Friday
I feel as though I should be undergoing a psychedelic experience. Thank latent hypochondria and its newest friend, the snowy, moldlike growth I discovered in my coffee filter this morning.
I really don't think that leaving the filter with its used grounds undisturbed for nearly two weeks has a whole lot to do with it. I keep thinking about the witch-hunts and the moldy-bread theory of mass hysteria.
I originally started this blog in response to the sense espoused by Susan Jacoby's The Age of American Unreason that American society is being quickly denuded of any intellectual aspiration. The causes pointed to in this case (based on the introduction and single chapter I've read so far (religious fundamentalism, mass media, corporate-sponsored bad science)) made rather good sense to me, given my scrutiny of the daily newspaper (90% naturally-inclined, 10% occupational).
Reading the single chapter and its prologue inflated me with a sense of horror and birthed within me a powerful need to do something. Perhaps seizing a nearby transient and angrily educating him about the Pythagorean Theorem, or breaking into a local high school and editing the science textbooks with my mini-Bic lighter.
Fortunately, I'm not a very creative individual--I do what I'm told to do--so nothing much happened. That gave me enough time to figure that because I was reading this book, I was therefore to consider myself a member of the book's ideal audience--a pejorative "elitist" intellectual--for being curious enough to read it.
Hm. Knowing my nature, that provided the first chink in the Armor of Indignant Geek Righteousness. I'm not an elitist or an intellectual--I just like to read and look at stuff. The book sounded good, so I looked at it, and decided I'd like to own it sometime soon. But after taking that pause, I remembered that someone had sent me a link to Dictionary Evangelist, so I went over there and read it.
What followed was a five-hour clicking adventure. Blog after blog of superlative writing about writing (meta-writing? metalexic writing? ("metalexic" could actually be a neologism! (which was actually discussed on Dictionary Evangelist))) with multidisciplinary dribs and drabs, which makes me secretly think that maybe all those different disciplines are really facets of the same gem. Semiotics, mythological archetypes, etymology, linguistics, lexicography, history in general...Lordy.
I finished the night at Hanzi Smatter, chuckling richly to myself at the complacency. Not on a condescending level, I don't think; it was the human comedy. I was left with the sense that the intellectual culture is alive and well, perhaps even thriving. Perhaps the forces threatening that culture are not quite so doom-laden.
And then I realized that I've read only one chapter of the book so far, to say nothing of the possibility that I evaluated the book's audience and intent incorrectly. Call it mental hypochondria. Of course, now I'd like to catch the next chapter; there's something to be said for mass media.
I really don't think that leaving the filter with its used grounds undisturbed for nearly two weeks has a whole lot to do with it. I keep thinking about the witch-hunts and the moldy-bread theory of mass hysteria.
I originally started this blog in response to the sense espoused by Susan Jacoby's The Age of American Unreason that American society is being quickly denuded of any intellectual aspiration. The causes pointed to in this case (based on the introduction and single chapter I've read so far (religious fundamentalism, mass media, corporate-sponsored bad science)) made rather good sense to me, given my scrutiny of the daily newspaper (90% naturally-inclined, 10% occupational).
Reading the single chapter and its prologue inflated me with a sense of horror and birthed within me a powerful need to do something. Perhaps seizing a nearby transient and angrily educating him about the Pythagorean Theorem, or breaking into a local high school and editing the science textbooks with my mini-Bic lighter.
Fortunately, I'm not a very creative individual--I do what I'm told to do--so nothing much happened. That gave me enough time to figure that because I was reading this book, I was therefore to consider myself a member of the book's ideal audience--a pejorative "elitist" intellectual--for being curious enough to read it.
Hm. Knowing my nature, that provided the first chink in the Armor of Indignant Geek Righteousness. I'm not an elitist or an intellectual--I just like to read and look at stuff. The book sounded good, so I looked at it, and decided I'd like to own it sometime soon. But after taking that pause, I remembered that someone had sent me a link to Dictionary Evangelist, so I went over there and read it.
What followed was a five-hour clicking adventure. Blog after blog of superlative writing about writing (meta-writing? metalexic writing? ("metalexic" could actually be a neologism! (which was actually discussed on Dictionary Evangelist))) with multidisciplinary dribs and drabs, which makes me secretly think that maybe all those different disciplines are really facets of the same gem. Semiotics, mythological archetypes, etymology, linguistics, lexicography, history in general...Lordy.
I finished the night at Hanzi Smatter, chuckling richly to myself at the complacency. Not on a condescending level, I don't think; it was the human comedy. I was left with the sense that the intellectual culture is alive and well, perhaps even thriving. Perhaps the forces threatening that culture are not quite so doom-laden.
And then I realized that I've read only one chapter of the book so far, to say nothing of the possibility that I evaluated the book's audience and intent incorrectly. Call it mental hypochondria. Of course, now I'd like to catch the next chapter; there's something to be said for mass media.
posted by Hugh VanDerGoetz at
6:56 PM
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