History and Class Consciousness Georges Lukacs: "Class Consciousness"
Hegel: The Essential Writings Frederick G. Weiss, ed.: "What is Philosophy?"; "Dialectic and Human Experience: The Phenomenology of Spirit"
Just Finished: The American Teenager Robin Bowman
History and Class Consciousness Georges Lukacs: "What is Orthodox Marxism?"
Why, facing no significant obstacles, can't I do what I should be doing, or have even professed that I want to be doing? It seems I almost seek out obstacles to place in my own way so I won't accomplish my own goals. As I've mentioned before, I am my own biggest obstacle.
For example, upon waking, with countless hours and endless possibilities ahead of me, instead of reading like I'd love to, I use those hours for things I consciously loathe to do and that I realize are pointless. The past week, especially, I've found myself color-coding my clothes to match my hangers, cleaning my room, watching hours of television and volunteering to cook dinner for my family instead of doing those things I know I enjoy.
At least I think I know I enjoy them. But if this is one of the few things I really know about myself, then why do I spend hours becoming more adept at developing avoidance tactics rather than actually read?
- It might be that if I begin to read with the expectation that it will be as satisfying as I've fantasized about, what happens if/when it proves not to be as satisfying as I'd expected?
- Is it because I have unwittingly constructed an identity based on my penchants and proclivities? Although, intellectually, I disavow any notions of a self, when it comes down to it, ego is the foundation of my daily existence. Maybe I'm subconsciously worried that if this aspect of my personality that I've held on to for so long has not survived my transition from then to now, I would be setting myself up for an identity crisis.
- It is easier to sit still and be dictated to than to actually have to exercise dominion over my own life. Sitting numbly in front of the television and having my own thoughts silenced loudly by those of another is hypnotic and easy. You don't have to make any sort of effort to live, the box does all the hard work for you. For me, the concept of effort is key. I don't want to put forth significant effort only to wind up unsuccessful i.e. I don't want to spend hours reading a text to find out that I can't understand a sentence of what I've read and begin to feel feelings of profound inadequacy.
Granted, I read for school in order to complete an assignment. I read newspaper articles, directions, recipes in order to gather useful information. But since pragmatism, reading for leisure has almost become foreign. In the few anxious weeks leading up to summer vacation, I always find myself expressing that "I can't wait to read things I want to read."
As I child, I read simply because it was the only thing that satisfied me. Even now, I recall myself reading the backs of cereal boxes at breakfast, ketchup bottles at lunch, memorizing the text of soap bottles in the bath and when I'd run out of little Enid Blyton books to read, picking up my mom's pregnancy books and my dad's invertebrate biology books to read, not because they were interesting, but because they had words.
I never did those things because my friends thought they were cool, because an authority figure recommended them or because I saw them as value added. I read simply because I loved it.
But with higher education came the hijacking of skills which were then exchanged into a form of currency that would make sense in the market one day. I was introduced to a new value system which claimed that value was not found in how happy our passions made us but in how competitive they allowed us to be relative to other people. Our competitiveness would then translate to success which would allow us to outperform our peers and ultimately, and most importantly, make more money!
Our passions were quantified on a scale of 1 to100 and graded as A, B, C, D or F. Those who love reading, writing, math, science, music, art, sports, etc. the most received As; those who got less than that clearly didn't love anything very well. We allowed our value to be extracted from us, abused and then imposed back on us.
Apparently, we all internalized this reification extremely well because our exchanges began being colored by this new value system. As our favorite author/book lists grew longer and more diverse, literary discussions became protracted ways of saying "I clearly read better than you and am thus of more value."
What used to be an insatiable hunger for learning became a hollow, depersonalized cultural commodity. Friends who used to discuss Harry Potter on the playground with almost rabid fervor now bandied about the giants of Western literature with a cool, pretentious air artfully cultivated at their various British Universities an Ivy League schools.
Some even gleefully deride our literary masters, not as charged expressions of iconoclasticism, but because this value system has deluded the worthless shits into believing that on a scale of 1 to 100, they can prove better than Shakespeare.
Is it too much to simply appreciate e e cummings for his artistic foresight or love Virginia Woolf for her innovativeness without having to talk about whether or not these authors have cultural cachet anymore, whether or not they're obscure enough to be cool, or which of the lot of us (who do not have a single serious accomplishment) has the most worth by virtue of having read the most of said author's work (albeit without understanding)?
But where does that leave me? Every time I pick up a work, I can only make it through a few pages before avoidance behaviour kicks in and color coding my socks, watching mindless television or playing tag with my little sisters take precedence over reading. But at least I know that if one my peers asks me about the last time I folded my socks, it isn't (likely) to devolve into a meaningless struggle to assert value over each other.
The answer, of course, arises from knowing why you do it. It comes from the "guts", and nowhere else.
ReplyDeleteBut I think you are too hard on yourself. In many respects, your challenge comes from not having your mind directed to one particular challenge. Your freedom requires limits. Perhaps what you are learning is that it would be better to have something to investigate than to wander around aimlessly in the library. It is not, to paraphrase Marx, enough to understand what the rows of books do, the point is to do something with them.
And so we must return to the question of why you feel guilty about not using your time more constructively. Perhaps, here, we see the formation of class awareness - an awareness that you do not have to do anything.
When you are done with Hegel and Lukacs, we shall read "My Universities".
I really admire (and in a sense, envy) your passion for literature. It's a passion that is so scarcely seen considering the blistering speed at which everything in this world travels at.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to say that with every passion, struggle of any sort is completely normal. On personal account, I don't think there is anything that we as human beings can do about it other than to simply keep the thought alive. The statement that we are, "only human" has been overused to death, but it's nevertheless pretty consistent with everything else. My two cents. Your blog is like literature in itself (in a good sense).