I've been meditating on my first blog.
I realized today that I have a great deal of respect for a person that is challenged by the world, whether or not they fail. I mean, I guess I think more accolades are in order for someone that wants to fight a storm and drown than safely kick at water in a puddle.
Three conversations I heard today on campus.
Conversation number one: "I heard that if you get hit by a campus bus, your tuition is payed for. That would be awesome."
Yes, I agree. That would be awesome if you got hit by a bus.
Conversation number two: "I hate my roommate. I am always doing his dishes. He doesn't understand that a dishwasher doesn't clean everything."
No, but apparently you do clean everything. How convenient for your roommate.
Conversation number three: "I hate our teacher. He sucks. He totally pretends to be a feminist but he isn't a feminist. You see how he disagrees with me and I'm a girl."
Yes, because he considers you worthy to challenge in class means he has an insincere attitude towards all women.
Anyways, I think accolades are in order for all of these people I overheard. They have really risen to the challenges of their times, right?
Okay, so a lot of our conversations divulge into petty thoughts. I don't think there is anything more therapeutic at times than gnashing your primate teeth at the specters of insignificant problems. And I've come to the realization that I do this all the time. I'm doing it right now writing this blog. I have no real problems. I have no profound protest with this world, and often take for granted all the things I have been given. Ultimately, I don't have to worry about things like invading armies and abusive spouses.
I even have the luxury to dream of abstract, impractical things. The other night I had a dream that I was reading a passage from Nietzsche by candle light. I seemed to awaken just as I finished the last sentence, reveling in the vague and oblique truth of this quasi-philosophical metaphor. Maybe it was my mind working through the problem of the student that killed himself. Or maybe it was just random neurons firing like he would have believed was at the root of all our thoughts. I don't know, you decide. This was the dream:
There are those that must prove everything with science. They are like trees unable to taste the ground water with their roots. And so they sunder their own bodies and souls into divining rods.
I think this just means that people abstract the mind into some kind of tool for understanding everything, rather than emphatically exploring the world. That is, exploring what they feel and how they feel it. The mountains near home never cease to cause a powerful feeling of wonder in me.
I realize now that I have never really read Nietzsche, and yet I dreamed I was reading his work. Or, at least, I have only read short quotes from him. Certainly not enough to justify dreaming anything that resembles his language. After all, I do not think the content of what I dreamt bears any relation to his life's work. How funny that this is what I dream; abstract things that are irrelevant to the philosopher they were imagined to be derived from, when across the world there are people that are sick and starving, sold into sex trades and stripped of a decent life.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
the harbinger of dumb
Yesterday I learned about a Harvard student that committed suicide.
But not before leaving behind a 1,904 page manifesto. Yes, 1,904 pages.
My friend showed me this said manifesto on the web. I looked at the title on the first page. "Hmm," I thought. "suicide note. I wonder what that's about."
Well, to his credit, he left a table of contents. That's nice when I'm deciding which part of a 1,904 page suicide note I'm going to carve into during my free time.
I'm going to critique this 1,904 pages without reading more than one percent of it. Why? Because I'm lazy like that. And why do I sound cruel? Because this person is not just saying that his life is meaningless, he's saying that my life is meaningless. And he's saying my 200 friends on Facebook lead meaningless lives. Well, maybe some of them waste a lot of time, but their lives are certainly not meaningless.
Look, he's saying my nephew, now two-years old, is meaningless. And now that crap is on the internet for everyone to see. Onwards.
Being a sucker for brevity, I went to the section in the table of contents called "Punchline," a section heralding his revelation about nihilism. Unfortunate. I guess the letters, words, structured sentences, and logical underpinnings that constituted 1,904 pages were meaningless, too.
I wonder, what would have happened if someone else had done the exact same thing, but only the day before? And what if their argument was better?
Okay, so let's entertain the notion that experiences are illusory and meaningless. Everything you experience (love, happiness, anger, pleasure) is really just a chemical reaction in the brain. Therefore, life is meaningless. Huh?
Are you thinking about the code that represents these letters on the page? Okay, so maybe you are. Stop it. But seriously, do you stop to reflect upon these pixels every single time you finish reading this elegant prose in your head?
No.
You just reflected on whether or not this prose is elegant. You had an attitude about my tone from the beginning. You understand this sentence as it unfolds. Now this sentence. Now this one. Now this one.
No? So, these words are still an illusion. Okay, maybe this reduction to the absolute physical is plausible. After all, science has tremendous explanatory power. But why should there be any less wonder, even given you can obliterate Mona Lisa's "smile" to atoms? Isn't there still some mystery in the very experience of her expression that you can't quite grasp? I mean, abstracting my experience of happiness to atoms just doesn't come even fucking close to the actual experience of happiness.
I'm still wrong? Okay, so the nihilist is right. Clearly, because he wrote 1,904 pages!
But I'll have the last word, fortunately. If the stuff that constitutes "us" is meaningless, then I know of no better time to start cultivating my own meaning.
What more could a writer ask for than blank, empty canvas?
But not before leaving behind a 1,904 page manifesto. Yes, 1,904 pages.
My friend showed me this said manifesto on the web. I looked at the title on the first page. "Hmm," I thought. "suicide note. I wonder what that's about."
Well, to his credit, he left a table of contents. That's nice when I'm deciding which part of a 1,904 page suicide note I'm going to carve into during my free time.
I'm going to critique this 1,904 pages without reading more than one percent of it. Why? Because I'm lazy like that. And why do I sound cruel? Because this person is not just saying that his life is meaningless, he's saying that my life is meaningless. And he's saying my 200 friends on Facebook lead meaningless lives. Well, maybe some of them waste a lot of time, but their lives are certainly not meaningless.
Look, he's saying my nephew, now two-years old, is meaningless. And now that crap is on the internet for everyone to see. Onwards.
Being a sucker for brevity, I went to the section in the table of contents called "Punchline," a section heralding his revelation about nihilism. Unfortunate. I guess the letters, words, structured sentences, and logical underpinnings that constituted 1,904 pages were meaningless, too.
I wonder, what would have happened if someone else had done the exact same thing, but only the day before? And what if their argument was better?
Okay, so let's entertain the notion that experiences are illusory and meaningless. Everything you experience (love, happiness, anger, pleasure) is really just a chemical reaction in the brain. Therefore, life is meaningless. Huh?
Are you thinking about the code that represents these letters on the page? Okay, so maybe you are. Stop it. But seriously, do you stop to reflect upon these pixels every single time you finish reading this elegant prose in your head?
No.
You just reflected on whether or not this prose is elegant. You had an attitude about my tone from the beginning. You understand this sentence as it unfolds. Now this sentence. Now this one. Now this one.
No? So, these words are still an illusion. Okay, maybe this reduction to the absolute physical is plausible. After all, science has tremendous explanatory power. But why should there be any less wonder, even given you can obliterate Mona Lisa's "smile" to atoms? Isn't there still some mystery in the very experience of her expression that you can't quite grasp? I mean, abstracting my experience of happiness to atoms just doesn't come even fucking close to the actual experience of happiness.
I'm still wrong? Okay, so the nihilist is right. Clearly, because he wrote 1,904 pages!
But I'll have the last word, fortunately. If the stuff that constitutes "us" is meaningless, then I know of no better time to start cultivating my own meaning.
What more could a writer ask for than blank, empty canvas?
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