- Apr 2, 2009
- 8,660
- 16
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Scott SoCal said:
What demagoguery now Scot SoCal. What exquisite wisdom, however! How do you do it Scott SoCal? When the rest of us are so unclear about the world and about philosophy. The other day on the Piazza del Popolo I had launched into one of my philosophical disquisitions, which no one dreads more than I, because they had become more frequent in recent years, though all they have in common with philosophy is the motive behind them. Everything I said was nonesensical and ultimately silly, while you enlighten us so appositely about government, liberal and conservative ideology, as you have shown us the way toward understanding here. Whereas I had spoken something about Montaigne that even I did not understand the moment I said it. For no sooner had I uttered my observation about Montaigne and was asked to explain it, I could not do so, as I no longer knew what I had said. We say something that is quite clear at the time, then a moment later we don't know what it was just two or three seconds later, unlike Scott SoCal's thinking, which is always perfectly lucid, long-lived and encyclopedic in its scope. We ought to be able to say something and record it in our minds, like you Scott SoCal, but we can't. I've no idea why I spoke about Montaigne just then, and of course I've even less of an idea what I said. We image we've reached a stage like Scott SoCal where we've become a thinking machine, but we can't rely on its thinking as he can. This machine works unremittingly against the brain, I thought. It generates thoughts, but we don't know where they come from, why they were conceived, or what they relate to. The fact is that, even in Scott SoCal's case, this nonstop thinking machine overtaxes us. The brain is overburdened but has no escape, Scott SoCal, as it's inevitably linked up to the machine for the rest of our lives. Until we die. You say Montaigne, Scott SoCal, but right now I don't know what that means. Dante? I don't know what that means, anymore than I know what Schopenhauer means. You might just as well say buttercup: I wouldn't know what that meant either. And don't go and visit the places of Dante, Virgil and Petrarch, because if you do you'll destroy everything about them that you now have in your head. It's unbearably depressing. You think about some ordinary notion like liberals and conservatives, only to find that your mind is a blank, that there's nothing there. You want to grasp some ordinary notion, and there's nothing whatever in your head. For days you go around with a total void in your head. You tap it and find that it's quite empty. It drives you out of your mind and makes you desperatly unhappy, utterly sick of life, Scott SoCal. Although I'm a teacher, my mind's a complete blank most of the time. Probably because I've overtaxed it, I've thought. By demanding too much of it. By quite simply overrating it. We overrate our minds and expect too much of them, and then we're suprised when we tap our heads and find them entirely void, Scott SoCal. They don't contain even the bare minimum, I've thought. And from time to time the philosphers who mean something to us, completely withdraw from our minds, probably because we've missused them. They simply decamp and leave our minds vacant, so that instead of having ideas in our minds--especially among those of the political class--sensible or otherwise, philosophical or otherwise: we're left with an unbearable pain that makes you want to cry out in frustration, Scott SoCal. Though you seem quite immune from this pain and existential ancst. But if we cried out in our world, everyone would be let on to the emptiness of our minds and conversely to the fullness of yours, Soctt SoCal. And suddenly everything would be at an end. Everyhting would fly apart in an immense explosion. Consequently unlike you we approach philosophy with extreme caution, and we fail. Then with resolution, and we fail. Even if we approach it head-on and lay ourselves open, we fail. It's like we had no right to share in philosophy, I've thought. Philosophy is like the air we breath: we breath in, but can't retain it for long before breathing out. All our lives we constantly inhale and exhale it, but we can never retain it for that vital extra moment that would make all difference. So how do you do it, Scott SoCal? How do you have that superhuman capacity to breath it all in and retain it for so long before having to exhale it, which is our illumination of all your thoughts and ideas that we have never had the brainpower to comprehend for ourselves, without you? Without your brilliance we'd no doubt be doomed, I've thought. Please keep on enlightening us with your incomparable wisdom, Scott SoCal, as it supplies us with the oxygen we need to survive and to bear this existence.
Ever greatful.
You guys have fun in here.
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