Thursday, July 17, 2003
Rowan Should Keep His Big Mouth Shut At Movie Night, Redux
Last week, it was Curious George being racist. What was it this week? Well, Emmet was talking about what Britney Spears' quote about how pop music is harder to make than artistic music. He was saying how he agreed, it had a lot of production quality, but of course no artistic quality. He was sounding fairly passionate and informed. Which made the chaotic little part of my brain say "Perfect timing. Let's get him!" My frontal lobes (which govern impulse control) went absent. So out of my mouth came "What's the difference?" Which led me onto a Socratic (idealized, but let's not get into Socrates just now) questioning of him on the subject, which would have led, eventually, to a "what is art?" discussion. Fortunately, my frontal lobes got back into gear before things got too weird, which gave him the chance to ask me a question. At that point, it all fell apart, as I revealed my secret, that I was a music snob too, there was just no logical reason for it. It was entirely subjective. Which he agreed with. So I let it end there.
I bring this up not exactly as a play-by-play explanation of my life, though that may be part of it. But because it provides a good segué. I can't handle philosophy anymore. I've been hit with a double whammy. First is analytic philosophy, from which I've gathered that there is no argument. It's all definition. And to top that off comes radical translation, which basically says that people are speaking different languages from each other, and translating the words into what they recognize. Then the other whammy is postmodernism. Which says that logic is bunk, and everything is subjective anyway. Combine those two, and you basically come to the view that argument is irrelevant. Which is why those frontal lobes of mine should have been in gear. Because there's no way I could have continued down that path.
I hate philosophy. But hate has attractiveness. I am most interesting in examining the things I hate. At least they're not boring.
Last week, it was Curious George being racist. What was it this week? Well, Emmet was talking about what Britney Spears' quote about how pop music is harder to make than artistic music. He was saying how he agreed, it had a lot of production quality, but of course no artistic quality. He was sounding fairly passionate and informed. Which made the chaotic little part of my brain say "Perfect timing. Let's get him!" My frontal lobes (which govern impulse control) went absent. So out of my mouth came "What's the difference?" Which led me onto a Socratic (idealized, but let's not get into Socrates just now) questioning of him on the subject, which would have led, eventually, to a "what is art?" discussion. Fortunately, my frontal lobes got back into gear before things got too weird, which gave him the chance to ask me a question. At that point, it all fell apart, as I revealed my secret, that I was a music snob too, there was just no logical reason for it. It was entirely subjective. Which he agreed with. So I let it end there.
I bring this up not exactly as a play-by-play explanation of my life, though that may be part of it. But because it provides a good segué. I can't handle philosophy anymore. I've been hit with a double whammy. First is analytic philosophy, from which I've gathered that there is no argument. It's all definition. And to top that off comes radical translation, which basically says that people are speaking different languages from each other, and translating the words into what they recognize. Then the other whammy is postmodernism. Which says that logic is bunk, and everything is subjective anyway. Combine those two, and you basically come to the view that argument is irrelevant. Which is why those frontal lobes of mine should have been in gear. Because there's no way I could have continued down that path.
I hate philosophy. But hate has attractiveness. I am most interesting in examining the things I hate. At least they're not boring.