Who am I?

Hello! Welcome to my blog! Thanks for stopping by.

"If you tell the truth, then you don't have to remember anything." --Mark Twain 

My name is Coral. I'm 22 and sometimes I think I have a good idea that I want to share with the rest of the world. I have strong nomadic genes and I don't like to stay in one place for very long. I love spontaneity and adventures, but I love truth and meaning more. I'm idealistic, sensitive, and have emotional breakdowns probably at least once a day. My friend describes them as "high-speed come-aparts."

I majored in Environmental Studies at Maryville College in Tennessee. I graduated with the egotistical and quintessential millennial desire to "save" the world. I thought about entering the Peace Corps, and I even got accepted to go to Zambia, but then I decided that Peace Corps was the charity wing of the Death Star and I was too good for it, but in reality the medical clearance was starting to piss me off because they were so damn particular and bureaucratic. Then last summer I decided to take a Permaculture Design Course, make a bunch of cool friends, fall in love, and adopt a crazy ass dog. (She's a hound mix, mostly coonhound, so I call her a goonhound.) Anyway, basically it all culminated in the most riveting year of my entire life. Now I think I'm very wise, but then when I actually think of something wise I realize that I don't know jack shit. Welcome to my blog.

Nevertheless, I'm going to share my ideas with you because this is the Internet and that's what you do on the Internet apparently.

Me and my crazy ass dog Willow. She's a goonhound.

What kind of blog is this?

In short, this is supposed to be a down-to-earth philosophy blog. It's not the kind of philosophy blog that will probably appeal to philosophy students, like those nerds that meet in coffee shops at night debating Kant and Nietzsche. Those nerds are cool, and I used to be one of those nerds, but that's not what this "philosophy" blog is about. I guess you could consider this as more of an anthropological blog. I will discuss a lot of political and social philosophy, but not in any rigid academic way. I will cite many books that I have read, but most of my observations will be based on life experience. This may sound sacrilegious to some, but I hope that my readers' main takeaway from reading this blog will be that they don't need to read books or go to school to learn how to live a fulfilling, meaningful life; the only way to live a meaningful life is simply by living it!

Not those kind of philosophy nerds. You know who you are. Just kidding, I love you and used to be one of you.

Nevertheless, I am going to throw all my ideas into the sounding board of the Internet mainly for my own personal benefit.  I feel like some of my ideas are pretty good, and writing about them clarifies them for me. I want to hear from others what they think about my ideas, and I want to get a conversation going. That's what I want from this blog. I'm not here to persuade anyone or deliver radical political propaganda. Personally, I am an ecological anarchist who was immensely inspired by Daniel Quinn's novel Ishmael, but you don't have to agree with me. I just want to create a conversation for my own personal growth.

By the way, here's a little disclaimer: I am going to get raw when I write on here. What I mean is that I no longer give any more fucks about what I reveal to the world. I am me. I've done and felt things before that I'm not proud of, and I believe things that are sometimes very controversial. I've finally mustered the courage to shout it all to the world. I no longer fear vulnerability. I will wear my heart on my sleeves unabashedly. Hopefully no cops are going to show up at my house because one time about a year ago I did mushrooms in a prairie and had a powerful experience, but that's the kind of thing I'm going to discuss in my blog.

But why would you open up your whole life on the Internet? Once on the Internet, always on the Internet.

Exactly. Look, I'm not going to lie on this blog EVER. All of the feelings and I experiences I talk about are going to be things that actually happened, so when I talk about them I will be showing you my honest, authentic self. There's nothing that makes a person feel better than feeling relatable. I want to show the world that I am a real human, and that no one needs to be ashamed of their feelings--EVER.

I believe with all my heart that if people just felt free to be themselves and not hide anything, the world would be a healthier place. And I'm going to prove it. I'm going to violate propriety. I'm going to tell you all exactly what I am. I will filter nothing. I will censor nothing. Everything you read on this website comes directly from my stream of consciousness.

There's a coffee shop called Needmore Coffee here in Bloomington, Indiana, which is where I am right now. That coffee shop sells T-shirts that say, "Filter coffee, not people." That mantra is very much at the heart of my message.

Why are you called "The Scruffy Idealist"?

Well, back when I lived in Knoxville, Tennessee, it was known as "The Scruffy City" because when they hosted the 1982 World Fair, major news outlets criticized Knoxville as being an ugly or a "scruffy little city." Rather than choosing to be insulted, the City of Knoxville decided to brand themselves as the scruffy city. Today, if you visit Knoxville, many gift shops sell shirts that say, "Keep Knoxville Scruffy," and although some people interpret this as a call of resistance to recent gentrification in the city, in reality the Scruffy City is just Knoxville's brand, the same way that Paris is the City of Love and New York is the City That Never Sleeps. There's even a bar/music venue there called Scruffy City Hall.

Anyway, living in the Knoxville area for 10 years, I decided that I really liked the concept of "scruffiness." This was only exacerbated by the movie The Empire Strikes Back, when Leia calls Han Solo a "scruffy-looking nerf herder," which just may be the singlemost greatest endearing insult in the history of cinema.

So you get it, I like the concept of being scruffy and I think it suits me. Many people have also considered me to be an idealist with silly unrealistic dreams, so there's the idealist part of the title.

My current philosophy in a nutshell

"The world will not be saved by old minds with new programs. If the world is saved, it will be saved by new minds--with no programs." --Daniel Quinn, The Story of B

As I mention in my Who am I? page, I found myself unbelievably inspired by Daniel Quinn's book Ishmael. If you haven't read it yet, I suggest you do--it may be one of the most important books you read in your whole life. (By the way, use AbeBooks to buy cheap books from small booksellers!) Daniel Quinn uses a lot of the logical devices that our culture is accustomed to in order to explain many of the philosophical ideas that I will be discussing. Daniel Quinn does an extraordinary job of explaining culturally transcendent ideas while still using the linear thought patterns taught to us by our culture, so people who generally tend to be skeptical of revolutionary ideas may feel at home reading Ishmael. My writing will have more artistic, feminine nuances to it, so if you are the kind of person who prefers to make decisions based on rigid science and masculine linearity, you will probably get more from reading Daniel Quinn's work than you will from my blog.

We are all animals. We are animals first, humans second. Humans, or Homo sapiens, is a type of mammal, so we are a part of the animal kingdom. We are not separate from the natural environment around us. There is no such thing as "escaping into nature," because everything is nature. The banks, the schools, the houses and highways--all these things were built by animals, by us. Abstract concepts such as money, government, and national borders--all these are ideas that a particular species of mammal came up with. Nothing we do is ever separate from the community of life. We can either be healthy members of the community of life, or we can be unhealthy members of the community of life.

We are never separate from the community of life.

Our bodies consist of cells. The collection of cells determines how healthily a body can function, but the body doesn't depend on any one cell regardless of how "good" of a cell it is. If some cells decide that they want to live forever and eat all the body's sugars, they turn into cancerous cells, and they multiply until they consume every part of the body. Eventually, the body may die, taking the cancer cells down with it. In this way, it's not very smart for a cell to become a cancer cell, because it and its offspring will surely die. It is much smarter for a cell to be a functional member of the community of cells that make up the body, because then the cells can continue to live and reproduce for an entire bodily lifespan.

Likewise, that is how we live. There is no separation between humanity and the biosphere. We are no more immune to ecological processes than squirrels or raccoons. Sure, we can escape the weather and live in heated homes. We can even escape the eminent darkness of night by turning on the lights in our houses. But even the energy that generates heat and electricity comes from resources that we need to gather from the environment.

So then how do we live in harmony with the rest of the community of life? The answer is much easier than we think. A mere several thousand years ago, most of us lived in this sort of harmony the same way that birds and insects do--thoughtlessly. Then, around eight to ten thousand years ago, a different kind of culture sprang up in Mesopotamia. It is true that this culture was one of the first to practice agriculture, but that's not what made them so different. A crude definition of agriculture is any system where a society takes the time to nurture plants or animals with the intention of one day consuming their products. These early civilizations, however, practiced a very specific type of agriculture. They not only planted seeds and raised animals, but they converted large amounts of land into space that produced food only for humans and no one else. In doing so, they reduced the biodiversity of the land. After many generations, this practice depleted the soil quality. The so-called Fertile Crescent began to lose its fertility and turned into something more similar to the ghostly climate we see in much of the Middle East today.

But there was a big problem. Because the land had grown almost nothing but human food for many generations, the human population in these areas was spiraling out of control. Now there wasn't enough land to grow enough food to feed everybody. Furthermore, the soil was ruined, which in turn reduced the crop yields. Now there were a bunch of hungry people who needed to be fed! As a result, they banded together and raided other lands with other people living in them. They conquered these lands and resettled there. The native people living in these lands either had to leave or assimilate.

The culture grew and continued its tradition of using land for the exclusive purpose of producing human food. Consequently, the pattern continued. New land was acquired, used up, the population grew, and the culture expanded. These were the first empires.

In the old days, there was no need for government or national borders. Humans naturally banded together into communities of 100-200 or so individuals. These communities would come together sometimes, and individuals might leave one community to join another, which promoted genetic diversity. But within each community in which everyone knew each other, and in many cases grew up together, there was room for a lot more trust. You wouldn't want to murder your neighbor's son because your neighbor was a really good hunter and you could count on him to bring you his extra kills. In turn, your neighbor would ensure that you were well fed because you were knowledgeable about medicinal plants. Within these small communities, everyone had a role and a purpose. The thought of someone intentionally hurting another was just as unthinkable as a flower killing a bee. We lived in a mutual symbiotic relationship with one another.

Psychologically speaking, humans are instinctively cooperative. Many articles have been written about this, such as this one, but what I dislike about many of these articles is that they define cooperativeness as the opposite of selfishness. This is in fact a false dichotomy--there doesn't have to be a difference between caring for others and caring for self, and I will explain why.

At some point you probably believed that you were your body. When you got older, perhaps in school, you decided that you were actually your mind. If you are more spiritually inclined, perhaps you believe that you are your soul. But certainly everyone, from atheist to pious monk, has at some point in their lives asked themselves the question, "Who am I?"

Most of us ask ourselves this question multiple times throughout our life. We struggle with identity crisis after identity crisis, and sometimes we even take drugs to induce an ego death and realize that our own personality and sense of self is really just an illusion. But none of us really need DMT or ayahuasca to know this, because it's something that is intuitive to all living organisms.

Take a breath of air right now. Okay, so at what point during that inhale did that air become a part of your body? Was it as soon as it entered through your nostrils, or after the oxygen was processed into your bloodstream? Exhale. At what point during the exhalation did the discarded carbon dioxide become no longer a part of you? When you eat a piece of toast, at which point does the toast become a part of your body?

At what point does the toast become a part of your body?

As you sleep, eat, and go about your daily existence, there are millions of bacteria and other microorganisms living inside your body and on your skin. As you move about in your environment, these microorganisms are constantly leaving and entering your body. You exchange microbes with friends, roommates, pets. Every time you pick up a pencil or touch a computer keyboard, microbes are entering and leaving your body. But microbes are more than simply just mere hitchhikers. In many circumstances our bodies actually depend on them to get rid of dead cells and digest the food in our guts. Our immune system depends on our healthy microbes to compete with other microbes that may make us sick. Where does "you" begin and where does "you" end? What is the self?

There are many theories and philosophies which examine the nature of the self. When I was 18, I used to read the delightful blog Wait But Why, where I stumbled upon this very interesting article that attempted to tackle this question. I feel like this article doesn't so much answer the question as much as explain why the question isn't so straightforward to begin with, which is basically like all academic philosophy ever, or really just like all science ever.

So who are you? Who am I? What is this concept, the "self"? If our body is constantly exchanging elements with our environment, and even our body is nothing but a collection of even smaller individuals such as cells and microbes, then where does "you" end and the rest of the world begin? Each cell in our body is surrounded by a membrane that contains its functions, and as a result that cell has a pretty clear idea of where it begins and where it ends. But when you look down at your hand you don't see each cell individually, you only see the continuous pattern of your skin. To your perspective, there are no cells, there is only the singular skin.

Maybe the self is an illusion. Maybe the dichotomy between you and me isn't real. Maybe your self doesn't end where your body ends, but maybe your self includes your whole environment. You are your environment. You are the land. You are the sky. You are the biosphere. You are the world. 

You are the universe.

Ayn Rand and many conservative philosophers suggest that human beings only act in rational self interest. On the other hand, many Marxist and leftist philosophers suggest that humans innately strive to take care of one another.

Maybe, just maybe, BOTH philosophies are true! It doesn't take enlightenment to know that we naturally want the best for ourselves, that we are naturally selfish at least to an extent. Many of us equate being selfish with being greedy and hoarding resources. But if your idea of self is expanded beyond your skin-encapsulated ego, if you think of the air as part of your self, the land as part of your self, and other creatures as part yourself, then being selfish doesn't seem like such a bad thing, does it? With this perspective, to be selfish is to be cooperative. (By the way this bigger concept of self was an idea I read about in The Moneyless Manifesto by Mark Boyle.)

Remember how I said that thousands of years ago a culture decided that it was separate from the community of life rather than a part of it? Daniel Quinn calls this culture, and the cultures that sprang from it, Taker cultures. Other cultures are called Leaver cultures. When we think of Leaver cultures, we traditionally think of hunter-gatherers. Hunting-gathering tends to be the lifestyle trend of Leaver cultures, but many practice agriculture to an extent as well. The main difference between Taker and Leaver cultures has nothing to do with hunting-gathering or agriculture, however, but rather a philosophical difference. Taker cultures believe that the world was made for humanity, that human intelligence is somehow the climax, the purpose of the whole universe, whereas Leaver cultures believe that humans are part of something larger than themselves, that they are part of the community of life as a whole.

I know there may be some who denounce what I have just said as romanticizing the hunter-gatherer lifestyle, while they insist that so many hunter-gatherers engage in bloodshed or do atrocious things. Leaver cultures are just as diverse as Taker cultures. Just as not all Taker cultures engage in bullfighting or forbidding women from leaving their homes without a burqa, not all Leaver cultures are inherently violent or peaceful. What I do believe is that the philosophy of most Leaver societies seems to be important for their ability to live for many generations on their land without having the explosive population growth or environmental depletion that most Taker societies struggle with. I'm not saying there aren't some Leaver societies that deal with these things, but the pattern I see suggests that it would behoove our culture to acquire some Leaver wisdom if we want to survive on this Earth while also living fulfilling lives.

Conclusion

Whew! Well, there's a kind of solid foundation for a lot of my ideas and philosophies. Obviously, I didn't get the chance to discuss every facet of this philosophy or address every single counterargument I could think of. Like I said before, I'm not here to convince anyone that I'm right. I'm here to share my ideas with you and engage in an insightful and fun conversation. If you have any questions, pretty please ask them. If you have any opinions or insights you would like to share with me, then please share them, and if they are riveting enough then I may even dedicate a whole blog post to them!

I'll begin my posts by explaining my life story and how I came to believe what I believe. I understand that many people aren't super interested in the life story of some random girl on the Internet, but I really need to tell my story for my own benefit to get a solid foundation to explain the ways I stumbled upon my ideas. Feel free to completely disregard my life story if you wish.

In the meantime, try to enjoy life and not take it too seriously! Enjoy your existence on this beautiful and special planet.