Tuesday, December 14, 2004

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?

4 comments:

nhakram said...

dude, being a libra means jack all, as does being a capricorn..whcih is what, a goat, which is what, terribly salacious. and my bang on religious room mate being that (a capricorn, with a hijab n all) n she is hardly lecherous so really, it means jack all what bloody star sign you are

also,your writing is really boring

but i agree with your view on philosophy which needs a defienite makeover
also, you have your head stuck up your ass a bit too (http://neuralger.blogspot.com/2004/11/asstriches.html)

cogitation--mental constipation

but whatever:) i'll be barging back in soon to read what your scholarly nature's ejected...

Aureantes (aka Kagen Aurencz Zethmayr) said...

Enh....I'm really not that taken with that initial post myself--thinking that prolongedly about something so academic, and compulsively trying to get just the fair and exact meaning I want, kinda drains the life out of the writing itself. I really should just abandon all intellectual scruples, I suppose...after all, it's not like the rest of the witty world seems to use them that much.

I think I want to strangle the first person I meet who actually has a whole /degree/ in "philosophy"....maybe one could see it as the ultimate test of whether they've learned anything worthwhile.

I think that's also the one area in which the French are most massively and annoyingly full of themselves. Camus escapes that censure, though--he was Algerian, not an insulated peninsular, and I think a good deal more in touch with the physical and human world.

nhakram said...

:) witty world...it scares me more than the "big bad world" you know? but yeah id' agree with you on camus but that's possbly only because i'm happily materialst
apriopri is bull
i just think sometimes that philosophy is the first real tool i got to assemble some sort of framework for my life (in terms of why i do the things i do, morality n shit) but then i think why do i need a fucking framework anyway?

and my typing's ussually good (as is my spelling and use of language), i think its a reactio to your structured scholarity

how old are you anywayy? i saw ur picture before you took it off (why'd youtake it off, you look a little like john mayer...you get that a lot?) i reckon your what, 23? (see i missed the apostrophe and the e! bleh..)

Aureantes (aka Kagen Aurencz Zethmayr) said...

Well, I'm a bit older than 23, and I haven't the faintest idea who John Mayer is--the general consensus is that I have a noticeable resemblance to James Spader....and actually, I only took off one of the three pics I posted here (was a duplicate anyhow)--the two I left each have their own separate posts. I'm testing the system, as I've never used Blogger before, and wasn't exactly sure how the upload manager would manage things. So, if anything looks amiss, that's why...I'm still a bit experimental.

Btw....hmm...though my friends do say I'm a sensualist, I've never considered myself a materialist. Maybe it's because I do this so habitually and am aware of my own flaws, but I don't believe in /ignoring/ the material for the immaterial. Or in categorically denying that it means anything at all because it's just an illusion. We're creatures that thrive on meaning, even when we have to build it for ourselves. Even consciously taking the freedom for nothing to mean anything is a meaning in itself.

Just like vehement atheism is just as religiously fanatical as any religion it tries to eliminate from public sight--except that there that's the urge to dominate and repress another's freedom, not being content to merely state one's path and follow it.

There are very few people in the world who have the humility to lead and teach by example alone. And I'm not necessarily saying that I'm one of them, just that I dislike factionalism in general and don't like anyone trying to convert or force anyone else's beliefs.

Unless of course they're just thinking on demonstratedly false evidence or propaganda in the first place, in which case a good logical objection/dissection is always admissable unless you're wary of blowing their mind and shattering their functioning mental universe. "Enlighten" at one's own discretion...


The majority of people I instant-message with online are not very scrupulous with their writing style--so that makes me all the more determined to keep mine well-maintained.