But what can a decent man speak of with most pleasure?
Answer: Of himself.
(…) I bet you think I am writing this from affectation, to be witty at the expense of men of action; and what is more, that from ill-bred affectation, I am clanking a sword like my officer. But, gentlemen, whoever can pride himself on his diseases and even swagger over them?
Though, after all, every one does do that; people do pride themselves on their diseases, and I do, may be, more than anyone.
Read in Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre by Walter Kaufman
Hah, I read that and instantly thought about all of the teenage blogging going on these days. Seems the whole premise of the emo kid blogging era is that your life sucks and you must vocalize that because that is the one connection you will have with other people in the world. It’s the whole “people pride themselves on their diseases” thing, because what else is the point of complaining about your very life in a medium which everyone is supposed to see? You’re communicating. You are communicating a thought or an idea to them. You’re bitching about your life, you’re celebrating your ills. Basically, you’re doing nothing more than emulating Dostoevsky, and I do say, you’re probably not doing it as well.
The more existentialism I read, the more I see why it’s turning more and more into this “fad philosophy“, it’s the “in thing“, I suppose. I’m actually disappointed in that correlation because in my mind, it casts a (quite large) stereotype and totally demeans some of the essences of existentialism itself. (Such as always thinking for yourself and not letting others think for you.) But oh lord, I don’t want to be anywhere near this sort of philosophy when every emo kid learns that life doesn’t suck that bad and starts actually reading philosophy—specifically existentialism. I can also see existentialism being one of those college-timed phases, i.e. “omg I’m out in the world sort of, wow this philosophy is kinda how I feel about my life right now.”
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Heh, communicating these thoughts to everyone who bothers to read this. But most of the time, I’m not even writing down the thoughts that truly bother my mind. (At least, not in the past year or so.) Come to think of it, these personal blogs are so useless because you rarely ever truly comprehend what you’re actually even writing. It’s not thought out, it’s just “I did this, I like that, I hated this, my life sucks,” drab and overdone. Most of the words that are blogged each day carry absolutely no significance whatsoever the next day.
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I’ve also made a correlation between my writing personally and my sleeping habits. I’ve been trying to get back into writing somewhat content-worthy posts on my blog but have been unable to and then today (got 4 only hours of sleep—in the middle of Spring Break!) realized I was quite rambly and maybe at times incoherent, but yet a lot more fluid in my thinking. So perhaps I’ll try getting very little sleep again, just to see what kinds of philosophical or societal rubbish I come up with next.
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Hm… So I’ve only read into maybe 60 pages of that Existentialism book (which Sara got me for my birthday), heh. Gonna try to finish off at least the Notes from the Underground part tomorrow.
And yay, I’m going to be awake in 5 hours. Christ, I suck at sleeping even when I’m dead tired.
