i. i finished infinite jest.
ii. i watched dfw's interview again.
iii. i am keeping tabs on the crisis unfolding in congress and in the horn of africa.
somehow i feel a heavy link between i/ii and iii. during early college i very much contemplating joining peace corp or americorp. i think it was for a selfish purpose or rather because i had lost a sense of purpose. i couldn't see my future because i had so many things i wanted to do yet a real job seemed so drab and routine. everything was so accessible that i lost grasp of a one real thing. this is hard to explain. i am not saying that i should have only one interest or passion, but that even with multiple interests i should be in pursuit of a common ideal. perhaps kundera alludes to this when he explained the two kinds of men who pursue a multitude of women: "some seek their own subjective and unchanging dream of a woman in all woman. others are prompted by a desire to possess the endless variety of the objective female world." i think the former tribe is happier.
but i lost grasp of that ideal, partially due to the freedom that living ansilver-spoon american life has given me and partially due to lack of self-discipline. and so while i was fine and happy most of the time, there was also a layer of dissatisfaction that would momentarily surface whenever i was not doing anything exciting. so i do deeply identify with marathe's side of the debate in infinite jest and with dfw's cultural criticisms. i have felt the beginning of that slope which endless gratification gives us. it is not some big momentous event, but the small effects are palpable in unity. a recent performance by michael landy had him categorize and destroy every bit of his possession in a ford assembly line-like setting. i am reminded of how easy it is to obtain things, physically and mentally, yet how hard it is to unload them. and how constantly regretful i was and still am with all the things i want cluttering out what i need.
so i contemplated escape, to go to africa and find need and purpose again on the edge. unfortunately it didn't work out, though i am still searching for ways to reach the same effect. but looking at the current drought situation in africa and calls for changes in humanitarian aid, i am reminded of sophomore year again, which tells me some things about the nature of giving and why i am irked with people who show off their humanitarian effort or indiscriminately dump money on aid. one, because aid, in the form of money most often, is pretty much worthless these days without proper investigation what with all the rampant corruption among large non-profits. and two, because what gets pushed aside when considering volunteer work is that one often gains so much more in terms of becoming a fuller person than what one gives. it should be a humbling moment.
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a few select quotes from a tv interview with david foster wallace, 2003
dfw: "i know there's a paradox in the u.s. that the people who get powerful jobs tend to go to really good schools and often in school you study the liberal arts which is philosophy and classical stuff and languages which is all about the nobility of the spirit and broadening the mind and from this you go to a specialized school to learn how to sue people and how to write copy that will make people buy a certain suv...and yeah its....i dn't know what to think about it then i'm not sure really that its ever been all that different. because very few of us get to use pretty much what we were taught. i know that in America there is an entire class, now i'm talking about a very specific class of upper and upper middle-class kids whose parents can afford to send them to very good schools where they get very good education, who often end up in jobs that are financially rewarding but do not have anything to do with what they were taught, persuasively taught, was important and worthwhile in school."
---
dfw: "when i was growing up one of the mythological periods is the great depression where the story goes that everyone pulled together...it seems to me now that the country's reaction to feeling frightened and insecure is to buy suvs that are large and massive and tank-like and make individual people feel safer but also gets 4 miles to the galleon in a country where the gasoline is probably one-fifth as expensive as it ought to be...there is a sanity in Europe about gasoline prices and fuel consumption that is not here yet...and yet we're voting for people who are deciding to go over and very possibly kill hundreds of thousands of civilians to kill a few enemies. none of which are important but the fact that no one here is talking about the connections between how we live and what we drive and the things that are happening...the speed with which it becomes those bad people those bad fanatics, what they hate is our freedom and our way of life...which is hard to swallow. who hates freedom? people hate people not freedom.
i...now don't know what's going to happen. i as an american am scared...this is totally personally but i am more scared of us and that is a bleak place to be. i don't think this is an evil country or that americans are evil but we've had it very easy materially for a long time and we've gotten very little help in understanding things that are important besides being comfortable and i'm not sure anyone knows how we'll react if it gets bad here..."
interviewer: "are there any forms of rebellion?"
dfw: "sure. well there are people doing it all over the place. i don't know about people repelling down buildings and getting tear-gased and stuff. the people i know that are rebelling meaningfully don't buy a lot of stuff and don't get their view of the world from television and are willing to spend 4 or 5 hours researching an election than rather going by commercials. the thing about it is that in america we think of rebelling as this very sexy thing that involves action and force and looking good. my guess is that the forms of rebellion that will end up changing things here will be very quiet and individual and probably not all that interesting to look out from the outside...thinking in a chair and thinking about what this means and why the fact what i drive might have something to do with how in other parts of the world feel about me is not interesting."
ii. i watched dfw's interview again.
iii. i am keeping tabs on the crisis unfolding in congress and in the horn of africa.
somehow i feel a heavy link between i/ii and iii. during early college i very much contemplating joining peace corp or americorp. i think it was for a selfish purpose or rather because i had lost a sense of purpose. i couldn't see my future because i had so many things i wanted to do yet a real job seemed so drab and routine. everything was so accessible that i lost grasp of a one real thing. this is hard to explain. i am not saying that i should have only one interest or passion, but that even with multiple interests i should be in pursuit of a common ideal. perhaps kundera alludes to this when he explained the two kinds of men who pursue a multitude of women: "some seek their own subjective and unchanging dream of a woman in all woman. others are prompted by a desire to possess the endless variety of the objective female world." i think the former tribe is happier.
but i lost grasp of that ideal, partially due to the freedom that living an
so i contemplated escape, to go to africa and find need and purpose again on the edge. unfortunately it didn't work out, though i am still searching for ways to reach the same effect. but looking at the current drought situation in africa and calls for changes in humanitarian aid, i am reminded of sophomore year again, which tells me some things about the nature of giving and why i am irked with people who show off their humanitarian effort or indiscriminately dump money on aid. one, because aid, in the form of money most often, is pretty much worthless these days without proper investigation what with all the rampant corruption among large non-profits. and two, because what gets pushed aside when considering volunteer work is that one often gains so much more in terms of becoming a fuller person than what one gives. it should be a humbling moment.
-------
a few select quotes from a tv interview with david foster wallace, 2003
dfw: "i know there's a paradox in the u.s. that the people who get powerful jobs tend to go to really good schools and often in school you study the liberal arts which is philosophy and classical stuff and languages which is all about the nobility of the spirit and broadening the mind and from this you go to a specialized school to learn how to sue people and how to write copy that will make people buy a certain suv...and yeah its....i dn't know what to think about it then i'm not sure really that its ever been all that different. because very few of us get to use pretty much what we were taught. i know that in America there is an entire class, now i'm talking about a very specific class of upper and upper middle-class kids whose parents can afford to send them to very good schools where they get very good education, who often end up in jobs that are financially rewarding but do not have anything to do with what they were taught, persuasively taught, was important and worthwhile in school."
---
dfw: "when i was growing up one of the mythological periods is the great depression where the story goes that everyone pulled together...it seems to me now that the country's reaction to feeling frightened and insecure is to buy suvs that are large and massive and tank-like and make individual people feel safer but also gets 4 miles to the galleon in a country where the gasoline is probably one-fifth as expensive as it ought to be...there is a sanity in Europe about gasoline prices and fuel consumption that is not here yet...and yet we're voting for people who are deciding to go over and very possibly kill hundreds of thousands of civilians to kill a few enemies. none of which are important but the fact that no one here is talking about the connections between how we live and what we drive and the things that are happening...the speed with which it becomes those bad people those bad fanatics, what they hate is our freedom and our way of life...which is hard to swallow. who hates freedom? people hate people not freedom.
i...now don't know what's going to happen. i as an american am scared...this is totally personally but i am more scared of us and that is a bleak place to be. i don't think this is an evil country or that americans are evil but we've had it very easy materially for a long time and we've gotten very little help in understanding things that are important besides being comfortable and i'm not sure anyone knows how we'll react if it gets bad here..."
interviewer: "are there any forms of rebellion?"
dfw: "sure. well there are people doing it all over the place. i don't know about people repelling down buildings and getting tear-gased and stuff. the people i know that are rebelling meaningfully don't buy a lot of stuff and don't get their view of the world from television and are willing to spend 4 or 5 hours researching an election than rather going by commercials. the thing about it is that in america we think of rebelling as this very sexy thing that involves action and force and looking good. my guess is that the forms of rebellion that will end up changing things here will be very quiet and individual and probably not all that interesting to look out from the outside...thinking in a chair and thinking about what this means and why the fact what i drive might have something to do with how in other parts of the world feel about me is not interesting."
