Temporary but Unrepentant Umbilical to Furthur Thought-Insanity, Part XVIII

Carlos-O(1): “ That’s an interesting observation, and maybe we can investigate it further. However, what interests me more is the conflict between your celebration of NOW, of the ecstatic, energetic, the nascent, the erotic, HAPPENING NOW, and any need you have for the reflective, the recollective, historical thought, or study of the past. If the past already contains the now in its fullest, most advanced, form (Plato was a computer programmer), we should be able to get anything we might get from the past more simply, more clearly, more directly, more immediately (and thus more intensely), from being ‘in the now’. We could, if I follow your drift, get Plato by surfing, if we wanted. Certainly I agree that’s a much more pleasant and exciting way to “get Plato” than sitting in a hard chair in front of a standardized desk placed in a narrow row of other standardized desks in a rectilinear box of the sort we call a classroom. Or, come to think of it, much much more pleasant than where we are now, in this dank underground where we carry out our discussions of light. Why do you or would you ever bother AT ALL?”

Orla-O(1): “That’s because whenever I go into a dark, dank place, or on the other hand a well-lighted, standardized, routinized, homogenized, bland, reductive, or police monitored and controlled, authoritarian-structured place, it becomes ecstatic, energetic, erotic, etc.”

Carlos-O(1): “ That’s merely narcissistic.”

Orla-O(1): “ Well, there’s a narcissistic dimension to virtually all human activity. Mine happen to align more with what’s pleasant, humorous, and enjoyable. What’s wrong with that? Why do you suppose you overcome the narcissistic with your emphasis on the unpleasant, the dour, and the compulsory?”

Carlos-O(1) : “ My work is directed towards others, my students, my readers, other participants in academic discourse. I’m helping them, assisting them, expanding their horizons. I'm placing my students on the path to a productive and rewarding future; my comments on the history of philosophy may help my colleagues advance in their own work. In as many ways as possible, what I do is geared to the interests of others…That’s not so narcissistic, really. Of course I have career and other ambitions, and don’t turn down any recognition I receive. I also get pleasure from helping others. It’s greater than the pleasure I get from surfing, truth be known. (I’ve never had the feeling you’d deny me this.) ”