NOT snobbery

i recently had a great conversation with a fellow english major who expressed a great point about our "useless" degrees. he said that while it's nice that many of our peers graduated with more technical or pertinent education and landed high paying jobs right out of college, he really loves the social relevance of an english degree.

seriously. we know so much random crap! crap that probably a large percentage (i don't do math or statistics, i'm an english major) of NON-liberal arts majors would have no reason ever to learn. and this stuff pops up all over the place. for instance: one of my new favorite adult cartoons, archer, on fx. if you haven't seen it, go get yourself a hulu account and watch all of the first season right stinking now, it's freaking hilarious, you won't regret it.

creepy-bad-accent mob dude asking super-suave-spy archer (under cover as sailorman dude who runs the chocolate fountain on the yacht) to bring lots of chocolate to mob dude's rendezvous with sexy-counterpart-girl-spy (also undercover). the exchange goes thusly:

mob guy: "not as much as i love chocolate. and you! bring plenty of it!"
archer: "i would prefer not to..?" 
*flamboyant storm troopers cock their firearms* 
archer continues: "... bartleby the scrivener? anybody? not a big melville crowd here, huh?"

as if the show's vulgarity and super speedy wit and non-sequitur humor weren't enough to make me fall in love, they throw in a PERFECT literary reference. i laughed so STINKING hard. the point is, i felt a little sad that a lot of viewers perhaps did not get the reference. and so, i shall share, so next time you're in a sticky situation, you can say 'i would prefer not to' and feel super cool and smirk because you totally get it, man, you totally know some knowledge.

bartleby is a short story by herman melville (you know, this guy). i'm glossing over the obvious humor that archer quotes melville, who is most famous for moby dick, in the setting of a stinking BOAT in the stinking OCEAN. standing next to a dude the size of a whale.. i won't spoil the episode. anyway.

bartleby is a scrivener (back before computers, people had to hire people to make handwritten copies of things they wrote once already!), or law-copyist, on wall street in 18somethingsomething (story was published in the 1850s). benevolent dude hires bartleby to .. scrive. but eventually bartleby gets a bit complacent and starts responding to all his coworkers' requests with 'i would prefer not' or 'i would prefer not to.' even when confronted with 'you will not?' he gives the same response that he would just prefer not, but that he's not picky. slacker!

***SPOILER ALERT***
the reference is as exciting as it's going to get (except for the stretch i make a little later that the comment on "the absurd" relates to how stinking absurd archer, the show, is...), but as long as i'm enlightening you (oh, THERE'S the stereotypical snobbery), i might as well delve into something a little deeper than cartoons. i am totally anti-spoiler, but the story is really short and you should read it if you haven't, but i know you won't anyway so here's the thing...

he keeps preferring not to do any and everything, including leave the building upon being fired, and eat when he's finally thrown in prison, and... he eventually dies. poor narrator bossman.. bartleby was the only one who was good at his job and didn't complain about personal stuff!

dude. got. depressed. so depressed, in fact, that he finally had no motivation left at all to even stay alive. and his super nice boss tried so hard to understand him and offer help and try to find what would make him happy!

hey depressopants, that's pretty irrational.. oh wait, what do i love? existentialism? postmodern problems? THE ABSURD?!

absurdism - The belief that nothing can explain or rationalize human existence. 

thank you, existential primer, you haven't failed me yet. the final exclamation in the story is the poor narrator (nice boss guy) lamenting his weirdo friend's demise: "Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity!" read: dammit, bartleby, there is no REASON in your behavior! nor in any of humanity's behavior, for that matter! dude doesn't get it. because there is no explanation.

to come full circle... if you have, by now, ventured to watch at least a snippet of archer, you will understand how ridiculous and crazy the show is, thus making the reference to bartleby's irrationality and lack of preference (i would prefer not to, but i'm not particular, i.e., i have no preference except NOT) doubly amusing to those of us snobs who actually got the reference. and now you're one too. so watch it with your friends, and laugh really heartily at that line, then pause if they don't laugh, then show them this blog entry. they won't be your friends anymore, but you'll feel pretty cool, won't you?

good day, sir.

eternal return and responsibility

i love those ah-ha moments when i'm reading fiction and i can see some of my favorite philosophers' influence in the 'big thoughts' the characters face. i had a moment yesterday during my reading that made me revisit nietzsche - effectively distracting me for the rest of the day, and most of this morning.

nietzsche's concept of the eternal return is, to me, one of the most profound and terrifying ideas in philosophy. i think it's because, though nietzsche would not consider himself an existentialist, it illustrates very well the notion of taking responsibility for one's self, actions, and life. consider:

“What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you in your loneliest loneliness and say to you: ‘This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence-even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!‘”
- Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science

what if. what if you had to live this exact same life over and over again? nothing new, no second chances, all the same choices, opportunities, mistakes, heartbreaks, and revelations. why is this so terrifying? because we think our major limitation is time? if i had all the time in the world, would i DO LIFE differently?

this concept puts so much responsibility on the individual (because there is no fate, and, of course, god is dead) to take control - to be the driving force, the sole influence in one's life. this is my favorite (yet still most terrifying) concept in existential philosophy. it takes a lot of pondering to understand what responsibility really means in this sense.

further, it is not just an idea put forth by nietzsche. he puts the 'blame' on some demon, who 'steals' after you in your 'loneliest loneliness.' he does not directly take responsibility for this idea. he places it on a demon - a malevolent force. and it must come to you when you are at your weakest (in nietzsche's eyes): your loneliest loneliness. is it the confrontation of individual alone-ness, of nothingness, the oh-so-existential problem of confronting and understanding the possibility of your own non-existence?

(oh dear, we've gotten into heideggarian territory. it was bound to happen.)

to nietzsche, then, the eternal return is more terrifying than nothingness. in your night of solitude and loneliness, confronting nothingness and non-existence versus, perhaps, dasein, this demon - a being itself - gives you something even heavier to ponder: that your every choice and every action carries infinite weight. even if we don't have to live this life over and over for eternity, isn't it the same that we only get one shot? we do have to live with our choices 'eternally' since all we have is all we have.

enchanting

just re-started reading salman rushie's the enchantress of florence. (i got about 50 pages in a few months ago and managed to neglect the act of reading for some time due to .. life.)

i must say, it only takes about a sentence for this book to creep back under my skin and make me grin. the mind grapes start juicing and i get all kinds of comfy; sinking in for the long haul. even if the story were garbage (which it isn't), the prose is beautiful. the philosophical musings interspersed so seamlessly with character and setting development that you forget you're reading a story.

don't worry, no spoilers here, but i must set up the following AWESOME quote by saying that the emperor, despite his palace full of concubines, has imagined himself up a wife. she's 'imaginary.' and the this quote is spoken by her speaking to him:

when a boy dreams up a woman he gives her big breasts and a small brain. when a king imagines a wife he dreams of me.

that quote hit me like a hammer. i immediately reached for my pen. probably because it speaks to the boring desirability of a well-endowed woman who longs for nothing but to please a man, versus the unattainability of a strong, questioning, intellectual woman.

another, you ask? ok. this one is dear to my heart for obvious reasons:

witchcraft requires no potions, familiar spirits, or magic words. language upon a silvered tongue affords enchantment enough.

chew on that.