The view of things to come.
A little over a week ago, I posted my final response to the 100 philosophical thought experiments in Julian Baggini's wonderful book, The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten: and ninety-nine other thought experiments. That post marked the culmination of five years of blogging for me about evolutionary philosophy and the worldview I hold as a result of my thoughts on that subject. As you can see on my greatest blog hits page, I started this journey with an examination of 10 core tenets, followed that up with a mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive way to know thyself, and then continued on to do 60 profiles on the survival of the fittest philosophers. Now, after also going through the 100 thought experiments, I'd say my philosophy groundwork is thoroughly done.
I do still have a few more things I'd like to clean up with my philosophy posts though. At the end of the last entry, I introduced my idea of evolutionary well-being, which I've been encouraged to excerpt and clarify for an article to be published elsewhere. In fact, I may pursue peer-reviewed publications for several of the ideas I wrote about during my thought experiment blogs. But before I do that, I will write a summary post here recapping the major findings from all of the thought experiments, and then design some sort of infographic to put on my greatest blog hits page so new readers can find specific experiments on the topics that interest them. Once that is done, however, I plan to take this blog in a new direction. You are hereby warned.
On the home page of this website, I introduce myself as "a writer and philosopher." I also list the three goals of evphil.com as being:
Now that I see my philosophy-building as relatively complete, all three of these goals have been met for my non-fiction writing. Therefore, it's time to turn my attention to the fiction. At least for a while. I've published one novel, Draining the Swamp, and I'm about to start the process of selling my second novel, The Vitanauts. I've also published three short stories of strengths — Curiosity, Love of Learning, and Judgment — but I have 21 more of those to get through before that project is complete. In the introduction to those short stories, I note that:
In 2004, positive psychologists Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman published the book Character Strengths and Virtues which scoured ancient and modern texts of wisdom from around the world and found six core virtues composed of twenty-four character strengths. Seligman and Peterson suggest that practicing these universally good traits leads to increased happiness. So, in order to encourage this, I'm writing a short story about each strength. I hope that by spending some time contemplating each one, you can build more strengths and become a happier person.
Who doesn't want to be happier?!
So, with all this in mind, I'd like to start using my blog to work on the rest of these short stories. I plan to post each one for free until the next one is ready. Whenever a new story comes out, the previous one will be taken down from the blog (although any comments will remain, so people can continue their discussions), and I'll put the previous story up for sale electronically, just like the first three are right now. Once I'm done with this project, I'll turn them all into a bound book for publication. I'd love to get feedback on these as I write them though, so please stick with me for these free previews. If you decide it's even better and more thought provoking than the philosophy, spread the word! (If not, I'm sure you'll figure out what to do...)
Before I get to all that, I'll be heading off to Ireland for a bit of a tour. But once I return, I hope you'll agree that this blog will be headed to more verdant destinations too. Thanks very much to everyone for all the support I've received so far—it really has been a wonderful five years of concentrating on philosophy and making new friends—but I hope you'll enjoy this new direction as much as I'm looking forward to taking it. I'll be back with more just as soon as I can!
I do still have a few more things I'd like to clean up with my philosophy posts though. At the end of the last entry, I introduced my idea of evolutionary well-being, which I've been encouraged to excerpt and clarify for an article to be published elsewhere. In fact, I may pursue peer-reviewed publications for several of the ideas I wrote about during my thought experiment blogs. But before I do that, I will write a summary post here recapping the major findings from all of the thought experiments, and then design some sort of infographic to put on my greatest blog hits page so new readers can find specific experiments on the topics that interest them. Once that is done, however, I plan to take this blog in a new direction. You are hereby warned.
On the home page of this website, I introduce myself as "a writer and philosopher." I also list the three goals of evphil.com as being:
- An attempt to clarify ideas within a new school of philosophy
- A means to expose those ideas to competition, cooperation, variation, and selection—i.e. to evolution itself
- A platform to share fiction and non-fiction works that expound upon this collection of ideas
Now that I see my philosophy-building as relatively complete, all three of these goals have been met for my non-fiction writing. Therefore, it's time to turn my attention to the fiction. At least for a while. I've published one novel, Draining the Swamp, and I'm about to start the process of selling my second novel, The Vitanauts. I've also published three short stories of strengths — Curiosity, Love of Learning, and Judgment — but I have 21 more of those to get through before that project is complete. In the introduction to those short stories, I note that:
In 2004, positive psychologists Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman published the book Character Strengths and Virtues which scoured ancient and modern texts of wisdom from around the world and found six core virtues composed of twenty-four character strengths. Seligman and Peterson suggest that practicing these universally good traits leads to increased happiness. So, in order to encourage this, I'm writing a short story about each strength. I hope that by spending some time contemplating each one, you can build more strengths and become a happier person.
Who doesn't want to be happier?!
So, with all this in mind, I'd like to start using my blog to work on the rest of these short stories. I plan to post each one for free until the next one is ready. Whenever a new story comes out, the previous one will be taken down from the blog (although any comments will remain, so people can continue their discussions), and I'll put the previous story up for sale electronically, just like the first three are right now. Once I'm done with this project, I'll turn them all into a bound book for publication. I'd love to get feedback on these as I write them though, so please stick with me for these free previews. If you decide it's even better and more thought provoking than the philosophy, spread the word! (If not, I'm sure you'll figure out what to do...)
Before I get to all that, I'll be heading off to Ireland for a bit of a tour. But once I return, I hope you'll agree that this blog will be headed to more verdant destinations too. Thanks very much to everyone for all the support I've received so far—it really has been a wonderful five years of concentrating on philosophy and making new friends—but I hope you'll enjoy this new direction as much as I'm looking forward to taking it. I'll be back with more just as soon as I can!
