Re: Not to you dear Eli
I think this feeling of failing is perhaps less a result of any particular scholastic endeavor, but perhaps a side effect of the human condition?
It makes me think about a scene from the Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (2005 film) that I think of often, where Arthur confesses to Slartibartfast that “All my life I’ve had this strange feeling that there’s something big and sinister going on in the world,” Slartibartfast responds that, indeed, “No, that’s perfectly normal paranoia. Everyone in the universe gets that. Perhaps I’m old and tired, but I think that the chances of finding out what’s actually going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say, ‘Hang the sense of it,’ and keep yourself busy. I’d much rather be happy than right any day.”
“And are you?”
“Ah, no,” pausing to snort-chortal, “Well, that’s where it all falls down, of course,” sighs Slartibartfast.
We (if I may speak for “us all”) go around, pretending that we are all in the same big-ol’ space… but when we really get down to the nuts and bolts of subjective individual experience (experience, here being the operative word—not rooted in any particular function of sensing per se, but this is a gerund-y sort of thing: living) we find that sharing is really really difficult.
This is why I want to either teach literature at a collegiate level, be a kindergarden teacher or cook for my professional life. All of these are about sharing, in very different sorts of ways of course, but sharing is nonetheless formative to all of them. I think that sharing is mighty important.
Here I haven’t answered your question:
“Do you feel like this as well? I think this is where a lot of my academic frustration stems from. Because we fail to use singular words in speaking of complex ideas, we fail to progress in thought.”
Perhaps it is a result of this very failing that we actually progress? If we all spoke with singularity (like a black hole) I am not certain that we would be able to progress at all. Maybe it is a double bind—catch 22—paradox, where in singularity we would both comprehend e v e r y t h i n g as well as collapse all of that which is constituant of e v e r y t h i n g, because through achievement of singularity everything is made to nothing…
That sounded cookier than I was intending. I think that more simply what I’m trying to say is that in our efforts to share we are able to share.
