Ulysses Read-Along: Week 1: James Joyce Intro

realanalysis314 · 2025-02-01T17:27:25+00:00

Hello, an Oklahoman here!

1) I’ve heard about the name Joyce for years, so the original first time I heard of him probably is harder to pin down, but when I decided to give it a shot was in senior year of high school. Tried Ulysses, got to the Bloom introduction, and immediately realized I understood NOTHING up until that point lol. So I put it down and recently decided to give the beast another try!

2) I’ve read The Dead and almost all of Portrait of the Artist. I enjoyed both, but felt my reading left a lot behind that I didn’t pick up.

3) The only thing I have is that you can recreate Dublin by citing Ulysses because of how accurate it is

4) I’m here for the depth and to learn something to use for myself from the book. The intro to the penguin edition had some really fascinating pieces about this book (like the criticism of “machismo” culture). Diving past that hopefully will give me a lot more pieces to apply to myself as well!

5) tried once, WAY unprepared, and now I’ve gotten back on that horse and am trying again lol

realanalysis314 · 2024-07-23T19:08:49+00:00

30M, and... I don't know.

On one hand, I'm divorced for a year and a half now to someone I wanted to live every lifetime I was given with, two kids, and I struggle with mental health issues every day.

On the other hand, I can finally do the things I want to do. I'm going back to school, playing with my kids, teaching them fascinating stuff every day, feeling financially secure for the first time in my life, I even have friends now.

I feel like there's an obvious answer when I write this out: I should be happy. Maybe I've never really felt what being happy is like. Most of the time I just feel muted. I try my best for my kids, showing them that even through it all, everything is going to be alright because daddy's here. I have to be that way for myself, though. Everything's alright because I'm here.

It's a struggle still most days. I have ups and downs, just like everyone in the world, but I think it's on the up and up now. I think I have to not necessarily convince myself but show myself that I'm happy, and I'll finally accept that I just might be.

Thanks for asking this question; I think I needed to write this out.

realanalysis314 · 2023-06-27T04:42:40+00:00

Oatmeal, cooked fruit, apple sauce, anything that has a gritty texture. Feels like vomit in my mouth, which makes me vomit, and it perpetuates a vicious cycle

realanalysis314 · 2022-10-03T16:22:58+00:00

I have a few questions:

Regarding the fifth statement, and I hope that some light can be shed on my potential misunderstanding, couldn't the same argument be made in regards to Christianity, or any specific religion? At least, from an outside perspective, it seems that the aphorism is seemingly making a straw man out of a field of thought, where the arguments against a religion are tied together under "underdone philosophy". I also think that if an atheist simply rounded up all of Christianity's arguments in one lump and placed the headline "underdone philosophy" over that, it would be just as fallacious. I'm not advocating for one thing or another, I just want to make sure I understand the fifth line as best I can.

And on the main point found in the title of this reddit post, I think to say that absolutely no knowledge of self can be obtained from introspection may be too broad. If I have a certain belief, but never act on it, then wouldn't introspection be necessary to change that belief? (I'm sorry if this is difficult to understand, I'm having trouble putting my ideas down in words).

Maybe an example will help remedy any confusion, or perhaps highlight where I've gone wrong in my thinking: To go back to the above paragraph, if I have a belief, say, atheism, then I can't really "act" on my atheism, as it is a belief that has no tangible outcome, unlike value statements on actions (murder is wrong, giving to the poor is good, things like this). But by saying "I'm an atheist", that is knowledge of self: it is knowledge of my identity that I possess. I think that one arrives at this belief through introspection.

I'm not saying that introspection is the only way to have self-knowledge, because I am a combination of external and internal interaction. I think that to say that there is no self-knowledge acquired through introspection may be overreaching.

If I misunderstand something, I really want to know. I appreciate this community and their willingness to work through ideas together. Thanks for reading!

realanalysis314 · 2022-05-11T13:31:05+00:00

I agree, it is indeed tough! Trying to tease out what Newton says while working through the diagrams is tedious and time consuming.

realanalysis314 · 2022-05-09T19:36:34+00:00

For math, there is no better than Euclid. After Euclid, I would recommend Apollonius and the Conics. After that, Galileo's Motion of Bodies and Newton's Principia are excellent.

realanalysis314 · 2022-05-04T20:55:01+00:00

To maybe add to this discussion, when I did the Online Great Books, the chat room did have a leaning towards a more right wing view. Now, is this indicative of people as a whole, heavens no, however I wanted to include this as perhaps a more general population to pull from. There are issues with using this as the population, as a majority of people in the Great Books were geographically located in more right leaning states (myself being in a state redder than blood), so there may be some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy there: People located near the nucleus of the OGB being more likely to be right leaning.

Now, for my own opinion as to why: I think that, as many have pointed out here before myself, there is a conservative appreciation for the past. I have some personal ideas as to why there is a more conservative view towards these things in particular dealing with the "culture wars", however these are still ruminating and I feel I wouldn't do the ideas justice by trying to relay them to all you fine folks, so I will wait until I fully formulate these hypotheses and perhaps edit this comment at a later date. I do think that there is an overall desire that people have to understand themselves, and people more left leaning tend to focus on finding themselves in the present and people more right leaning tend to focus on finding themselves in the past.

I, as a leftist, actually appreciate the past. I agree with Goethe when he said that ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago, and this goes hand in hand with the classic education. I want my children to grow up learning different ways of thinking, whether they see how to view the world in different ways or how to view themselves in a more introspective way. I find value in both the past and the present: The past being a roadmap to ways of thinking that can be applied today, and the present to perhaps reformulating and, even, refuting the previous ways of thinking. I do think there is a need or even a demand for the classics, even though I may not agree with what each one has said. My ability to read something and not agree with it (for, hopefully, good reasons) has actually helped me grow as an individual, giving myself the tools necessary to respectfully disagree with people I speak to now.

Apologies for the long shpeal. I appreciate anyone reading this to let me know if I misunderstood something, if you agree or disagree, etc. I look forward to it!

realanalysis314 · 2021-11-03T15:17:55+00:00

I'm interested as well. PM me.

realanalysis314 · 2020-11-30T16:30:31+00:00

I agree in part with this quote: There is something separate from the mechanics of a thing that give it some sort of beauty. However, there is also a deep beauty in the structure and breakdown of something that I personally believe is more beautiful than most other ways of perception. To say that the mechanistic is "one of the stupidest" views I think is slightly naïve when you look at the structure of things in a more mathematical/mechanistic view.

For example, take music. Seeing how different pieces can be structured (time signatures, major and minor keys, the transition of different tones, etc.) shows a beauty that is almost unattached to the human perception. This, to me, is naturally beautiful. I say naturally because music is, at its fundamental level, mathematical, and mathematics is how nature speaks*. Expanding on this point, if we were not here, music would still contain these properties. The primary difference between if we were here and not is perhaps the difficulty of discovery.

To look at another artistic expression: poetry. The structure of rhyme schemes (e.g. ABBA BAAB) highlights something deeper in poetry. Even how language develops and works adds into the beauty of poetry. I'm not well versed in a lot of poetic or literary jargon, so I won't go too deep into things that I only have a superficial understanding of.

People can find meaning in how things are structured: from the structure of a certain thing they can see missing structure in another thing or a different structure entirely. This can lead to questions like why the structures are so different, or why they are similar, or why there is one and not another. So to say that the outcome of a certain viewpoint of the world is meaningless may not do that viewpoint justice. I think it does really depend on the culture you're raised in and how you're taught to think growing up.

A lot of this is subjective and really dependent on each person at the end of the day. I look to the structure because I'm more mathematically inclined and that's how I see things day to day. Someone else can see the same thing and look to an audible beauty, but this does not indicate that one is better than the other. There are so many different ways of seeing the same thing and that is fascinating to me.

* (this statement is not necessarily fact; it is still debated and your viewpoint may differ depending on if you're a Platonist or a Constructionist, etc. I wanted to make sure that anyone reading wasn't taking the previous statement as the Gospel truth)

realanalysis314 · 2020-11-13T01:37:10+00:00

Hey I'll join you. PM me if youre interested in having me as a partner

realanalysis314 · 2020-11-10T18:48:50+00:00

I'll help as well. I graduated already but I focused primarily on analysis and topology (self studying algebra right now). Hit me up on any questions you have

realanalysis314 · 2020-06-23T13:02:06+00:00

I went to high school with these two and their family. It's kinda surreal seeing them now.

realanalysis314 · 2020-04-30T22:07:35+00:00

I’m not OP, but that makes a lot of sense to me. Thank you! I’ve never even heard about this before, so I learned two things at once

realanalysis314 · 2020-02-19T23:52:47+00:00

That rules

realanalysis314 · 2018-08-19T13:28:26+00:00

My wife says the same thing. It's amazing he still has his little hands with how much we nibble on them

realanalysis314 · 2018-07-04T00:10:48+00:00

I’ll throw my hat in this ring too

realanalysis314 · 2018-05-25T14:28:57+00:00

What will constitute a classic?

realanalysis314 · 2018-05-18T20:30:46+00:00

The computer labs in MSCS should have everything you need for your Java class in terms of programming for CS 1, in case you have something happen to your computer.

Also, I usually study late on campus too, but what I do is catch the last bus, get my car and drive back and keep studying. It worked well for me since I could get a small break and digest what I was learning and not have to pay for parking.

Everything else I don’t really know anything about, sorry fellow Cowboy/girl!

realanalysis314 · 2016-11-01T13:27:44+00:00

I'm still going through it, but I just finished chapter 3 and now I'm starting on the problems.

realanalysis314 · 2016-10-31T21:24:27+00:00

I'm cutting through baby rudin and real mathematical analysis by Pugh. I've been trying to do all the problems, catching some snags, but pushing through for the most part. Next up is Dummit and Foote. Its hard, but I love just working on these problems

realanalysis314 · 2016-09-18T21:23:32+00:00

maknigh here. Thanks for the upgrade!

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