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| life is so much easier in california...
the roads are wider, the roads are well paved, there are always parking spaces, there's always tons of good food to choose from, groceries stores and parks on every corner, the weather is always nice, the beach is 10 minutes away, the people are more laid back, its where family is, its where friends are, the court system is straightforward, the public education is fantastic, there are other people who look like me, there is mexican food, i have a home, i have a car, i have a life, and it is much easier there...
life is much more strenuous in new york...
the roads are narrow and cracked, full of potholes and strange freeway names (i.e. what the hell is a mass turnpike?), no parking here, no mexican food here, it's been overcast 80% of the past 50 days, it snows here, no good food period, people take themselves too seriously, they're trial court is called the supreme court and their highest court is the court of appeals, dearth of basketball courts, no one likes to just hang out, law school law school law school is in new york, i have no family here, i have few friends here, i have no life here...
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| and for my birthday...
i ate taco bell with my suite mates
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| ...must do as he's told, must think as he's taught, must say what is right, must accept that which cannot be changed. Everyday, you encounter strange, unsettling things that tickle that back of whatever moral barometer you have left to feel with, until you can feel no more. This is the true duty of an elite legal education, to turn you into a machine, to separate you from your labor, from your mind, and from you heart. In a Heideggerian sense, to make you but another cog in the expediency of supply and demand so that we might all benefit from your unscrupulous efforts and your eventual degeneration into standing reserve. We are all but causal links in the cosmic race towards progress and saliency, unwittingly vulnerable to our own self-righteousness and greed. But perhaps they, not we, are applying the principles of post-modernity correctly by undoing the binary oppositions between justice and injustice, good and the bad, the right and the wrong. Posner's brainchild of law and economics strains to make sense of the ever-growing divide between morality and economics by asserting that true justice relies not upon truth, but upon expediency. In our modern world's rampant deluge from having to confront morality, we have contented ourselves with the Posnerian substitute that is softer on our consciences and even softer on our pocketbooks. Why struggle with right or wrong when it is easier (or "more efficient") to impose guilt or liabilty based on the maximization of material benefit. Pretty soon, true justice will be unnecessary to the functioning of our legal system as every case or controversy will be justiciable based on Judge Andrew's practical politics, in which case there will be no right and wrong - just expensive and less expensive, efficient and less efficient. But there is something deeply unsettling about the proposition that the justice can be taken away from an individual in order to serve "the greater good." This utilitarian normative suggestion stands in direct controversy to the essence of justice and to the essence of law, which leads to the even greater question of "why am I here?"
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| If for every moment of a-emotionality I felt someone gave me a cookie, well, you know the rest of this line goes. Or maybe you don't, so I'll end it by saying, "then I'll be a fat asian man with lot of extra cookies laying around." Speaking of fat asian men, I will soon become one. It's painful to have to read about necessary and proper clauses without being able to dull that pain with some kind of reliever (i.e. beef jerky and chocolate pudding). In the end we will all become slaves to some kind of system. Not necessarily matrix-esque, but similar enough to warrant a Keanu Reeves-eque, "whoa." In law school, you're taught to forget about everything except the law. Even though our very first lecture was about the intersect between law and morality, in actuality, law is devoid of morality, both good and bad. Though morals can be argued as being nothing more than man made precepts which are normative for no other reason than establishing some kind of order in society, to argue that law is built upon this kind of pre-moral framework, and then to go right back and insist that you're doing your duty in representing your client to best of your abilities even if he's some crummy guy that's going to get away with doing some crummy thing... its just wrong. In the end, the supposed warm fuzzy feeling you're supposed to get is not because you did the right thing, but because you fulfilled your responsibilities as a lawyer (which, inevitably is the right thing). I guess its okay to shift the end-gauge of rightness if you believe in the mutability of morality. Is it ever possible to feel warm and fuzzy for being a laywer? I thought the crumminess of being a lawyer is like one of those fundamental rules that govern the universe. Like E=mc^2, F=M*A, or girls=evil....
Just in case you never knew about the last one:
Proof of girls = evil
Girls = Time * Money
Your mother always told you, time is money --> time=money
Substitute time for money
Girls = Money^2
Your money always told you, money is the root of all evil. --> money = √ Evil
Money^2 = Evil
Substitute Money^2 with evil.
Therefore,
Girls = Evil
Q.E.D.
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The intersection between art and science happens between the
drone of my mini-fridge and Jimmy Eat World.
Less than an actual marriage, they coexist in a sort of multi-layered
cake that can only be eaten by the most cognizant of individuals. 23 was playing, and singing along to it
casually gave me reprieve as law school was indeed “killing everything in me.” But as I reached for my toothbrush, I heard
something that sounded like a perfect 4th harmony coming from the
back of my mini-fridge. Indeed it was
the same drone that keeps me sane during endless chapters of torts that
invariably occurs as a result of the hyperactive fridge engine; the same engine
that’s responsible for freezing all of my chocolate pudding. My mini-fridge harmonized (perfectly I might
add), to the chorus of 23 by jimmy eat world.
That is where the intersection between art and science should be. Not in some obscure aesthetic that is both
meant to save the world and enlighten it.
Not in modern art, which is but an attempt to self-validate our unsophisticatedness. But in the reality that there is music in
everything. And though not all of us are
good at singing, we should never be restricted from doing so when we want to.
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