Featured: White Sands National Park, New Mexico, USA

The author enjoying himself in his hobby of seeing national parks across North America. He's visited all but two states, and has visited parks across the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, having driven nearly 750,000 miles, much of which was for touring.

Book and Journal of Mattanaw

Sunday, July 10^th, 2022

Thursday, December 15^th, 2022

Author: Mattanaw, Christopher Matthew Cavanaugh

Masters Business & Economics, Harvard University (In Progress)
Attorney, Pro Se, Litigation, Trial, Depositions, Contracts (E.g. State of Alaska v. Pugh, et. al.)⁴
B.S Psychology, University of Maryland, 4.0, Summa Cum Laude¹
B.S Computer & Information Science, University of Maryland, 3.91, Magna Cum Laude²
B.A. Philosophy, University of Maryland.³
G.E.D, State of Maryland, Montgomery County, 1999.

Former Chief Architect, Adobe Systems

Current President/Advisor, Social Architects and Economists International.

Contact:

Resumé

Professional Resumé

Preface

This Book and Journal is the progression of my work on Moral Philosophy which has been underway since I was still a teenager, over 20 years ago.

It is also a result of a long software project, the culmination of which is to share my entire life online; as far as is possible in the artifacts I’ve collected over the years. This may seem insignificant, but consider: Who do you know who shares every, or nearly every photo from their camera roll online? Who do you know, who has collected all of their personal writings for decades, and photos from photo albums, including negatives, and digital files, and organized them in such a way as to be able to share them all online. I have recently been able to transfer all of the digital photos and videos in my possession up to this book. This means this book really does hold each and every file I have that could be put in a photo album, and each and every piece of writing I have archived. I have reached a point where I can nearly destroy every paper document in my possession with no issue.

Also a part of this effort is to have an open identity. I have shared my identity and some health records on this book which may be of interest to readers. These can be found on my page Open Health and Identity. If you think through the topic of autobiography writing, you’ll notice there are two serious concerns: the first is of including all that you can about yourself honestly, to be totally open. The second is ensuring authenticity of your writing that matches your life so that others do not have any authority at all to distort your recorded persona.

That is only possible, however, if you are able to openly share your life, in a way that does not exclude much if any personal details. This is where autobiography and openness connects with morality and moral philosophy, and living a moral and ethical lifestyle.

Content on this book will be a gradual fusion of my life events and my moral thought. You will find video content on channels related to my travels, fitness, and the like, which appears to be separable from my moral philosophy, and is to an extent in relation to interests in entertainment. However, if I’m not speaking in a landscape scene at a national park, it does not mean that the content does not figure into my plans in life which relate to my moral philosophy.

Acknowledgements

There are a number of people I would want to provide acknowledgement concerning their support over the years on things unrelated to writing, which still contributed to the opportunity to complete work. There are others I would want to thank for more interesting conversation and mutual growth. Others I would thank for providing interest or positive nudges at times where that was more wanting. People who I would like to provide some acknowledgement to with increasing specifics can be found in acknowledgements.

I have felt for a long time that I could give acknowledgement even to people who I would not really want to openly credit, for being people of poor character, people who I’ve interacted with and learned from, who didn’t do anything of great significance for mutual growth, and people who simply related to a development that occurred within my own skull. I still feel some sort of appreciation at times although I’m not certain they deserve any special attention or any recognition for somehow contributing to my work. In this sense I would like to thank all those I have not simply forgotten to include on my acknowledgements page.

My acknowledgements page has not yet been improved to include more specific reasons for providing attention. I think this is a defect in our culture, that we don’t truly know how to credit yet, and have a typology or system for knowing how to classify contributions or stimulations.

An important thing I do need to state is: This book is almost entirely of my own mind with nearly zero contribution from any other person. There are intellectual references and citations that are needed, because there are some thinkers who I’ve been exposed to, mostly deceased writers, who I’ve depended on greatly for material which I thought about but did not create on my own. Everyone who is not a writer, who does not have a very specific contribution mentioned, simply has not contributed to this work.

I am fond as of late of bringing up the need to use frequency distributions. If I were to take anyone else’s contributions as a numerator to my own contributions to this book, for each and every person who could be input, the result would be zero. As the site grows, their contribution is approaching nearer and nearer to zero, wherever it is negligible and not nothing.

Details on Navigating the Site

All site materials are available using the contents within the sliding menu. If sections are larger, they will contain contents sections atop which will allow for navigation within that part. If there is any archiving, there may be a link at the end of the page, pointing to older versions of the page. This is to ensure that pages can be loaded, since some pages are quite large, and may include hundreds of images, or many pages of text.

Treat this site as a Book and Journal. All can be found on the primary contents, but those sections may have their own organization and treatment, but all can be found easily from the main menu.

Introduction

Moral Philosophy has been traditionally divided into practical morality and theoretical morality. For those who are coming from a religious background primarily and not an academic ethical research background, this division can be thought of as the life of the moral philosophy and writing about application, versus the parts which might be more abstract and general without as clear an application. In my estimation, the theoretical part could be considered simply knowledge. For those who have neither a religious background or moral philosophical background, but a scientific background combined with personal learnings in life experiences, I would say the theoretical part would correspond with the totality of scientific knowledge at its widest scope, or potential natural knowledge, and at its smaller scope, which is also of great importance, knowledge and wisdom that has high veracity that can be stored in a human brain. This is your wisdom that you have from all your learnings and not those that simply appear to be moral necessarily.

Part of my effort in my work is to re-orient a study of morality and life behavior, to extricate from errors of earlier moral philosophers and religious thinkers, and confusions of scientists too. Notice that scientists have not supplied anything really comparable to religious moral teaching, or teachings from moral philosophers. There have been some inroads through the discipline of Psychology, which includes, of course, methods of aiding people in improving their lives and their behaviors, with some solid scientific basis and findings, but not any totally open holistic approach, that people can use without making payments to people. I have a degree in Psychology and nearly a Bachelors in Philosophy from when I was a dual degree major at the University of Maryland. I have been exposed and trained in each of the disciplines relevant to this effort which I am now finally sharing, again after more than two decades of work. For other relevant details about my history, see my Bio Page.

This site does not yet have a section that is totally about the theoretical part of my ethical system, and these writings will slowly be included. This part has been very well developed, however, to the extent that working on this section is not of personal interest. The reason for holding back on this part is to potentially unlock a book deal which might provide me some financial return, and also to build interest first, and complete other groundwork necessary, to get people prepared for learning something which otherwise would be inaccessible. There are several preparatory articles I still need to publish before this theoretical work is included, fully elaborated.

This journal is totally free, and I really do intend to share all I can without any expectation of monetary contributions. I’m already successful in software and in my career, and am semi-retired, in part to make my efforts possible without requiring any financial support, which can be corrupting or distracting, depending on how it is received. Despite this mission, I do also have a strong desire to publish a single smaller volume containing less that is in this site, but with perhaps more edits and more polished appearance, for those who would benefit from having a high quality presentation with less demands on attention. I also simply wanted to have a book written on paper. But as I work and developed this site, I am becoming less interested in that, for prospects of being able to self publish here and to self publish anyway. But to be candid regarding openness, I did think it worth mentioning that I do find it attractive to have a volume published through an academic publishing company, perhaps with similar materials available here but in a different format that makes a purchase attractive and reasonable for certain readers.

References to materials are usually to items freely available here, either in the digital library, or in the work itself someplace. Books and Journals with extensive references have historically been to materials that were scattered widely and hard to access. Often too costly or difficult to obtain. Here, however, these materials have been made available, except for those books the author has read and has included to indicate with transparency what he is familiar with and has read himself in his life. This is necessary to provide a more complete autobiography, but not necessarily to provide direct citations. The point is that research is not easy and much work has to be done simply to get subscriptions or physical access to libraries. Here the author is striving to make this unnecessary, regarding the materials that are within the author’s control.

Currently the site mainly includes developments on the practical portion of the moral system which is about effectiveness in behavior. There are articles of interest that will tie into the overall system of ethics as it is gradually released. The remainder of the site is autobiographical. My life is bound with my work and I want to share all I can; but it’s also extremely useful to me too. Instead of having to have many photo albums in my possession, I can simply look at my own website. I have my own private cloud of all my assets here. These assets connect, again, with ability to be totally open with what I’m doing, and how I spend my life. It includes my various life plans which lay out where I’m going.

I’m unaware of anyone who has connected their own personal digital and writing interests completely with their method of sharing their autobiography, in connection with their moral outlook and system of ethics. At present I’m not sure there are many people, if anyone, who could combine years of moral system development with software architecture, and organization of life assets in a digital library. Given my backgrounds I’m not sure this is something easily achieved by anyone else.

This may lend to some justification as to the naming of the site in my own name. Really the site is for me, and it is to convey my life. It doesn’t appear there is any other name which would be justifiable to my mission unless it is another self-interested title of sorts. Writers of blogs and books will tend, I think, to share concerns about naming, particularly when the work is large and there is a desire to have a universal name for it all, and not just the parts. For example, suppose a writer has 100 works. Suddenly the author’s name is what connects them all, but there is no additional word or title that can be used in a published format to bind them all together into one. Book and Journal of Mattanaw is the best I can think of for now that binds all together into one final, holistic-as-it-can-be corpus of writing.

I am a semi-retired social architect and consultant, with professional/academic experience in the fields of computer science, psychology, philosophy, and more recently, economics.

Articles on this site are eclectic, and draw from content prepared between 1980 and 2022. Topics include ethics, art, fitness, finances, health, psychology, and vegetarianism. The common theme connecting all articles is moral philosophy, even if that is not immediately apparent. Any of my articles that touch on "the good and virtuous life" will be published here. These articles interrelate with my upcoming theory of ethics, two decades in preparation.

I welcome and appreciate constructive feedback and conversation with readers. You can reach me at mattanaw@mattanaw.com (site related), cmcavanaugh@g.harvard.edu (academic related), or christopher.matthew.cavanaugh@member.mensa.org (intelligence related), or via the other social media channels listed at the bottom of the site.

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