Stories
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
At that time FM radio was just becoming what it became. Folk music was becoming popular. I used to get an FM station out of Chicago that played the new-lights like Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger. Also they did recorded night club acts like Mike Nichols and Elaine May or folk music. The Beatniks and the Beatles were big all of which influenced me.
I was also, towards the second winter of that period, hanging out a little bit with my nemesis Hegel. He was home from college and was writing a novel. We would sit in the same room together and he would write his fiction and I would do my analysis. Even went to a large coffee shop on occasion. Sometimes we played the Beatles on the jukebox, who had just come on the scene. "Have you heard the Beatles?", everyone was asking, 'I Want To Hold Your Hand'.
In this period I made any number of major decisions. I rejected the concept that reality could not really be understood because it was not real like Poe's: 'Dream within a Dream', or the concept of illusion. No sense being here or doing anything if it is not real. Can't say anything about anything. I decided that I should be Agnostic, since positions as Believer or Atheist, eliminated the possibility of the other, and thus neither could be examined objectively. I decided I should be agnostic in all things. I decided to become an empiricist. If authorities as found in books could not be trusted, since the particular prejudices held by these individuals might not be apparent, I would look for evidence as manifest in real experience.
(9 of 15)
Next Page
