Objectivated spirit (Objektive Geist)

I found, in developing my previous personal website which was murdered by my then Internet Service Provider (ISP) in late 2020 because they figured out web hosting was not profitable for them, that an interesting interaction developed between my thought and its objectivation therein. Whenever I thought of something, I wanted to add it to that ever-growing "semiotic net". Conversely and correlatively, things I added to this aggregation of symbols sometimes led me to new ideas (in the broadest sense, including images, etc.), and to new "things to pursue", and, hopefully and most importantly, to seeing already included material in new ways – for new things are just more of the same [kinds of things as one could already conceive of], whereas seeing previously known things in new ways is a higher-order enrichment of one's "world", in a way perhaps similar to the difference, in mathematics, between (a) adding more elements to an already generated infinite set and (b) constructing sets-of-sets.... [ Crescit eundo.... ]

In school, never had any interest in taking notes, or keeping a diary, etc. – probably because they seemed such futilely private activities (as Hannah Arendt says in The Human Condition, in classical Greece, the "private sphere" was considered: deprived). And, in school, I could not see the point in my repeating [copying] what was already written or said ("Leave the dead to bury the dead", etc.). The teaches should have mimeographed what they told us and handed it out before each class began.

No later than late June 1989 (I even found an example from late 1966, but I apparently did not follow up on it at the time) – before I absorbed the idea of "computer hyperlinking" –, I had elaborated a discipline of annotating books I read (Example: right), not just with underlining and comments, but also by noting in the margin references to other pages in the book (or, occasionally, in other books...) which I found relevant, and also placing references on the "target" pages back to the sources – thus constructing ever-growing [I don't think I gave them a specific name at the time, although now I might call them:] networks, or "referential spaces" of two-way many-to-many associations. Sometimes, I would "chain" these references, from one page to another to another to yet another... (+2022.05.19. I have found an example of me doing this no later than early 1967.) ~ Note: I consider links-per-page a rough, albeit not "intelligent", metric of information density, i.e., I hope: depth and intensity of knowledge, understanding and wisdom, too.)

This web site (and my previous one from 1997) has become an important part of my "objectivated mind" (Objektive Geist) [also: "noetic economy"]. I strongly believe, however, as Husserl said, that transcendental subjectivity is intersubjectivity (structurally, even if there happen to be no accessible factically existing other interlocutors...). Therefore, I invite you, my reader, to join this "conversational space", by engaging in your own mind with what you find here, and sharing your thoughts with me. Send me something that adds value to what I've got here and I'll add it, with the appropriate attribution: bmcc.edd@gmail.com

Genius loci. I understand this phrase: "the spirit of a place", and I respect it. Happy the person who comes from a happy home! My provenance was not that way. I have, however, been able to construct despite my social surround, around myself semiotic "spaces" which I have felt "resonated" with me: physical settings [my little "Merzbau"s...] decorated with symbols found and made (by others and by myself...) images and objects, my dissertation, and the present "virtual" space of this website.

Consequently, I would apply the quote which appears below, and the thesis elaborated above concerning the objectivation of spirit [living / lived experience] to this concept also: Genius loci – the spirit of any place – is the creative (creating!...) human spirit which makes place [in a normative sense] out of "stuff" [in a factical / taxonomic sense, including people's "values"], by "taking place" [acting into the world...]. But this is not an individual ["private" / solipsistic...] activity. It is necessarily social (intersubjective – see above, structurally, even if misfortunately not empirically).

As with mankind's first great attempt to make an emphatically human[e] place for themselves: The Tower of Babel, I invite you to join with me in ongoing construction (and re-new-al). Send me something that adds value to what I've got here and I'll add it, with the appropriate attribution: bmcc.edd@gmail.com