I am Glenn Campbell. I am an
"existentialist", which means I believe existence itself provides its own meaning,
without reference to outside gods.
(See video definition).
Central to existentialism, in my view, is the concept of "triage". This
is the process of managing ones resources to achieve the greatest net gain.
(See my
newsletter on triage or
video on triage.)
There is no "absolute" truth; there is only the "best" truth you
can come up with at the time based
on the options currently available to you.
I have expounded on philosophy on the internet
since 2005.
My pontifications are found in my
Twitter feed,
videos,
an unfinished book,
and various short essays (all described below).
Philosophy Essays
Between 2005 and 2010, I wrote a number of philosophical essays, most of them
only a page or two long, which appeared on several of my websites...
Between May 2008 and March 2010, I produced a series of 68 one-page essays published as a
printable newsletter called "Kilroy Cafe". All of them are available at KilroyCafe.com. Each issue is designed to be
printed (although I have never actually printed them), and each is exactly one page long.
(I chose this one-page format because it forced me to be concise.)
I am very proud of these essays but I eventually
graduated to video and Twitter
as my primary outlets.
(I already know how to write, so I would rather practice my video skills whenever I
have the chance.)
Most of my Kilroy Cafe essays were reposted to my
Kiloy Cafe Blog,
mainly so that search
engines would find them and people could comment on them.
This blog is also my outlet for miscellaneous philosophical
essays that don't fit anywhere else,
and I may still post to it occasionally.
My training ground for the Kilroy essays was my various writings on
Family Court in Las Vegas (2005-2008),
including my Family Court Chronicles newsletter (46 issues) and a series of 110 random essays
I called the Family Court Philosopher. While the newsletter is chiefly concerned with politics of the court,
the essays range across a wide variety of topics.
Since Sept. 2010, I have spouted daily wisdom on Twitter
as the @BadDalaiLama.
This is my place for philosophical rants and observations
that fit into 140 characters—which
turns out to be quite a lot!
A comprehensive index and welcome page is found at
BadDalaiLama.com.
I also maintain a searchable archive of all my old tweets
(delayed by a week or two).
Occasionally, I post "tweeted essays", which are a series of related tweets on a single topic, usually within the space of an hour.
You can find them listed here.
A tweeted essay is intended to cover larger topics than a single tweet can contain;
yet every tweet has to be able to stand alone.
Other Twitter users can "recommend" my tweets by starring or retweeting them.
Here are my most popular tweets of all time
by stars and
retweets.
You can also monitor
tweets people recommend right now.
Many other searching options are found at
BadDalaiLama.com.
Between April 2009 and Sept. 2010, I tweeted as @KilroyCafe, which can be considered a practice
run for the @BadDalaiLama. All of those tweets are archived here.
No new tweets are post to this account.
I have retweeted some of the best @KilroyCafe tweets on @BadDalaiLama, but
there are still many gems yet to be mined.
Here are @KilroyCafe's
most starred and
most retweeted tweets.
To distinguish between Twitter, Facebook and Google+, I have my own personal
Social
Media Policy.
Over the course of my life, I've started writing a lot of philosophy books, most of
which never got very far. The most sophisticated was
The Case Against Marriage, which got to 30 chapters!
A college professor even saw my work, assigned it to his students,
and at the initiative of one of those students, I gave an
interactive lecture against marriage
at Daytona College in Florida.
(I felt like Freud lecturing in Worcester.)
The book was well-written and made a lot of good points, but
I eventually abandoned the project because I found that I was simply repeating myself.
Everything I had to say could be summed up in a single one-page newsletter.
Beyond that, I was just belaboring the obvious.
No matter what I said, the religious believers in marriage would not be dissuaded.
There was also the problem that the "book" was a dying medium, with few prospects for
making money even if it was published. If I'm not going to be an
impoverished
philosopher, I'd rather devote my time to a lot of little
ignored projects than one big ignored one.
"Short and sweet" became my mantra.
The full manuscript is now available online.
(Apparently, the website stopped working for a few years, but I repaired it on 12/9/2011.)
Philosophy Videos
I started making philosophy videos in 2010. There are over 30 of them by now.
All of my videos are posted to my KilroyCafe YouTube account.
However, many of them are "unlisted", so you need the URL to view them.
(These videos aren't
secret. I just made them unlisted so they didn't dilute my more polished videos.)
In addition to the list below, you can find most of my video on my
list of Tweeted Videos.
Here are my philosophy videos (as listed on my video page)...
Between 2005 and 2010, I wrote a number of philosophical essays, most of them
only a page or two long, which appeared on several of my websites...
