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This
is an offering, part 1
by marriah,
5th August 2001.
This is my intellectual biography, the story of how a
crisis in my life compelled me to become a
philosopher
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This is an offering. I
don't know if this will accomplish much in the way of literary
invention (a "future history"), but it serves multiple purposes
nonetheless. I intend for this to be an autobiography, but not in
the sense that autobiographies are usually written. Firstly, it is a
story that has not yet been told. It is the record of my
psychological, intellectual, and spiritual journey for the past 25
years. There is not reason to write such a thing after a quarter of
a century of life. So much has happened, and so much is yet to
happen. But, rather than wait for things to happen, I am engaging in
a little bit of "self-fulfilling prophecy" by writing of things that
have not happened as if they have already happened.
I have
become aware that literary greatness happens in two ways (three,
actually, but the third - a living legend - is so rare that I am
going to aim instead for two more probable routes to greatness). The
two routes are as follows. Self-promotion: so that the unconscious
of the reading public is pressed so repeatedly by an active
consciousness that the active consciousness is taken as a given - a
natural part of events - that must be recalled if those events are
to be recalled. This has been accomplished by Walt Whitman.
Undiscovered talent: the active consciousness lies beneath the radar
of the public mind until the active consciousness dies, leaving a
mother-lode of materials so rich and diverse that the public mind,
upon discovering this talent, is enthralled by it in a sudden
rapture. This was the accomplishment of Emily Dickinson.
I
am hereby choosing the first route, for I wish to be remembered with
the age that I live in.
But, this piece is multi-purpose. It
can't be called a diary for it does not record daily events. Rather,
it tries to accomplish for the postmodern era what Frederick Douglas
and Rousseau accomplished for the modern era. As Shakespeare said,
all the world's a stage, and the people merely actors. Hence, my
life and mind become a great, and dramatic stage, of hopes and
desires, followed by tragedy and despair, only to recapitulate with
a triumph of the hopes and desires, in the true journey of The Hero.
The literary term for this, from a third-person perspective, is
bildungsromah: a coming-of-age story. But, instead of chronicling
dates, events and actions, it tells of a deeper, more profound
journey that is unique to the teller, and cannot be repeated by
another life.
This story is a perfect medium for the
postmodern age because it also accomplishes that which was lost with
the demise of the modern era: social connectivity. The postmodern
era is known chiefly for its irony; namely, the self-looking back on
itself, and laughing. But two things must have occurred for the
postmodern era to be before us: the universe no longer includes a
multitude of people striving for a common goal to better themselves
(the story of the modern era). Rather, it is the condition of a
single individual who recognizes the futility of combining efforts
with other people for the purpose of betterment because the
individual knows he cannot be helped, and he knows all efforts to
help himself are pointless.
So, he concentrates instead of
living each moment to its fullest, laughing at his ridiculous
situation as he acknowledges that the world has stopped moving in
any direction, and has basically imploded. The modern era was the
age of transcendence - rising above yourself to improve yourself.
The postmodern era is the age of untranscendence - recognizing that
we not only cannot rise above ourselves, but do not even want to
because we prefer to stay in our poor condition. It's the effort to
rise out of it that makes us laugh. All previous efforts to rise
only make us laugh harder.
The purpose of literature is thus
twofold. It recognizes the era, and it unites minds in embracing the
era. It provides the catalyst for transforming the intellectual into
the actual. Thus, today's literature recognizes the crumminess of
human nature and action, and it unites minds in celebrating that
crumminess, acknowledging that it is OK, and even great sometimes to
be crummy. That provides the teeth of the irony: it is great not to
be great. This can be seen in such books as "Wonder Boys", "The
Diary of Bridget Jones", and " A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering
Genius", all of which celebrate a troubled character and his/her
failings.
This piece strives to be post-postmodern. It
throws off the stifling and stultifying shackles of the postmodern
by rejecting irony. It acknowledges that greatness is not only
possible, but is occurring at this very moment, in the telling. It
chronicles greatness, and hopefully provides lessons in how to
achieve it. (For those inclined still toward the postmodern, this
may sound almost tongue-in-cheek - as if I am deliberately writing
words to be laughed at because "Thou Shalt Not" transgress the
cardinal rule of morality: humility. Be that as it may, I stake my
claim.) In essence, this piece encourages my brethren to throw of
the shackles of the postmodern and embrace the modern. By embracing
the modern, I encourage you to embrace me. In embracing me, I
encourage you to embrace each other.
I was born in 1976, the
day after New Year's. I have always hoped that was an auspicious
beginning, because it provides the right mixture for an origin:
close enough to a day of celebration to make my life glean from the
warm glow that the calendar provides, yet not totally eclipsed
either so that I maintain a modicum of identity and chronological
independence.
My mother came from a German-Jewish family
that had immigrated from the Netherlands in the early 1900s. My
Grandfather's name is Swearingen, taken from Van Swearingen, which
also happened to be the moniker for a wealthy family in Columbus,
Ohio in the 1920s. Using a new credit system, they created railroads
and invented the suburb before the idea took off in the 1950s. They
constructed a couple big buildings in downtown Columbus. Then they
lost all of their money in the depression. My Grandfather's family
was forced to give up a maid. My Grandmother's name was Kemerrer,
and she had an uncle who was an economics professor at Princeton
University in the 1920s and 30s. He went down to Latin American
countries and helped construct their economies on the gold standard.
When Roosevelt took the country off the gold standard, he advised
against it. My mother's family was quite conservative in lifestyle.
They lived in a small town called Galion, Ohio (so small, they only
had one high school).
My father grew up picking cotton in
Austin, Texas. He turned to music early in his life, and even after
joining the air force, kept playing a variety of instruments. My
mother sang, from the age of 5, but did not pursue a music career.
Like her mother, she went into paralegal work. But when she was 25
she decided to leave the Midwest and head to the Southwest. There
she met my dad, and, via pot-laden philosophical conversations, fell
in love with him. She asked him to father his 5th child, which he
agreed to on April 1.
My mother and father have very similar
temperaments. He is a party animal, she likes to stay home and read
a book; but both are very calm, joyous people. She is comfortable
with books on utopia, and plenty of New Age spiritual books that
talk about energy, Ascended Masters, and the ascension process. He
aunt turned her onto New Age spirituality after giving her Edgar
Cayce Books, as well as books on the Masters of the Far east. My
mother is comfortable with books about Ramtha, about a 25,000 year
old ascended being who has come back to earth in the body of a
female descendent, to teach people how to access their higher selves
and ascend. She also reads books on the True meanings of Jesus'
teachings, which connects Eastern religions with Egyptian
discoveries and Hawaiian philosophy. Then there are books on The Tao
of Physics, about how Quantum Physics is beginning to show
scientists what the people of the Far East have described for
millennia. She has her New Age friends in Tucson (once described to
me as the "Mecca" of the new Age), with whom she mediates and tries
to raise her Kundalini. She went to Ramtha's class where she learned
how to communicate telepathically.
My father, in contrast,
is not at all a book reader. He can turn anything into a musical
instrument, and is renowned for playing three flutes (one in his
mouth, one in each nostril). When he isn't partying and putting on a
show, he is cleaning the houses and yards of elderly women and
couples. His yard work once brought him in contact with the novelist
Barbara Kingsolver. When he isn't doing that, he is counseling
people on their interpersonal relationships, reprising his work as a
counselor after returning from Vietnam, but on a less formal basis.
My father met my stepmother when I was 8. She has very
different tastes than either my mother or my father. They are very
public, willing to talk about anything, even in a grocery store,
while she is very private. She does not believe in God, nor will she
let her children talk about God in the House. But she does have a
very spiritual side where she interacts with other people's energy.
She reads horror novels (Stephen King, Dean Koontz) and is mostly
focused on physical things, having to do with her house, her
children, and her career.
I discuss these people because
they shaped my early life, and hence my views on the world. I
traveled with my parents until the age of 5, as they went from one
concert to another, one college to another, one radio show to
another, singing and teaching their philosophies. I heard other
people calling them by their first names, so I did the same. That
enabled me to see them (and all other adults - except teachers) as
equals, and treat them as such. My sister was born when I was five,
and that caused me to be protective. I took all responsibility for
what happened to us. As I looked around at my family and friends, I
also began to take responsibility for what happened to my family. I
knew we were lower-class, so I saw it as my responsibility to make
them upper-class. But there was no way for me to act on this
responsibility, until my stepmother came along. She grounded my
father, making him live in one city. She also helped me go to
school, though it was my mother who first took me (after I
threatened to run away). My mother stayed in town to be near us.
I had started reading from the age of four, but I felt
lonely, friendless, with everybody going to school except me. I
started exploring to pass the time, and that exploration became an
engrained part of my psyche. I saw every endeavor as exploration and
discovery. When I went to school, I, in effect, embarked on a master
plan to improve myself and my family. I had to make sure that my dad
stayed in town so that I could use his house as a base of
operations. I went to my mother's house on the weekend to relax,
review, and plan ahead. As long as everything stayed like that, I
felt comfortable.
I liked being at my stepmother's house
because she was so interested in physical things. She thew parties,
she cooked meat, and basically allowed me to live a normal
lifestyle. But she also imposed great discipline, giving me set
bedtimes and putting me in charge of my sisters (now there were
two). Then, on the weekends, I went to my mothers house. Sometimes
she sang at churches, and I accompanied her with my sister. Having
lived in a Godless environment made an interesting contrast with
churches on the weekends, but it made no significant impact on my
psyche. I took everything with a grain of salt. For me, it was never
a matter of believing or disbelieving, having faith or lacking it.
If religion helped me do well in school and improve my family's
circumstances, I wanted to be part of it. If it didn't do that, I
had no use for it. As far as I could tell, all the New Age material
and religious environments my mom introduced me to had no meaning to
me other than being an arena for playful relaxation. I called myself
a Christian to fit in, and I read Bible stories as well from a
picture Bible, but it was at most great entertainment.
In
fact, I saw religion, philosophy and any academic pursuits through
very practical eyes from the very start. First, I new I was
surrounded by a variety of perspectives, with a New Age mother,
Rastafarian father, Fundamentalist Christian Grandmother,
Agnostic/Atheistic Stepmother and friends, and, at the age of 17, a
Pagan stepfather . I saw myself in a unique environment, with a
unique situation, and therefore a unique opportunity. Since I
interacted with these major people in my life constantly, I knew I
would be able to measure with a great degree of accuracy what
certain beliefs entails in terms of practical consequences. More
precisely, I knew that if I spoke with each person seriously about
what they believed and why, I would be able to see how exactly parts
of their belief translated into specific actions, consequences, and
reactions on their parts.
This would allow me to study the
emotional consequences of adopting certain beliefs, because once the
environment was created from one's beliefs, that environment would
either cause joy or suffering. So, from the very start, I took to
seeking out my parents for insight on how the world worked. But I
also extended this to any other ideas I might encounter. As far as I
was concerned, the only value any idea might have was its practical
value: could I use it? Now, use is a very general term, so I should
break it down. By use, I meant, could I use an idea or a philosophy,
or an academic subject to get the things I desired? In essence, I
saw all ideas as tools to be used by those who were smart enough to
use them for the sake of either self-improvement or acquisition of
desired objects.
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| Member Ratings |
| Member |
Date |
Overall |
Agree? |
Writing? |
Enjoyment? |
| anwer
sher |
06 Sep
2001 |
Absolutely
sensational |
n/a |
Don't touch
it! |
Standing
Ovation |
| brilliant.. | |
| all ideas
are tools to be used by those who are smart enough to use them
for the sake of self-improvement or acquisition
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