I find it to be somehow pathetic to fool yourself that your thoughts are so valuable that they deserve to be written down and shared with the rest of the world. Actually, the more enthusiastic people are with writing and the more easier it becomes to be able to write and share, the harder you will find something valuable in this ever-growing sea of written words. Don't get me wrong, I think it's great that things like blogs where invented and that people are eager to use such tools, but in the same time, I think this writing thing, for the most of us, is perceived as something more valuable than it really is.
I particularly target books, papers, articles or posts that talk about the author's ideas concerning the greater things in life. And, most often, this blog falls in this category; in a way, this is a post criticizing my own blog.Socrates once said: “By all means marry. If you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher and that is a good thing for any man.” Much more recently, the Unabomber wrote in his manifesto that “we use the term "surrogate activity" to designate an activity that is directed toward an artificial goal that people set up for themselves merely in order to have some goal to work toward, or let us say, merely for the sake of the "fulfillment" that they get from pursuing the goal.” Well, I doubt that “becoming a philosopher” (a pretty bad and unoriginal one, most of the times) is “a good thing for every man”, but I think that these types of activities are a perfect example of what Ted Kaczynski described as a "surrogate activity".
When things aren't all shiny and bright, people start to build up complex models, to complicate things and to generally just think too much. Eventually, they are starting to believe that they have discovered a part of this word's mechanisms, that they begin to understand how things work, and they feel the need to brag about it by sharing these discoveries with the rest of the people. Their initiative is a conceptual failure, because, if they where indeed to have discovered such things, they would have been most probably enjoying living their lives, instead of writing down all these thoughts. What Socrates said is basically that being a philosopher is nothing more than a manifestation of frustration. But this is something that can be easily extended to all sort of other activities, starting with art, and covering probably most of what we are doing when we are not hunting or gathering food. Our culture tries to dismiss such a thought, and we are educated since the beginning of our lives to respect and to aim towards high achievements. In fact, we are trained in such an effective manner, that many times we are stroke by guilt if we are not always trying to achieve more and better things, to earn more money, to climb the professional and social ladder, to “use our potential”, as they put it.
From my point of view, this post should be a paradox. But I am still able to not think too much and be preoccupied with such things as paradoxes all the time, so frankly, I don't care. I'm just going to post it, because I feel like doing so. There it is, I still stand a chance :)
Happy New Year!
