The difference between capital letters and the lack thereof has always been pretty symbolic of personality to me. I know that I, personally, have two clearly distinct modes of thought: lower case, and mixed case. The mixed case stuff is, I think, the stuff that is more enduring, the stuff that I want to be taken seriously. On a visual level, lower case text blends into each other; there are no obvious delimiters between things. It's the stream-of-consciousness which I live my life in, and it's lots of fun and certainly closer to who I am. At the same time, none of the stuff that I think in lower case is going to be overtly persistent in my life. Certainly my thoughts shape my intuition, but that's in a more subliminal and subtle way.
My mixed-case thoughts typically fall into two subcategories. One is historical; when I'm thinking about my past, when I'm concocting a narrative. The other one is impersonal; when I'm doing things that seem to require none of my individuality or subjectivity, universal things. The two main examples of this in my life are mathematics and fiction writing. What these things have in common is that they are (in theory) timeless; unlike the weblog, they have no particular time-dependent context in my life or in anyone's life.
I now have to justify to you why I'm writing this prologue in mixed case. Obviously part of it is for stylistic
unity, but I think it's also because this delineation of case is something I feel has a universal basis. It starts,
in a way, with neckties.
August 17, 2002: When at first you don't succeed. [autobiographical]
September 5, 2002: That whole age thing. [autobiographical]
January 20, 2003: Mixed-case versus
lower-case. [philosophical]
March 22, 2003: The happiness cycle. [philosophical]
May 3, 2003: On excitement and personal consistency (or, why Bridget went to MIT). [mixture]
May 8, 2005: The creative process of
writing. [philosophical]
August 29, 2006: The contrast theory of
relationships. [philosophical]
August 23, 2007: Society, animal rights,
and the Michael Vick dogfighting incident. [philosophical]
June 11, 2008: Antidepressants. [philosophical]
November 17, 2008: Proposition 8 and gay marriage. [philosophical]