(no subject)

How in the world does one deal
With this dissipation of zeal?

I've read comparatively little Bloom the last two or three years, essentially since coming to agree with him completely. That was a strange effect, a strange, spasmodic string of realizations--almost amounting to the externalization of my own opinions, which perhaps created a sense of freedom from them (since someone else was in charge of them and fighting for them better than I ever could), maybe one exaggerating a natural late youth/early middle age aversion to the very concept of opinion? Not that I don't still have a billion knee-jerk ones, but suddenly they are largely knee-jerk. Once I've uttered them I regard them with some bemusement and wander away. Creative, violent, spontaneous opinion-making has died down a bit, doubtless to the greater delight of everyone I know. No, this too seems wrong. I may not wonder more, but how I wonder does feel different.

It seems to me that when you're young you pick, or something picks for you, either the route of ignorance or certainty (each requiring tactical deployment of the other one now and then for self-maintenance, of course). You can know exactly as much either way, this is more how you frame your knowledge against your lack of knowledge. I picked certainty, which I'd defend as not necessarily the worse of the two: it does involve the assumption you've settled profound issues based on as-yet superficial experiences, but the more wildly you do this the more you butt into reality, the more you learn to defend. And the first lesson of defense is to give up what's indefensible. I guess this is what people mean when they offensively suggest that everyone who isn't religious/an atheist/a Democrat/a communist/whatever at 15 is lacking, but anyone not the opposite by 30's even more so. Arbitrary self-approval allows you to experience more errors from the inside--combined with the ability to learn, which also probably erodes the more dangerous appendages of self-approval, this can create an impressive amount of knowledge of what to avoid and why. But maybe you'd have had that anyway if capable of this much mental engagement, just by seeing the errors of others.

I doubt it, though. I think we fill the circle best by scribbling madly, then erasing carefully as needed: Blake's path of excess leading to wisdom, Kafka's line you know only by tripping over it.

But there's certainly more to learn once you're wise. And whatever cabin in the woods or base underwater the line takes you to, there you are, still alive. How's this second verse go?

(no subject)

We take such pains to control what we realize.

Our tendency is to simplify the ideas of others into brief phrases, then connect each idea, where we find no immediate reason to agree with it, to some recognizable fault or inadequacy in its holder. This destroys rival conceptualizations at both root and bud. It is a very useful filter and always at least partly accurate: every formulation is imperfect due to limitations of the formulator. But, since life teaches us so few things directly, applied overscrupulously this practice walls us off from almost everything there is to know--such as most of the few things learned by each of the billions of other human beings.

So we learn to suspend disagreement now and then. With our enemies, say, or at random, on Whatifyou'reright days. WhatifI'mwrong is of surprisingly limited value, I think because it connects up to our self-esteem, therefore is subject to our astonishingly subtle and powerful self-esteem defenses. I might be wrong elides to Oh no I'm wrong, I must be bad, waaah! Which we don't ever mean: we deliberately overstate a case against us or against that which is of crucial importance to our sense of self (i.e. nearly everything we feel like arguing about) so that the proposition in question no longer makes sense, therefore cannot be meant, need not be thoughtfully answered. The effort at self-critique is answered by a burst of emotion which, unlike our sense of the facts, will run its course and disappear. Humble-me is a straw man we set up to avoid truly arguing with ourself. Rather, a straw man who immediately agrees with our self-criticism, but in impossibly distorted terms, thus killing the critical exchange through a drama of parody. This works with others, too, no? Insincere agreement is resorted to to end a heated discussion--usually vague half-agreement so we don't have to admit to ourselves that we're trying to lie the issue away. Naturally we don't let ourselves realize when we aren't letting ourselves realize something.

So deliberate self-effacement or critique generally won't work, but half-forgetting ourselves in sympathetic immersion in the other person's words and thoughts often can. This is one reason why style is important: the easier you make it for someone else to understand you and yours more exactly, the better off you'll both be.

This is one reason literature is important.