Initiating contact....

My other blog, Aureantes Talks, is now mainly designated as the place where I go off on obnoxious in-jokes and add quizzes and make snarky references with semi-incriminating personal information. Not that there isn't anything serious there (it is my first blog, after all), but the whole system there and the rather incestuous nature of my friends list and our mutual interests makes it a bit unlikely that anything of a scholarly or professional nature is going to get noticed on that network. And I am definitely scholarly and trying to keep somewhat professional about it.

Hence, this newest blogsite of yours truly, which I really must remember to add-link to the portal page of my main site, Aureantes' Realm. The more I can keep things organized the better, as I certainly did not come online in the first place to sit in a corner and surf without sound. I make a fair amount of noise as I pass, though only where it seems needful. And of course I like to get some noise in response.

Pundit?--sure, you can call me that, though being a Libra I am unlikely to espouse any real extremity of position. Definitely a universal critic as well, but vehemently opposed to dryness and miniscule dissections of signification. I follow the way of Camus, not so much that of Sartre. Camus regarded philosophy as needfully concrete and connected to the reality of one's situation, not so far abstract that it only seems to truly exist within the pages of academic dissertations, no matter how much popular culture it chews up and spits back in reference.

I was raised to be an academic myself--I can speak that language fluently if the occasion demands--but frankly, I find it rather boring. And empty. Someone said that music degenerates when it moves too far away from the dance (I'd say from natural singing and its rhythms, myself)--and modern philosophy, it seems, has moved so far away from any real estimation of necessary human concerns that it is now propagating itself more or less in vitro--via college computer monitors, camera lenses and overhead projectors, rather than by reiterating its contact with the physical and sensual world, the only interface through which it can achieve real and enduring value to anyone, anywhere.

Mysticism, on the other hand, is immanent. One does not need a special rarefied terminology to pin it down with, nor a degree, nor even the reading of a single thesis. It can be translated without any proprietary intellectual structure, so long as one has the key of insight. Of course, it can be--and sometimes tragically is--misunderstood. But that's the nature of wisdom itself--it cannot be forced but has to grow. Trying to turn it into an object, though, a science in the modern sense...well, who can say whether that's a vain or an honourable pursuit? All I know is, it seems a lot of people are going about that business all wrong, and that the study which is supposedly the "love of wisdom" seems to have its head simultaneously off in the clouds and up its own arse. I watched "Waking Life" and thought it was both poignantly beautiful and almost too erudite for its own good, a dreamscape so abstracted into verbal concept that one might as well float off into the clouds.

While we're in this thing some call reality, I think it best to engage it with all our senses, on every level. And I think the academic pursuit of wisdom itself (to which philosophy is apparently nothing more than a string of cages) should if anything be as non-formalized as possible, a matter of exposure and absorption rather than the drive to win a grade or impress with one's citings.

If anything one learns is to be of value, then the impulse to express it in discourse and inquiry must be sincere and spontaneous--not something that one is forced to produce but that on the contrary cannot be held back once the forum is opened. That is the true desire of wisdom, when no other persuasion than the sheer thrill of insight and connection is needed to spur one's searchings and all that follows from them. If one does not love wisdom and learning for their own virtue, then of what use is it to formalize and dry things out into easy bitesize pieces to try and feed everyone at similar pace? Far more useful that those who have the desire recieve the whole fruit wherever it can be given or found in their own gleanings, while those who are not ready or fit for such things should not be forcefed that which they cannot digest.

More on this to come...my own academic history is an interesting one, and my views are (as one can see) not necessarily those of the mainstream. I do tend to ramble a lot, though, when left to my own devices and not the framework of a plot or formal thesis. But of course...what else is this place for?