis because the analysis and the way that they analyze is the content.
Since they’re still adjusting to this new country, it feels like wearing alien clothes, so they can see every single detail unlike a native who just accepts everything as is. The foreigner is the analysis paralysis, but it’s not analysis paralysis. It’s just being new to a way of life.
Like nouveau riche who feel alienated by their previous “the people” peers and by their current “ignorantly rich” peers. They don’t want to fit in, and they never do. They will always be in between worlds, more aware of what it means to be “the people” than their previous peers and what it means to be “ignorantly rich” than their current peers because of their combined dialectical perspective.
Footnotes
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Like “byword”, but our “ways” as “manners of behavior” to which we default, rather than “byways” in the meaning of “secondary roads” ↩
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This particular execution and how I understand and work with it generally ↩
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E.g., my now-defunct practical philosophy of focusing on the abstract and being averse to “show, don’t tell” ↩
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Specifically the way that I wrote and engaged, which included how my room appeared, how my desktop was fashioned, and so many other savory details that were all grappled with in the process of reclaiming the self given the nature of my autobiography-journal as an 20-year-old’s project with a young adult’s desire for “identity integration” as its constitution or charter. ↩