jjj,
If you’ll recall, a million years ago success was determined by who had the biggest club. Today, in the modern world, wit has taken the place of brawn and usually it’s the guy with the largest vocabulary who claims the victory. What puzzles me is the fact that with club and wit alike, success doesn’t appear to be “success” in the sense that it has overcome any obstacle. The inherent problems in human existence remain and what one might call “success” is really just a type of biding time, distractions, occupying oneself. What I mean is that when someone shouts “I’ve done it!,” that usually means that they have convinced themselves that some amount of progress has been made. But if one looks closer, it has not, nor was the problem that was claimed to be fixed even really a problem to begin with. So, parading the minor problem with a solution does nothing but create an illusion of progress, success, as well as an element of jealousy to be passed back and forth between competing thinkers depending on who “got there first.” One, the pedant doesn’t want you to ask questions he cannot answer, and two, he certainly doesn’t want you to understand so easily what has taken him many a dollar and pressed suit to discover. Philosophy has become, in the modern world, a fashion institution. You simply aren’t supposed to “know” the things you know without due investment. We can no longer become “smart” by taking a walk through the woods or sitting beside the lake on a stormy afternoon. We have to jump on an imaginary band-wagon, pay the fees, learn the rudimentary essentials, and only then can we begin any original thinking.
It is indeed a psychological game, where the players believe that knowledge is power, and power is success. Meanwhile, in outer-space, the gag reel keeps turning, and usually it’s the guy sitting beside the lake that knows this, and knows this alone.
Bingo! In the company of a pedant, one needs to do two things. First, let him do the thinking, and two, never tell him that he is wasting his time contemplating issues that you solved when you were 11. Or better yet, issues that you realized cannot be solved when you were 12.
Oh, heavens no! “Academics” do nothing but confuse the problem more. Just ask the common man, not these hideous mutant beings.
I believe it was Good Will Hunting that once said- “When you get to be fifty years old you’re going to realize two things. First, “don’t do that,” and second, you wasted a hundred grand on an education you could have got for a buck-fifty and late charges from the public library.”
