| | |
|
MattBurkeSecondEssay 5 - 19 May 2015 - Main.MattBurke
|
| |
| META TOPICPARENT | name="SecondEssay" |
|---|
| | | -- By MattBurke - 18 May 2015 | |
<
< | Introduction
Someday, I’d like to write a compendium of wrong ideas—Lamarckian transformation, Ptolemaic geocentrism, and Aquinian scholasticism. My thesis: Each wrong idea struggles to formulate some truth until the truth becomes incompatible with the idea that formulates it. The formula, though essential, is essentially incidental. The struggle to understand produces the greater insight. But my compendium is a long game. I mention it here to help introduce a wrong idea of my own: We desire others to accept for us that which we struggle to accept about ourselves. | >
> | Wrong ideas
Someday, I’d like to write a compendium of wrong ideas—Lamarckian transformation, Ptolemaic geocentrism, and Aquinian scholasticism. My thesis: Each wrong idea struggles to formulate some truth until the truth becomes incompatible with the idea that formulates it. The formula, though essential, is essentially incidental. The struggle to understand produces the greater insight. But that compendium is a long game. I mention it here to help introduce a wrong idea of my own: We desire others to accept for us that which we struggle to accept about ourselves. | | | Anecdote 1: A speech
When I was nine, my parents separated. After, I had trouble in school, frequent fights, diminished quality of work, that sort of thing. My mother took me to a therapist. At our first meeting, the therapist told me a story: A man came to her office with a boa constrictor around his neck. Whenever the therapist tried to engage the man, he would ask her to pet the snake. So, the therapist told the man to put the snake down, or she would not help him. | | | Anecdote 2: A question
In my second year, a student I’ll call Jon appeared in my class. It was in the middle of the period. He was a transfer. He introduced himself by shouting a profanity before finding his seat. | |
<
< | I held him after class and gave a speech. But my speech meant the same thing to him as his profanity had to me. An announcement: This is who I am. After my speech, we talked. | >
> | I held him after class and gave a speech. But my speech meant the same thing to him as his profanity had to me, an announcement: This is who I am. After my speech, we talked. | | | We talked frequently. Often removed from class, I’d find him pacing the hallway and walk with him up past classroom doors. I’d find him in the office and hand him a stack of papers and a red pen. He’d grade some. I’d grade others. He told me about his family, his brothers in jail, and his father in Nevada. He talked about Nevada—his house had a backyard, he had his own room. We’d play cards. | | | Then he asked me: “Is it okay to join a gang?” I said, "no," but that missed the point. | |
<
< | Conclusion | >
> | Aporias | | | I put the second anecdote in my law school personal statement. There, it was about society, about "social problems." I didn’t use the word “aporia” because it didn’t fit the tone, but the meaning would’ve been right. As to the first anecdote, this is the first time I’ve joined the two scenes that form it—the realization upon which I premised the story is one I had while writing it, not, as I claim, while experiencing it. Together they relocate the aporia I previously located in society into people—the desire for something from another that none can give.
|
|
|
|
|
This site is powered by the TWiki collaboration platform.
All material on this collaboration platform is the property of the contributing authors.
All material marked as authored by Eben Moglen is available under the license terms CC-BY-SA version 4.
|
|
| | |