Parasites Blog: On Interruptions

Just to be absolutely deplorable, I'd like to start this blog by including the definition for an "interruption" as found in some free (and absolutely dependable) online dictionary.

1. To break the continuity or uniformity of.

2. To hinder or stop the action or discourse of (someone) by breaking in on.

Now, I've never really thought about interruptions much prior to discussion of them in Parasites, especially not in a positive light. I always considered interruptions to only be sources of annoyance: a friend cutting you off in mid-sentence, a cell phone going off in the middle of a movie, remembering that you have work to do right when you're finally relaxed and de-stressing, etc. And to me action, by contrast, is willful, planned, and generally positive in association. However, the more I think about it, the more action becomes a useless concept. For every action to come into the realm of reality, for it's praxis, it must interupt another action already in...well, in action. But if every action is an interruption, then every interruption, by extension, is interrupting an interrupt.

Life is sorta like this

Ok, perhaps not. I rarely tap any islands before considering my next interruption. Regardless, from birth, the course of our lives seems like a constant stream of interruptions. For instance my stream of thought is constantly interrupted by a friend texting me as I try to type this. Each interruption of hers is interrupted by the fact that I restart my blogging efforts. No one action is isolated, and since most actions can't run simultaneously...well I'm slaying the slain by this point I'm sure you get where I'm going with this.
Ok, now to truly blog. By which I mean things are about to get rather messy in my brain.
So what does this interruption-chain concept mean? To be perfectly honest I'm not sure. I don't think a lack of action, as opposed to interruption, inplies anything like predetermination or fatalism. If anything it would more closely resemble determinism, the view that all thoughts and actions are determined by the thoughts and actions preceding them in an unbroken chain of causality. I don't really think that a shift from considering actions and thoughts to one of chains of interruptions really supports determinism, but it is interesting to see how they both handle the idea that one event seemlessly leads to another in a way that is largely outside of our control, even if we are so used to interruptions that they feel like free will. After all, if you ignore determinist theory for a second, it's clear that interruptions allow for more freedom. For example, if somone walks in late to a class, the professor and the student have options as far as the parameters of the interruption go. The professor could call him out on it, or ignore him and continue lecturing. Likewise the student could try to sneak in quietly or swagger in with bravado (cell phone ringing, perhaps?). And of course the class is an interruption on both of their lives outside of the class, just as the rest of their lives is an interruption on the time they spend in class. And that concept was an interruption to my larger argument which I've now more or less gone off track of.

I guess my point is that I've come to accept that interruptions are not only important, they are practically everything. And that this paradigm shift has, thus far, not shifted very much... So consider this blog post a very tentative step in the deeper understanding of the nature of interaction.

In the mean time, the Tomcat Murr calls for an uninterupted reading sesh.