When I started in college I figured I might be pretty good at philosophy. This was, I realize now, entirely stupid. I am OK at the odd abstract thought, but never to the dizzying, looping, insane heights of actual philosophers, who use what I will refer to as thousand point words, nine times a sentence. See, there are 1 and 2 point words, like, say, bike. If I put bike in a sentence, there's only so many things it could mean (for instatce, it could mean bike) and therefor only so hard you have to think to incorporate bike into a sentence.
Then there are thousand point words, which may deliver you in any one of a billion directions, depending on every precise nuance of your brain at the moment, words like Modernity. No one actually knows exactly what modernity is, or when it started, or if it even happened, but it shows up in sentences like this:
"The angular re-substantiation of dilute Platonism donates that which having no driven basis in the underpinnings of neo-renaissance ideological rhetoric, distributes a kind of sub-modern deliberation which may imply the factors of post modernity." I tried to make that sound complicated by randomizing every next word, and it still reads easier than, for instance, Martin Heidegger:
Then there are thousand point words, which may deliver you in any one of a billion directions, depending on every precise nuance of your brain at the moment, words like Modernity. No one actually knows exactly what modernity is, or when it started, or if it even happened, but it shows up in sentences like this:
"The angular re-substantiation of dilute Platonism donates that which having no driven basis in the underpinnings of neo-renaissance ideological rhetoric, distributes a kind of sub-modern deliberation which may imply the factors of post modernity." I tried to make that sound complicated by randomizing every next word, and it still reads easier than, for instance, Martin Heidegger:
"The present of presence consists in the fact that it brings what is present each in its own way to presence. In accordance with the actual kind of presence, the ground has the character of grounding as the ontic causation of the real, as the transcendental making possible of the objectivity of objects, as the dialectical mediation of the movement of the absolute Spirit and of the historical process of production, as the will to power positing values."
Which all means that either Martin Heidegger is one of the smartest people on the planet, or a man who wakes up laughing daily for the mountains of chaos he's paid to pile into his word processor, which is slightly easier to imagine. I can see Mitch and his best friend, rolling side by side in his office right now. "The present of PRESENCE! You can't send that out!" "You gotta keep reading! It gets WAY better!"
Seriously though, I'm sure there actually IS something to that collection of 100, 500, and 10,000 point words, but I'll never understand it. For a while, this was OK. I could get by alright on enthusiasm and the occasional exterior insight, but I was never an intellectual venturer. My point was to always bring whatever I had read to some kind of relative conclusion, even if it meant compressing its wisdom severely. I also have a knack for pop-culture, especially movie based analogies of material. These are charming enough, but sometimes I fear I end up saying more about, for instance, Cast Away, than I do about whichever koot I'd spent the previous evening skimming.
Last class I believe I jumped the shark. It was my first discussion lead of the semester, and I was nervous, so anything I could turn into something I could easily expound on was jotted down on notes. For instance, I explained how revolutions were like, you know, Avatar, cause it appears that James Cameron just came up with something entirely new, but in fact it was based on prior conventions re-seen at a new level, which then prompts everyone to believe that 3D alone is the same thing as a revolution, and "Alice in Wonderland", I mean, what the hell? Right?
I'll barely make it out before I'm totally discovered, I think. I'll survive my philosophy minor with an A-, maybe a B+, and then I'll never have to struggle to relate Marcuse to Ninja Turtles 2 ever again. It will all be in the past, and I will be in the present...of presence. Ohhhhh, yeah, I see: it's just like in Cool Runnings.
Which all means that either Martin Heidegger is one of the smartest people on the planet, or a man who wakes up laughing daily for the mountains of chaos he's paid to pile into his word processor, which is slightly easier to imagine. I can see Mitch and his best friend, rolling side by side in his office right now. "The present of PRESENCE! You can't send that out!" "You gotta keep reading! It gets WAY better!"
Seriously though, I'm sure there actually IS something to that collection of 100, 500, and 10,000 point words, but I'll never understand it. For a while, this was OK. I could get by alright on enthusiasm and the occasional exterior insight, but I was never an intellectual venturer. My point was to always bring whatever I had read to some kind of relative conclusion, even if it meant compressing its wisdom severely. I also have a knack for pop-culture, especially movie based analogies of material. These are charming enough, but sometimes I fear I end up saying more about, for instance, Cast Away, than I do about whichever koot I'd spent the previous evening skimming.
Last class I believe I jumped the shark. It was my first discussion lead of the semester, and I was nervous, so anything I could turn into something I could easily expound on was jotted down on notes. For instance, I explained how revolutions were like, you know, Avatar, cause it appears that James Cameron just came up with something entirely new, but in fact it was based on prior conventions re-seen at a new level, which then prompts everyone to believe that 3D alone is the same thing as a revolution, and "Alice in Wonderland", I mean, what the hell? Right?
I'll barely make it out before I'm totally discovered, I think. I'll survive my philosophy minor with an A-, maybe a B+, and then I'll never have to struggle to relate Marcuse to Ninja Turtles 2 ever again. It will all be in the past, and I will be in the present...of presence. Ohhhhh, yeah, I see: it's just like in Cool Runnings.
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