Re: off-topic griping.
John Rauschenberg (johnr@uclink4.berkeley.edu)
Mon, 16 Feb 1998 15:54:50 -0800
I've been nearly invisible on this list for a while, with school and all,
but Helena's post forced me out of reclusion. This is exactly the sort of
stuff I am concerned about. Last semester, I took a great philosophy class
in which we read a lot of the great books of Western Culture (began with
the Odyssey, ended with Moby Dick); the whole point of this class, for the
teacher, was to make us care again, or at least make us want to care. He's
worried that in a post-monotheist, post-everything world, people have
become too detached and relativistic to even want to care any more. He
made me want to be involved in something.
However, he doesn't believe you can choose to be involved in something. I
didn't believe this at first, but now it makes sense. When you choose to
get involved in something, then it has no authority and thus no real
meaning, because of the very fact that you chose it and can unchoose it at
any time. The best example I can give, I guess, is that you can't really
choose to be a Christian. Sure, you could decide one day to join a church,
and go through the motions without really believing in God, but then you're
not really being a Christian. God has no real authority for you. So you
can't really choose to believe in God and Jesus and all the rest: it has to
pull you in somehow so that you can't unchoose it. No Christian that I've
known has ever said "I chose God"; it's usually "I found God" or "I let
Jesus into my life"; these last two statements assume God's existence,
which gives an idea of the way God has authority for truly religious
people: they couldn't choose God, he just WAS and they had to let him in.
So, one of the implications of his theories is that nothing in the modern
world grabs people any more. I mean, nothing grabs you and pulls you into
it, thus giving your life a specific set of equipment and goals, and thus a
meaning and a certain range of possiblities which make sense. Once I had a
discussion with him in office hours, and the only thing we could think of
that still grabs you like that, gives your life meaning and goals, was
romantic love. He remembers Martin Luther King, and I guess that might
have, but I can't conceive of it (born 4/6/78).
I think of this so much: wouldn't it be great to be grabbed by some cause
or movement and get meaning? Sometimes I even wish there was a war (but
before everyone jumps on me: I really really don't want a war, it's only
when I'm caught up in this sort of one-dimensional how can I care thinking
that I even wish for it, and even then only momentarily). Nevertheless,
war is one of the great worlds that can pull you in. All of a sudden you
have a set of equipment and goals and a range of choices; suddenly your
life has meaning and color and makes sense.
And so with this waiting comes thinking of worlds that don't exist any
more, and longing for them, not really for what they were but romanticized
versions, which Helena put so well. On Fridays I usually eat in Bowles
Hall, a very old all-men's dorm here at Berkeley. Now it's falling apart,
dingy--nobody wants to live there. But when I'm in there, there's still
enough material for me to imagine myself a college student in the fifties,
living in an all-men's dorm, wearing suits all the time, going to stately
parties on Friday nights with a girl that I had to wait for on the bottom
floor of her dorm. The world now is a graveyard of sensory experiences and
most of the time I'm a dog, sniffing around for a scent.
John