See this guy. He writes plays that are supposed to upset "p.c. liberals," though he is a liberal himself; he is a self-described racist because he recognizes the total lack of diversity in his upper-class background.
So what?
What does this self-awareness gain him besides some kind of hip edginess? Not only is he an obnoxious bastard, he knows it, too. Great.
It's very hip to be "self-aware," to be patently aware of the ridiculousness of one's own life. And in some ways this kind of self-awareness can save you possible humiliation and can lead to enlightenment about the world you live in and your relation to it.
In some other ways being self-aware strips you of the last of the human dignity that you might have scraped from the dregs. The only thing sadder than a pointless person who does irrelevant things is someone who knows he is pointless and irrelevant. See dude above; although he may not think himself pointless, he clearly believes the battle he is fighting (against presumption, self-congratulation, et cetera) is already lost, at least on his own front. So why bother fighting?
I think sometimes we accidentally end up destroying our own reality when we try to remove all of its illusions; just because it's constructed doesn't mean it's not real. See the Prudential Center vs. a mountain. Just because one is man-made and will doubtless be destroyed before the other does not, for the time it exists, make it less solid, less defining of space.
I will now quote C.S. Lewis because he is brilliant, and because if C.S. Lewis knew what was up then some other people must know too. (We aren't totally doomed as a species.)
"The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to ’see through’ first principles.
If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To ’see through’ all things is the same as not to see.”
Yay Clive Staples.
I took another walk today
nstead of doing work, because I am lazy. I walked up Boylston, around the Boston Common, and back down Beacon. Then I met Mary Beth and walked to Harvard to get frozen yogurt. Life is good, even if I'm not productive.
Can't get the photos to format correctly, so bear with me. * Le sigh. *
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