[a view of the sufferer as supplicant, begging entrance to a ward for effective treatment.]
My acceptance into your University was not the beginning of my family's reverence for black and orange. Cassie, my older sister, wore these colors in 1999, but she was not headed to Princeton. She went instead to St. John's College in Annapolis, and for four years, her academic world was defined by the seminar and by Great Books. Through my sister and my high school classes, I have acquired a taste for this kind of education.
That's the short version of why I am interested in the freshman program in the humanities –– or, as I explain it to those unfamiliar, the crash course in Western civilization the familiar know as HUM.
I feel like college, especially at a place like Princeton, should be humiliating (no pun intended) –– not in the sense that it breaks one's spirit, but rather in the sense that it builds one's character and makes one more self-aware and open to development. I know my academic self well enough to realize that, despite my glittery transcript, I read slowly, and I intend to ameliorate this problem during my undergraduate years. It has occurred to me that four hundred pages of classical literature, thought and history a week may help. My array of talents has never included the ability to brush off schoolwork I care about.
That being said, no, I don't care about all schoolwork. I find most theoretical mathematics to be abjectly dull, and I have no head for memorizing dates, although I love history; raw philosophy, without good writing or theological components, likewise bores me without a context for discussion. The type of study I anticipate in this sequence will not bore me. Most any literary exchange interests me merely for the opportunity to consider the points of view of my classmates –– still better if the subject matter is worthwhile.
HUM is worthwhile. I care deeply about the deeds and ideas of my cultural ancestors. Books assist in the fleshing-out of one's own thoughts and beliefs, but they are also spiritual objects: within every text lies a portion of the author's soul, left for me to mourn and celebrate, to remember and revive, all just by reading and understanding the words on the page. I make it my business to adopt the souls of authors, old gods, and historical figures –– for example, Franz Kafka, Abraham Lincoln, Odin, and Genghis Khan –– and give them a kind of cushy cultural afterlife as I cherish their memories and exalt them to others.
Literature, mythology, and history, entangled as they are, are not so much a hobby or an academic interest of mine as they are my religion. When I found out these classes were offered at Princeton, I didn't really consider them an option any more than a practicing Christian would consider Sunday church an "option." It's just what I have to do. I will come to your classroom to find my literary ancestors, I will read them to know them, and I will return the next day or week to honor their memory –– so long as it's okay with you.
Showing posts with label St. John's College. Show all posts
Showing posts with label St. John's College. Show all posts
3.3.07
the melancholy Dane - numer drei.
That evening, I read Big Red, and think about philosopher kings.
A problem all Johnnies encounter at some point, before or during their four years in Annapolis: how to read without becoming distracted or falling asleep. Where to do it? In bed, on the quad, in the library –– truly, they’re all bad options, because no matter where you are, it is either comfortable enough to doze off, or public enough for friends to find you.
I have a unique solution to the problem. My room’s windows lead out onto the roof. The concrete cannot be called comfortable, and with the curtains drawn, my roommate knows well enough not to distract me. A reading light clips comfortably onto Big Red’s spine. It usually works.
Today, I can still taste the gelato on my tongue, and I am distracted by it. My eyes scan the words, but the meaning doesn’t even begin to register. It’s no use. I close the book and look out over the quad, brick behind me, rapidly cooling October air all around me. My balcony becomes a prison, and I must sit out my sentence.
Oh, it’s melodramatic, of course. I know. We all know –– those of us who don’t are generally regarded as insufferable by the rest. Some even feign acceptance, as if they, in a place like this, are well-adjusted. As if they could be.
Here is what I dread: I am alone, and I am thinking. No escape in sight.
It’s not that I’ve been stricken by some kind of existential angst. I feel it, but I feel it for someone else –– for her. I want to believe because she wants to believe. The vision of her looking away, all her warmth and joy dampened –– it makes me want to cry. I don’t cry. I haven’t cried in a long time.
Faith. What a gift.
I don’t remember believing, not when I was two, ten, or thirteen; certainly not now. Contentedly, thoughtlessly, I have checked the “agnostic” box throughout my life. How? How have I lived before now, without desire, without despair?
“Søren?”
She can pronounce my name, and uses it to my face. It’s so strange. She’s so strange. And she knows where I am. How does she know where I am?
I lean over the edge.
“How did you find me?”
She smiles a little. “I guessed.”
“Oh.”
“Can I come up?”
“I’m trying to read.”
“Can I come up anyway?”
Ah, hell. It’s not as if I’m actually reading. She’s been up here all this time.
“Sure.”
I sit back against the wall, eyes settling on the purple-blue sky. She knows where my room is? How does she know ––
“Nice place you have up here.”
Wasn’t my room locked?
The curtains are parted, and she’s peeking through. She steps onto the roof with one bare foot, steadying herself on the window frame. Faith is so natural up here. I can’t explain it –– the way her silhouette fits against the almost-night sky, the way her eyes reflect the quad and the trees and College Creek. She belongs like the wind and humidity, just another force of nature.
“It’s a good place to read,” I tell her. “Most of the time.”
“Not right now?”
“Not so much.”
“Why?”
How am I supposed to answer that?
“Ducks,” I say at last.
“Ducks?” She crosses her arms, tilts her head so her curls fall into her eyes. “But the ducks don’t need you.”
I feel how she felt, burning, wounded, weak. “I think the ducks need me.”
“They don’t know you. They’ll swim toward anyone.”
Disgraced, childish, petulant. “They don’t need to know me. They still need me –– they need someone.”
She smiles, and I smile, hesitantly, in return. She sits next to me, close –– closer than I would have expected. Our shoulders brush against one another.
“You can get away with skimming it,” she tells me, eyes traveling from the gold-leaf words on the cover of the book up to my face. “And you don’t have to have it read for another two days.”
I see myself in her pupils and irises, the latter so deep and warmly dark that they’re hardly distinguishable from the former. My reflection is distorted, my nose too big, eyes and mouth withdrawn. My hair is messy –– which I knew –– and I look content –– which I didn’t know.
She pokes my nose. “Don’t you remember what we’re here for?”
“To read great books?” I speculate.
“Part of it. What else?”
I don’t know, although I know I should. “Remind me,” I say.
“To find the truth.”
A beat, and I smile. “Ah. That.”
“Yes. That.”
A gust of wind passes through, and I look away. The sky is darker now, and it is nearly nighttime proper, colder and blacker all the time.
“We have four years,” I say as I turn back to her.
“You say it like it’s a long time,” she answers, more quietly. “Some people never even begin in their lifetimes. Our odds for starting and finishing in just four years are pretty bad.”
“At least we’ve started.”
“At least we’ve started,” she agrees.
A problem all Johnnies encounter at some point, before or during their four years in Annapolis: how to read without becoming distracted or falling asleep. Where to do it? In bed, on the quad, in the library –– truly, they’re all bad options, because no matter where you are, it is either comfortable enough to doze off, or public enough for friends to find you.
I have a unique solution to the problem. My room’s windows lead out onto the roof. The concrete cannot be called comfortable, and with the curtains drawn, my roommate knows well enough not to distract me. A reading light clips comfortably onto Big Red’s spine. It usually works.
Today, I can still taste the gelato on my tongue, and I am distracted by it. My eyes scan the words, but the meaning doesn’t even begin to register. It’s no use. I close the book and look out over the quad, brick behind me, rapidly cooling October air all around me. My balcony becomes a prison, and I must sit out my sentence.
Oh, it’s melodramatic, of course. I know. We all know –– those of us who don’t are generally regarded as insufferable by the rest. Some even feign acceptance, as if they, in a place like this, are well-adjusted. As if they could be.
Here is what I dread: I am alone, and I am thinking. No escape in sight.
It’s not that I’ve been stricken by some kind of existential angst. I feel it, but I feel it for someone else –– for her. I want to believe because she wants to believe. The vision of her looking away, all her warmth and joy dampened –– it makes me want to cry. I don’t cry. I haven’t cried in a long time.
Faith. What a gift.
I don’t remember believing, not when I was two, ten, or thirteen; certainly not now. Contentedly, thoughtlessly, I have checked the “agnostic” box throughout my life. How? How have I lived before now, without desire, without despair?
“Søren?”
She can pronounce my name, and uses it to my face. It’s so strange. She’s so strange. And she knows where I am. How does she know where I am?
I lean over the edge.
“How did you find me?”
She smiles a little. “I guessed.”
“Oh.”
“Can I come up?”
“I’m trying to read.”
“Can I come up anyway?”
Ah, hell. It’s not as if I’m actually reading. She’s been up here all this time.
“Sure.”
I sit back against the wall, eyes settling on the purple-blue sky. She knows where my room is? How does she know ––
“Nice place you have up here.”
Wasn’t my room locked?
The curtains are parted, and she’s peeking through. She steps onto the roof with one bare foot, steadying herself on the window frame. Faith is so natural up here. I can’t explain it –– the way her silhouette fits against the almost-night sky, the way her eyes reflect the quad and the trees and College Creek. She belongs like the wind and humidity, just another force of nature.
“It’s a good place to read,” I tell her. “Most of the time.”
“Not right now?”
“Not so much.”
“Why?”
How am I supposed to answer that?
“Ducks,” I say at last.
“Ducks?” She crosses her arms, tilts her head so her curls fall into her eyes. “But the ducks don’t need you.”
I feel how she felt, burning, wounded, weak. “I think the ducks need me.”
“They don’t know you. They’ll swim toward anyone.”
Disgraced, childish, petulant. “They don’t need to know me. They still need me –– they need someone.”
She smiles, and I smile, hesitantly, in return. She sits next to me, close –– closer than I would have expected. Our shoulders brush against one another.
“You can get away with skimming it,” she tells me, eyes traveling from the gold-leaf words on the cover of the book up to my face. “And you don’t have to have it read for another two days.”
I see myself in her pupils and irises, the latter so deep and warmly dark that they’re hardly distinguishable from the former. My reflection is distorted, my nose too big, eyes and mouth withdrawn. My hair is messy –– which I knew –– and I look content –– which I didn’t know.
She pokes my nose. “Don’t you remember what we’re here for?”
“To read great books?” I speculate.
“Part of it. What else?”
I don’t know, although I know I should. “Remind me,” I say.
“To find the truth.”
A beat, and I smile. “Ah. That.”
“Yes. That.”
A gust of wind passes through, and I look away. The sky is darker now, and it is nearly nighttime proper, colder and blacker all the time.
“We have four years,” I say as I turn back to her.
“You say it like it’s a long time,” she answers, more quietly. “Some people never even begin in their lifetimes. Our odds for starting and finishing in just four years are pretty bad.”
“At least we’ve started.”
“At least we’ve started,” she agrees.
1.3.07
the melancholy Dane - numer zwei.
It’s a long walk downtown, but I like Annapolis. I like the sidewalks. Some of them are new, clean brick or concrete, but my favorites are ancient, warped, eroded by feet, rain and time. Mostly, though, it’s the trees –– intended to be ornamental some decades ago, now full-sized, roots creating massive undulations in the brick. Beautiful little weeds grow in the cracks.
Faith has become fond of the weeds as well. A lot of the Johnnies are fond of the weeds. We’re weed people.
No crowd mills at the harbor today at 3:26 PM Eastern Standard Time. (Time zones: remember them. If you don’t, you will end up waking your parents from a dead sleep. Mine have never appreciated such error.) The clouds are the waves, and the waves are the clouds. Annapolis is beautiful.
She gets mint gelato, which is blue. I don’t take issue with mint, but blue food makes me cringe. No food is blue. Even blueberries are just a deep shade of indigo. I tell her this, and she grins and waves her gelato in my face, shouting “blue! delicious, unnatural BLUE!”
I get mango, because gelato should always be fruit-flavored, and mangos are delicious, and mango gelato is the color of a mango, as well it should be. Gelato is expensive here, but it seems as if it’s expensive anywhere. Price is not an object. Gelato must be had.
We sit by the water, and I can tell by the look in her eyes that she wants to feed the ducks. An official sign a few feet away reads: “Please do not feed the waterfowl.” Of course she wants to. It’s only natural.
“The ducks are fine without you,” I remind her. “Really.”
“They always come to see me,” she says, watching them as they swim closer. Her flipflops dangle precariously from her toes, almost ready to fall into the water below. “They know me.”
“They’re ducks. They come to see everyone.”
“Hush.”
I hush. Mango gelato drips all over my hand, and I lick it off rather indelicately. Mango gelato mustn’t be wasted.
“I’ve never actually had a mango,” she tells me.
“Never?”
“Not once.”
“I’ll get you one. They’re amazing.”
“Are they?”
“Unbelievable.”
“Mm.”
Her books are on the ground, not the ledge, and therefore significantly less likely to fall into the water than her flipflops, or she herself. She turns and picks one up –– The Republic –– and opens it in her lap. We call it Big Red around here, for obvious reasons.
“What do you think of philosopher kings?” she asks.
“Fundamentally good idea,” I reply with a shrug, “but they don’t exist. Think about it. The responsibility, the loneliness, the self-deprivation. Wouldn’t it make you crazy?”
“Well, yeah. But there must be someone.”
“There’s no one. We’re all human.”
“What about God?”
I roll my eyes. “He hasn’t been down here in a while.”
“Maybe he has,” she says. She isn’t looking at me. “We might not know it yet.”
I look at her for a moment, her little hands splayed over the pages of Socratic dialogue and, finding no words, I break off the bottom of my gelato cone and toss it to the ducks.
Faith has become fond of the weeds as well. A lot of the Johnnies are fond of the weeds. We’re weed people.
No crowd mills at the harbor today at 3:26 PM Eastern Standard Time. (Time zones: remember them. If you don’t, you will end up waking your parents from a dead sleep. Mine have never appreciated such error.) The clouds are the waves, and the waves are the clouds. Annapolis is beautiful.
She gets mint gelato, which is blue. I don’t take issue with mint, but blue food makes me cringe. No food is blue. Even blueberries are just a deep shade of indigo. I tell her this, and she grins and waves her gelato in my face, shouting “blue! delicious, unnatural BLUE!”
I get mango, because gelato should always be fruit-flavored, and mangos are delicious, and mango gelato is the color of a mango, as well it should be. Gelato is expensive here, but it seems as if it’s expensive anywhere. Price is not an object. Gelato must be had.
We sit by the water, and I can tell by the look in her eyes that she wants to feed the ducks. An official sign a few feet away reads: “Please do not feed the waterfowl.” Of course she wants to. It’s only natural.
“The ducks are fine without you,” I remind her. “Really.”
“They always come to see me,” she says, watching them as they swim closer. Her flipflops dangle precariously from her toes, almost ready to fall into the water below. “They know me.”
“They’re ducks. They come to see everyone.”
“Hush.”
I hush. Mango gelato drips all over my hand, and I lick it off rather indelicately. Mango gelato mustn’t be wasted.
“I’ve never actually had a mango,” she tells me.
“Never?”
“Not once.”
“I’ll get you one. They’re amazing.”
“Are they?”
“Unbelievable.”
“Mm.”
Her books are on the ground, not the ledge, and therefore significantly less likely to fall into the water than her flipflops, or she herself. She turns and picks one up –– The Republic –– and opens it in her lap. We call it Big Red around here, for obvious reasons.
“What do you think of philosopher kings?” she asks.
“Fundamentally good idea,” I reply with a shrug, “but they don’t exist. Think about it. The responsibility, the loneliness, the self-deprivation. Wouldn’t it make you crazy?”
“Well, yeah. But there must be someone.”
“There’s no one. We’re all human.”
“What about God?”
I roll my eyes. “He hasn’t been down here in a while.”
“Maybe he has,” she says. She isn’t looking at me. “We might not know it yet.”
I look at her for a moment, her little hands splayed over the pages of Socratic dialogue and, finding no words, I break off the bottom of my gelato cone and toss it to the ducks.
the melancholy Dane - numer eins.
I hear my people have a “culture of low expectations.” We’re easily contented because we’re used to losing. Well, my dearly beloved Western nations, why o why would Denmark be used to losing? Could it be because our ancestral religion was unceremoniously trounced by Christianity, transparently changed for the purposes of the church? Or, no –– maybe it’s because the wind burns off our ambition whenever we walk out the door. It’s hard enough to live back home. It’s hard enough to stand our frozen ground. We’re not like you.
We’re not bitter, though, and we won’t take your blood money. We are Danes, and Denmark is not our prison; there’s nothing rotten there. It is one of few free places left in the world, along with this place: existentialist France, proto-Christian Judea, and ancient Greece (among others), nestled in –– of all places! –– America.
“Mr. Wodsen?”
My name is Søren, but people are in the habit of calling me Mr. Wodsen. It’s how we operate here: last names, straight-backed chairs, fifty pages of ancient wisdom a night, not counting the dreams. A place like this conjures interesting dreams.
“Yes, Mr. Julius?” I haven’t been paying attention. This is our music class. It’s always more or less the same, a pleasant break from independent thought. The dynamics are written out in front of you. Someone else’s genius becomes your voice, flowing and ebbing, cracking when the intangible link between the centuries-old ink and your throat slips and falls apart.
Our instructor is notoriously witty. The quip is coming. It’s always there, waiting to materialize.
“Just because you finally hit the right note does not mean you have the right to hold it.”
A good one, but I’ve heard better. It must be an off day. “Sorry, sir.”
My mind has been on her hair. It falls in deep brown ringlets to her shoulders and always seems a little bit out of order, which I like. She’s a little Polish, a little Hungarian, a lot American. Her eyes are wide and brown, and she stands in front of me in freshman chorus –– an alto, I think. I’m a baritone, edging on bass, and my singing voice is actually rather terrible.
I sing, we sing. Class ends, and she turns around and smiles. She pokes me. She pokes me a lot.
She’s a fan. She’s obvious about it, always sitting to my right in seminar, going off on elaborately constructed tangents about the old gods and the new faces. The rest of the class thinks they’re spontaneous, I’m sure. Oddball scholars though they may be, they are not me. I don’t think a single one of them has a drop of Germanic blood –– they’re Celts, Moors, Magyars, Romans, Tatars, Slavs. Not Scands. Certainly not Danes.
It’s not that I’m in love with her. I don’t think she’s in love with me, either. It’s just a mutual interest, a curiosity. We’re all curious here. We just happen to be curious about one another.
We walk out on the quad. Some of the upperclassmen are playing croquet, but we’re new here, and croquet is still bizarre to us. She carries her books close to her heart: Plato and Aristotle and some Neal Stephenson novel, clutched like an infant, a treasure, invaluable and irreplaceable. Books are important. It was a shock to find so many Americans who find books so important –– a good shock.
“Been downtown yet?” she asks me. She’s from around here. (I’m not.)
“No.”
“Want to go? There’s a gelato place you’d like.”
Gelato. She has me there, and I smile, and she knows it.
“Let’s go,” she says, and she starts walking faster, toward the gate. When I don’t pick up the pace and follow, she stands there, looks back at me with a kind of perverse smirk on her face. I imagine my eyes look blank, a little confused as she grabs my wrist and drags me off campus.
Whatever. It’s gelato, and she’s Faith, and all is right with the world.
We’re not bitter, though, and we won’t take your blood money. We are Danes, and Denmark is not our prison; there’s nothing rotten there. It is one of few free places left in the world, along with this place: existentialist France, proto-Christian Judea, and ancient Greece (among others), nestled in –– of all places! –– America.
“Mr. Wodsen?”
My name is Søren, but people are in the habit of calling me Mr. Wodsen. It’s how we operate here: last names, straight-backed chairs, fifty pages of ancient wisdom a night, not counting the dreams. A place like this conjures interesting dreams.
“Yes, Mr. Julius?” I haven’t been paying attention. This is our music class. It’s always more or less the same, a pleasant break from independent thought. The dynamics are written out in front of you. Someone else’s genius becomes your voice, flowing and ebbing, cracking when the intangible link between the centuries-old ink and your throat slips and falls apart.
Our instructor is notoriously witty. The quip is coming. It’s always there, waiting to materialize.
“Just because you finally hit the right note does not mean you have the right to hold it.”
A good one, but I’ve heard better. It must be an off day. “Sorry, sir.”
My mind has been on her hair. It falls in deep brown ringlets to her shoulders and always seems a little bit out of order, which I like. She’s a little Polish, a little Hungarian, a lot American. Her eyes are wide and brown, and she stands in front of me in freshman chorus –– an alto, I think. I’m a baritone, edging on bass, and my singing voice is actually rather terrible.
I sing, we sing. Class ends, and she turns around and smiles. She pokes me. She pokes me a lot.
She’s a fan. She’s obvious about it, always sitting to my right in seminar, going off on elaborately constructed tangents about the old gods and the new faces. The rest of the class thinks they’re spontaneous, I’m sure. Oddball scholars though they may be, they are not me. I don’t think a single one of them has a drop of Germanic blood –– they’re Celts, Moors, Magyars, Romans, Tatars, Slavs. Not Scands. Certainly not Danes.
It’s not that I’m in love with her. I don’t think she’s in love with me, either. It’s just a mutual interest, a curiosity. We’re all curious here. We just happen to be curious about one another.
We walk out on the quad. Some of the upperclassmen are playing croquet, but we’re new here, and croquet is still bizarre to us. She carries her books close to her heart: Plato and Aristotle and some Neal Stephenson novel, clutched like an infant, a treasure, invaluable and irreplaceable. Books are important. It was a shock to find so many Americans who find books so important –– a good shock.
“Been downtown yet?” she asks me. She’s from around here. (I’m not.)
“No.”
“Want to go? There’s a gelato place you’d like.”
Gelato. She has me there, and I smile, and she knows it.
“Let’s go,” she says, and she starts walking faster, toward the gate. When I don’t pick up the pace and follow, she stands there, looks back at me with a kind of perverse smirk on her face. I imagine my eyes look blank, a little confused as she grabs my wrist and drags me off campus.
Whatever. It’s gelato, and she’s Faith, and all is right with the world.
the disease is duly named.
[timed writing for the national council of teachers of english achievement in writing award competition 2006. marks the initial diagnosis of the afflicted.]
Do I strike you as the type of person who writes long, dry editorials on overplayed subjects? Am I always full of bright new ideas? Do I take irrational, offensive points of view just to provoke those around me? Am I a rabid liberal? A hardheaded conservative? The clothes I wear, the classes I take, the people I associate with – have any of these things molded your perception of me?
When was the last time you doubted your own convictions? Where did those convictions come from, in any case?
What in the world can change your mind now?
I, for my own part, don’t know if my cardinal virtue has a real name, a name you could find in the dictionary. It is self-doubt; it is intellectual curiosity; it is open-mindedness; it is the unknown little someone that sits in the back of the human mind, jumping up and down and screaming at the top of his lungs:
“Why!? Why!?”
For the sake of communication, let’s call it gadfly syndrome.
If, up until now, the words I have written have been an annoyance to you – a sort of incessant buzzing in your ear, if you will – then you are not alone.
The original patron of my cardinal virtue was named Socrates, sometimes referred to as the Gadfly for his tendency to flit about the heads of respectable Greeks (who were minding their own business, thank you very much), voicing the concerns of the strange little fellow making a ruckus in the hollow of his skull. Socrates was an annoyance. He was, in fact, infuriatingly obnoxious; he asked too many questions. The government of Athens (Socrates’s old stomping grounds) eventually got so fed up with him and his antics that they executed him by means of hemlock wine.
I hope you will all be kind, and choose not to poison me. Socrates was a sight more obnoxious than I am, in any case, and quite a lot more persistent.
In a few remote locations, folks are still hearing the echoes of the philosopher’s buzz, and these places currently face an epidemic of gadfly syndrome. At colleges in Annapolis, Chicago, Southern Vermont, Santa Fe, and who knows where else, sufferers isolate themselves voluntarily from society at large; they live on complexes of green grass, relax in libraries furnished with dangerously comfortable couches, and are taught in seminar rooms lined with straight-backed, unforgiving wooden chairs.
Here, in the heart of all things unsettling to sensible people, the afflicted talk.
To some, who hear only buzzing, the sight and sound of it is truly appalling. All these people do is discuss, ramble and ponder; it seems like an infernal waste of time. The mission statement of one school is simply “to seek the truth.” What kind of mission is that? The truth won’t line your pockets; it won’t keep you warm at night; there’s nothing sensible about looking for the truth.
To which the afflicted answer: Well, what do you want to line your pockets for, anyway? Why do you want to be sensible? There’s nothing interesting, nothing noble about being sensible.
At which point the non-sufferer may or may not be overcome with the sound of a swarm of locusts descending upon the field of their thoughts, opinions and prejudices, and subsequently, that individual may or may not heave a sigh, roll their eyes, throw up their arms and trounce away to the real world.
I am stricken; it is too late for me. I am a sufferer of the gadfly syndrome, and I want to know why, why, why.
Not for a moment do I suggest that everyone be shipped off to academic quarantine; I don’t expect the world’s whole population to become so completely infected with the disease of intellectual curiosity as those select, strange people. If that were to happen, it seems to me that the world would cease to function as we know it altogether, and of course no sensible person wants that.
However. . .
I recall a day upon which a classmate of mine expressed, with utmost conviction, that there were not enough differences of opinion in the classroom to justify a discussion of “political issues” – since, after all, every single person in our town worships at the altar of the Democratic Party.
I would challenge that student to question that conviction, and to question the presupposition that the 25 young men and women in the room with him that day hold identical opinions, each and every one, on each and every political issue. I would clear out the desks in the classroom – just for a day or two, you understand – and replace them with a long, wooden table and straight-backed, unforgiving wooden chairs. It would be an awkward fit; usually, about twelve students sit at a table like that. Perhaps adjustments could be made – for a day or two.
And we would talk.
We would go where the conversation led us; we would wonder aloud about the things we wondered at silently every day. I think – granted, this is I, a sufferer of gadfly syndrome, thinking this – that one or two of us would be surprised at four or five others of us. Maybe we would even want to know more; maybe we would find ourselves seeking the truth; maybe our search would go on, even when the plastic desks and metal chairs returned to our classroom.
I would take a day and shatter some assumptions, ask some questions, demand some answers, and hey, maybe I would even get some.
I do not know if there is a name for such a day that one could look up in the dictionary. For ease of communication, we could call it Gadfly Day.
Do I strike you as the type of person who writes long, dry editorials on overplayed subjects? Am I always full of bright new ideas? Do I take irrational, offensive points of view just to provoke those around me? Am I a rabid liberal? A hardheaded conservative? The clothes I wear, the classes I take, the people I associate with – have any of these things molded your perception of me?
When was the last time you doubted your own convictions? Where did those convictions come from, in any case?
What in the world can change your mind now?
I, for my own part, don’t know if my cardinal virtue has a real name, a name you could find in the dictionary. It is self-doubt; it is intellectual curiosity; it is open-mindedness; it is the unknown little someone that sits in the back of the human mind, jumping up and down and screaming at the top of his lungs:
“Why!? Why!?”
For the sake of communication, let’s call it gadfly syndrome.
If, up until now, the words I have written have been an annoyance to you – a sort of incessant buzzing in your ear, if you will – then you are not alone.
The original patron of my cardinal virtue was named Socrates, sometimes referred to as the Gadfly for his tendency to flit about the heads of respectable Greeks (who were minding their own business, thank you very much), voicing the concerns of the strange little fellow making a ruckus in the hollow of his skull. Socrates was an annoyance. He was, in fact, infuriatingly obnoxious; he asked too many questions. The government of Athens (Socrates’s old stomping grounds) eventually got so fed up with him and his antics that they executed him by means of hemlock wine.
I hope you will all be kind, and choose not to poison me. Socrates was a sight more obnoxious than I am, in any case, and quite a lot more persistent.
In a few remote locations, folks are still hearing the echoes of the philosopher’s buzz, and these places currently face an epidemic of gadfly syndrome. At colleges in Annapolis, Chicago, Southern Vermont, Santa Fe, and who knows where else, sufferers isolate themselves voluntarily from society at large; they live on complexes of green grass, relax in libraries furnished with dangerously comfortable couches, and are taught in seminar rooms lined with straight-backed, unforgiving wooden chairs.
Here, in the heart of all things unsettling to sensible people, the afflicted talk.
To some, who hear only buzzing, the sight and sound of it is truly appalling. All these people do is discuss, ramble and ponder; it seems like an infernal waste of time. The mission statement of one school is simply “to seek the truth.” What kind of mission is that? The truth won’t line your pockets; it won’t keep you warm at night; there’s nothing sensible about looking for the truth.
To which the afflicted answer: Well, what do you want to line your pockets for, anyway? Why do you want to be sensible? There’s nothing interesting, nothing noble about being sensible.
At which point the non-sufferer may or may not be overcome with the sound of a swarm of locusts descending upon the field of their thoughts, opinions and prejudices, and subsequently, that individual may or may not heave a sigh, roll their eyes, throw up their arms and trounce away to the real world.
I am stricken; it is too late for me. I am a sufferer of the gadfly syndrome, and I want to know why, why, why.
Not for a moment do I suggest that everyone be shipped off to academic quarantine; I don’t expect the world’s whole population to become so completely infected with the disease of intellectual curiosity as those select, strange people. If that were to happen, it seems to me that the world would cease to function as we know it altogether, and of course no sensible person wants that.
However. . .
I recall a day upon which a classmate of mine expressed, with utmost conviction, that there were not enough differences of opinion in the classroom to justify a discussion of “political issues” – since, after all, every single person in our town worships at the altar of the Democratic Party.
I would challenge that student to question that conviction, and to question the presupposition that the 25 young men and women in the room with him that day hold identical opinions, each and every one, on each and every political issue. I would clear out the desks in the classroom – just for a day or two, you understand – and replace them with a long, wooden table and straight-backed, unforgiving wooden chairs. It would be an awkward fit; usually, about twelve students sit at a table like that. Perhaps adjustments could be made – for a day or two.
And we would talk.
We would go where the conversation led us; we would wonder aloud about the things we wondered at silently every day. I think – granted, this is I, a sufferer of gadfly syndrome, thinking this – that one or two of us would be surprised at four or five others of us. Maybe we would even want to know more; maybe we would find ourselves seeking the truth; maybe our search would go on, even when the plastic desks and metal chairs returned to our classroom.
I would take a day and shatter some assumptions, ask some questions, demand some answers, and hey, maybe I would even get some.
I do not know if there is a name for such a day that one could look up in the dictionary. For ease of communication, we could call it Gadfly Day.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)