|
2003-12-01 - 6:09 p.m. Bright-Eyed Questioning The important questions are less wide-reaching than some would have you believe. A wide-reaching answer, where people are concerned and particularly in the field of human motivation, is of necessity an inaccurate one in many, most, or all cases. My optimism says this, anyway. It's not about what people are looking for or want out of life. It has to be about what I'm looking for, or no answers can be found -- hell, it's not even clear to me at this point if an answer can be found where one sufficiently complex person is involved. How then are we supposed to find answers that involve this entire meleange? A properly phrased question, I hope, contains within it the seed of it's own answer. Finding the right questions is such a bitch, though. Find a personal statement, first. Look around you at the things you have accumulated, or think of the people that you value, or the books that you treasure or the music that entrances you -- whatever comes to mind that you cling to as particularly yours. Then ask the first question: "Why?" Labeling it the First Question implies that there are others, perhaps even a series of exploratory probings that can unravel the tightest of mental knots and shed light on the most confusing of situations, but the questions that are necessary are determined by the situation. You can't untie the Gordian Knot while making the same motions you'd use to tie your shoelaces. You can't untie your shoelaces while trying to braid them like a lanyard. You can't do much exploration of your own mind without first determining your own topography. "Why?" is pretty universal, though. It gives nearly everyone problems their first few times. To some, it's a nonsensical question -- they just do things or just have things or just like things. It's entirely possible that I'm out of line in suggesting that there are any deeper implications or motivations that our preferences and actions stem from. I'm not going to deny that possibility, though I don't think it's a very realistic one for the majority of the people that I've interacted with. I've thought about the Why's so long that I don't even remember the intervening steps to my conclusions. It's not really particularly healthy to accept something like that, since it leaves the door wide open to simply accepting any number of unsupported conclusions, which in turn forcefully includes the possibility and near-inevitability of those assumptions coming crashing down. It's quite possible to avoid having reality touch your preconceptions at all, but you have to cut out a lot of it to be safe. Friends, family, workplace, and philosophy. The isolationist, you see, has no trouble remaining a devout solipcist. Or Kantian. Or Jungian. Or Christian. Or Jew. Or Muslim. Or Scientologist. In a void there can be no disagreement, and the less of life that you bring into your personal sphere, the less likely that there will be anything to cause mental turmoil. So why don't we just .. stop? It's quite plainly easier to do nothing, by this train of thought I've just set down -- almost a rational inevitability, if the underlying priorities are as I've assumed them to be. Can you find them? That avoidance of discomfort is a high priority. That instability is uncomfortable. That stability must be preserved to ensure continued existence. That continued existence is of supreme importance, and that little but continuation is of value. Given these underlying assumptions and valuations, it's nearly inevitable that an individual attempts to minimize their contact with the chaotic, painful thing outside the apartment that we call life. It's those underlying assumptions and valuations I'm trying to find reasons to change, and it's so very difficult to find things of value to serve as motivation. For some time, I was near-obsessed with the lack of purity of intent or purpose that I found all about. I couldn't really offer any alternatives, since my own motives are cloudy and inconsistant at best, but everywhere else I looked it struck me as well. Perhaps we all don't want to be alone, but there are some things that we ought not have to see except when we look within. If I saw nothing of myself in other people, they would be much more attractive and interesting to me. It's not entirely that I'm introspective -- I genuinely like a lot of things about my intellectual self. There are simply very few people that I like anywhere near as well as I like myself, and having already discovered what heights of preoccupation you can reach with the right person .. geh. And we loop around to my list of preexisting assumptions and values as my answer swells back around to "..why bother?" Even the way in which I've found the truly interesting and valuable people that I've known reenforces the feeling that it's pointless to pay attention to the people who are physically around me. Too much good coming of online relationships can have that effect -- there's so much addictive room for fantasy, particularly early on, before you've met, but even later on it continues. I don't know what I'll do in the years to come. I don't know if there will ever be someone as powerfully interesting in my waking life again as the ones I dream about. Fundamentally, I don't know whether this is a stop or a pause. The difference between a stop and a pause is entirely contextual, and a pause cannot be defined until it's already past, you see? You can't know it's not a permanent cessation until the waiting is already over. You can never be sure and feel okay about giving up. Never. Not if you're rational about it. Or I should say -- I can't. Everyone makes their own choices, and this is just how I see the world. Only a couple of percent of Americans remain unmarried throughout their lives, and intelligent ones are no exception to the statistic. Chances are, I'll find someone and be alright with it. It's just the waiting, wondering, and generally existing that gets to me. That and songs like Magdalena by A Perfect Circle. Feh.
DLand |