I ask one thing, however (it's all I've ever asked from you at this point, and likely it's all I ever will):
As I have no idea whether I'm maintaining this blog entirely in vain, and while a labour of love should command this worry into donning the cloak of irrelevance, I would still greatly appreciate some response from anyone actively reading this page that would suggest to me the pulse does not just beat within a vacuum. One word, even, or a series of inexplicably arranged punctuation marks denoting your displeasure at my amateurish shattering of our fourth wall. Or even--dare I ask it--a fully formed thought. Some sort of "Boo" from the dark vast to let me know I'm not staring into Nietzsche's void without ever realizing that the void's been staring right back at me the whole time.
Oh, and Capt. O'Neal, while your responses are always welcome, of course you know I'm not referring to you here. I already know your pulse beats strongly in our minor community...
Thanks very much. Up next: a few words from the Tenure Track of Purgatory....
5 comments:
"About a century ago, Americans set out to experience the higher learning, but after a brief trial, they found they didn't like it. It was too hard and too serious: Latin and Greek took years to learn, and the noble, magnanimous heroes of ancient, medieval, and Renaissance history seemed useless and 'irrelevant' as 'role models' for the main American activity, making money. An acquaintance with the principles of logic and evidence was found an actual impediment to enthusiasm and good fellowship, and skeptical studies in the history of popular error and the domination of societies by superstition and mobs seemed undemocratic, indeed 'elitist.' A few genuinely educated people found that precise reasoning and analysis and the disinterested scrutiny of phenomena others uncritically took for granted constituted no formula for gaining 'popularity.' In short, it was soon discovered that real education was of little value in the American life of action, ambition, acquisitivenesses, and getting-on. In fact, just the opposite: the devolopment of intellect led only to an un-American life of study and contemplation."
I have often wondered much the same with my blogging. Then, about once or twice a year, someone out-of-the-blue writes to say that something I posted -- not necessarily something I wrote -- made all the difference to them in sorting out their lives.
Oddly, for the most part, that's the end of it.
In some instances, however, I discover people talking about my blogs within milieus that I don't frequent, and realize the ideas have found a home even though the authors are left in the dark posing questions like yours.
At any rate, laying down a record sometimes leads to novel synthesis or insights by others later on. I'm thinking of friends of Professor Mills who labored in obscurity only to be rediscovered and celebrated long after the fact.
You never know.
Thanks, Spartacus. It's less even that I'm worried about my own notoriety. I just want Perry to know the facts about there being an actual audience for his grievances. Even if I knew no one was reading this right now, I would keep up the posts. But it certainly is heartening to know that someone's paying attention...
I read this blog twice per week, and have since its inception. It helps maintain a sense that once this case reaches an objective judge, this bullshit and its perpetrators will be taken out with the trash.
-rb
Thanks, rb. May you continue to keep the past in your heart long enough to keep interested in the things that have helped shaped you, and to never forget...
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