they (the second-handers) have no concern for facts, ideas, work. they're concerned only with people. they don't ask: 'is this true?' they ask: 'is this what others think is true?' not to judge, but to repeat. not to do, but to give the impression of doing. not creation, but show. not ability, but friendship. not merit, but pull. what would happen to the world without those who do, think, work, produce? those are the egotists. you don't think through another's brain and you don't work through another's hands. when you suspend your faculty of independent judgment, you suspend consciousness. to stop consciousness is to stop life. second' handers have no sense of reality. their reality is not within them, but somehwere in that space which divides one human body from another. not an entity, but a relation--anchored to nothing...Opinion without a rational process. motion without brakes or motor. power without responsibility. the second-hander acts, but the source of his actions is scattered in every other living person. it's everywhere and nowhere and you can't reason with him. he's not open to reason. you can't speak to him--he can't hear. you're tried by an empty bench. a blind mass running amuck, to crush you without sense or purpose.
i guess i am most scared that i have somehow suspended my faculty of independent judgement. it makes me want to avoid all reviews of film, book, or art, and build my independent voice. so much so that the economist scares me, the ny times scares me, and online debate scares me. what do i think? i don't know. am i regurgitating mindless babble collected in the collective graveyards of dissent and opinion, consent and contestings? am i even sincere in what i think, or do i vomit arguments and debates for the sake of opposition and protest?
whatever it is, i am still disappointed that i secretly dream of living a life like the three sisters on charmed...
36 comments:
hello brother
stevie: great post. i've wondered about this lately as well. where does one's opinion come from? there is something important about being well read and thinking through the ideas and events of our time. however, it is also easy to find the right source and just repeat it. (i personally believe that this is what many of the idealogues on the left who hate president bush are doing...but so are the idealogues on the right who love him).
where's the love?
stephen: true. it's hard to listen to other people's points of view without being tainted. maybe you should try to live in a vacuum...or a bubble.
i guess i'm not that scared of those sources...whether it's the times, the economist, the church, or all of stephen's opinionated blogging friends...i enjoy trying on other people's thoughts. i can take a piece away that fits or reject them entirely. i don't think that listening and then evaluating them with my own independent judgement makes me a second-hander.
ayn speaks to me. but she's also an elitist.
dd.
you say that like you don't like elitists or the elitest.
stevey:
regardless of what others say, i really like your photographies.
paul: hello brother.
right or left, up or down, any person who seriously identifies his or her self with 'the right' or 'the left' is only going to vomit out the opinions of that which owns him or her. why do you think sean hannity does so well? he supplies mindless vomiting.
but do i think that independently or am i consumed by outside sway? i don't know how much longer i can keep doing this....
dd: is that sarcasm you are using? don't mess with me. and how do you know that you are, in fact, evaluating them with your own independent judgment.
what is wrong with elitists?
pt: you are a good cousin.
skinny: i'm sorry i was mean to you before. i like you and i think you should come visit. do it now.
dd: you are the american exception. i think stephen refers to the majority that read and search sources for ammunition in an argument--not for critique and understanding of an issue.
not just as use for ammunition but for reinforcement of previously held stereotypes--not bothering to evaluate the original stereotype or the merit of the article backing the stereotype.
i didn't refresh and see you there stevie. it is a strange feeling to be floundering amongst the arguments of others without a clear opinion for or against.
is it valid and safe to withold judgement until more light is shed on the subject...
does living in ambiguity without making a decision make you less faithful? it certainly makes controversial issues easier to swallow.
paul.
agreed.
petey: love the elitist, hate the elitism...an attitude of superiority (or contempt for weaker minds) offends my egalitarian sensibilities.
stephen: subjectivity is truth, truth is subjectivity.
paul: "..anyone who, without having faith, ventures out into critical deliberations cannot possibly want to have inspiration result from them. to whom, then, is it all really of interest?... faith does not result from straightforward scholarly deliberation, nor does it come directly; on the contrary, in this objectivity one loses that infinite, personal, impassioned interestedness, which is the condition of faith, the ubique et nusquam [everywhere and nowhere] in which faith can come into existence."
maybe living in ambiguity makes you more, not less, faithful.
i could not have stated it more clearly...
kierkegaard: you're really smart.
i too like the philosophies of men mingled with scripture...
dd: i have to agree that some of the arguments i've heard lately--and even the process of discussion of issues that i previously held without question--have felt detached. it is difficult to infuse faithful wording in a logical discussion.
stevie: school's out! way to go brother. you've acheived a very difficult thing.
paul: hi.
i say faith comes first, and then logic justifies your faith. or is it the other way around? i'm still scared that my opinions are second-hand, and nothing posted has swayed that.
stephen,
apology unnecessary, but accepted.
if your opinions are second-hand, whose opinions are original then?
one way to approach your second hand opinions is to allow for degrees of opinion. so that the issues you most recently encountered and your first utterances on the subject would be your least strongly held opinions. so although they are second hand, the fact that you repeated them places them higher on the list than a random opinion you only heard and didn't repeat.
i like it skinny.
happy 4th.
new photos: flickr, utahlife.
skinny: that's just the problem. i don't know. maybe no one has an original opinion. even my writing this is probably second-hand. even my wanting to introspect and discover what is original is probably motivated by something other than myself.
paul: maybe that works. repeat only the opinions you hear that make sense. but still, you aren't coming up with those yourself. but maybe there is nothing wrong with picking over others' arguments...
picking over others ideas was certainly more in vogue in classical writing. Dante copied whole passages from other works. It was a better life then. You just took the works of art that were the best and melded them into something new.
Didn't we all hate writing reports where we read it out of the dictionary and then forced ourselves to stare away from the source and write something that vaguely sounded different?
so i know no one's really commenting on any of these comments right now, but i thought that my buddy dostoyevsky posed it as well as any i've heard...
"why, today we don't even know where real life is, what it is, or what it's called! left alone without literature, we immediately become entangled and lost - we don't know what to join, what to keep up with, what to love, what to hate, what to respect, what to despise! we even find it painful to be men - real men of flesh and blood, with our own private bodies; we're ashamed of it, and we long to turn ourselves into something hypothetical called the average man."
i realize that some points are on, while some are in contradiction. but when it comes to dostoyevski i usually find no contraindications.
dostoyevsky's the man
Yes, Paul, I know, I know.
Yes, Paul, I know, I know.
Peter and Paul: do you think marriage helps one to find one's self? Would being married take one out of Dostoyevsky's search for one's self? Did Dost.... really know who he was and was he grounded in a meaningful philosophy?
uncle tracy.
*notes from the underground protagonist = no
*raskolnikov of crime and punishment = yes. after the brutal axe-murder, he had sonia the ever grounded christ-symboled prostitute.
so i would assume to have the creative literary wizardship to generate such complex and conflicted characters, dostoyevski must have been grounded. now whether that stemmed from his god or his wife is beyond my scope.
jonny...? any russian expertise on literature?
space may be the final frontier, but it's made in a hollywood basement.
do frank durden AND the narrator die?
ryan: you are sweet
stephen: i've been thinking...maybe you're right. perhaps independent judgement is an oxymoron. maybe a more important distinction is the difference between judgement that is influenced by others or judgement that is controlled by others (or the scariest of all---abdicated judgement). i hope i'm only influenced, not controlled. but how do i really know?
p.s. we need a new post. do it now.
paul: isn't his name tyler? and that's a good question.
r y @ n: hi.
you're right. it's tyler. my memory misserved me. one died, one lived.
have fun in peru brother...
don't get into trouble....
did you know that for a 6 ft tv av cable it is common to spend $150? and i thought biking was expensive.
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