When I reflect upon what I want from a book, it is a map of reality and its boundaries. That is all. If the nature and form of the boundaries suggest a frontier for me to explore, then that is all the better. Nothing excites me more than the notion that there is something out there wild -- as yet unexplored. The list of books that have intrigued me in the past have done so because they have suggested something about the nature of conventional reality and the means to bust out of it. My favourite authors/intellectual schools all give me tools I need to bust out of the rituals of convention -- or at least for contemplation of such:
1. Dambudzo Marechera
2. Judith Lewis Herman
3. Friedrich Nietzsche
4. Georges Bataille
5. GWF Hegel
6. Beckett
7. Luce Irigaray
8. Ortega y Gasset
9. Kleinian school
10. Bruce Lee
As an emotional skeptic, I see language as a precarious scaffolding on which I am compelled to do my balancing acts. Because of the emotional inflexions we subconsciously attribute to words, a particular word will not mean the same thing to you as it does to me. That is why I value a philosopher like Quine, who makes linguistic issues clearer. He's one of the good guys, in terms of the way he went about promoting clarity.
A skeptic about immediate feeling sensations seeks accuracy of interpretation above all. An intensity, a feeling, is necessarily a sign of something other than the emotion itself. What is it trying to get at? (If one believes that the answer is immediately clear, then one is assuredly not a skeptic about emotional matters.) My memoir took me eleven years to write because of this emotional skepticism. Not just any answer would have done -- I had to have the right one. I had to discern and interpret reality accurately. Failing to have done so would have jeopardized my personal growth and knowledge of the world around us in its true and essential form. Reality can't just mean anything at all, and not just any answer will do. Only the right interpretation of reality suffices to make maximal sense of it.
Although I process emotional material remarkably slowly, I enjoy undifferentiated emotional experience, where I am not required to interpret accurately. Wherever emotion may be permitted to be the mere epiphenomenon to the real event taking place, and its meaning, I enjoy emotion immensely. In all honesty, I have never felt more in my cultural element than when I was with a group of skydivers. I am also happy enough with martial artists, since their thick skin normally does not demand too much of me in terms of fine-tuning emotional nuance. I do not need to switch on for them a part of my brain that trembles in the face of needlework too fine for me to see.
I feel very at ease with research work, and can work hard and relentlessly at it, since it does not need me to meet people. It is truly my vocational element. If I had to spend a tenth of my time dealing with those of immature minds, working over things at the level of emotional issues, I would not have even a quarter of my current amount of energy left, to devote to research work. For the same reason, I have difficulties (in terms of energy allocation) in dealing with Western consumers -- who are generally very emotional -- and their issues. I automatically dismiss emotional content that does not promise an intellectual harvest, which I can find enjoyment in. I cannot process that kind of material as if it were real, in the true sense of what is real to me, since consumer complaints just seem to be a short-circuiting of reality, rather than pointing to a reality that is greater than themselves (ie. outside of themselves), and therefore such complaints don't seem to interest me.
1. Dambudzo Marechera
2. Judith Lewis Herman
3. Friedrich Nietzsche
4. Georges Bataille
5. GWF Hegel
6. Beckett
7. Luce Irigaray
8. Ortega y Gasset
9. Kleinian school
10. Bruce Lee
As an emotional skeptic, I see language as a precarious scaffolding on which I am compelled to do my balancing acts. Because of the emotional inflexions we subconsciously attribute to words, a particular word will not mean the same thing to you as it does to me. That is why I value a philosopher like Quine, who makes linguistic issues clearer. He's one of the good guys, in terms of the way he went about promoting clarity.
A skeptic about immediate feeling sensations seeks accuracy of interpretation above all. An intensity, a feeling, is necessarily a sign of something other than the emotion itself. What is it trying to get at? (If one believes that the answer is immediately clear, then one is assuredly not a skeptic about emotional matters.) My memoir took me eleven years to write because of this emotional skepticism. Not just any answer would have done -- I had to have the right one. I had to discern and interpret reality accurately. Failing to have done so would have jeopardized my personal growth and knowledge of the world around us in its true and essential form. Reality can't just mean anything at all, and not just any answer will do. Only the right interpretation of reality suffices to make maximal sense of it.
Although I process emotional material remarkably slowly, I enjoy undifferentiated emotional experience, where I am not required to interpret accurately. Wherever emotion may be permitted to be the mere epiphenomenon to the real event taking place, and its meaning, I enjoy emotion immensely. In all honesty, I have never felt more in my cultural element than when I was with a group of skydivers. I am also happy enough with martial artists, since their thick skin normally does not demand too much of me in terms of fine-tuning emotional nuance. I do not need to switch on for them a part of my brain that trembles in the face of needlework too fine for me to see.
I feel very at ease with research work, and can work hard and relentlessly at it, since it does not need me to meet people. It is truly my vocational element. If I had to spend a tenth of my time dealing with those of immature minds, working over things at the level of emotional issues, I would not have even a quarter of my current amount of energy left, to devote to research work. For the same reason, I have difficulties (in terms of energy allocation) in dealing with Western consumers -- who are generally very emotional -- and their issues. I automatically dismiss emotional content that does not promise an intellectual harvest, which I can find enjoyment in. I cannot process that kind of material as if it were real, in the true sense of what is real to me, since consumer complaints just seem to be a short-circuiting of reality, rather than pointing to a reality that is greater than themselves (ie. outside of themselves), and therefore such complaints don't seem to interest me.
1 comment:
Yeah, I can see what you describe as your emotional skepticism on a daily basis.
As you say, "In all honesty, I have never felt more in my cultural element than when I was with a group of skydivers." Adrenal rush is your drug of choice and there's culture involved with this feeling. Nietzsche is a good intellectual injection for this, as he can be an adrenal rush, especially for one coming out of the doldrums of 'white' suburban versions of Christian dogma.
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