From a GTalk convo I just had with a friend...

BLOT: (01 Oct 2011 - 02:11:04 PM)

From a GTalk convo I just had with a friend...

This was said by me, just minutes ago, in a conversation on GTalk with a friend. I think it says a lot about my stance on things, and my priorities, and I figured I would share. I've edited it for clarity [very slightly] but mostly this is exactly what came off the top of my head, as we were talking about things like being successful and making use of our degrees versus student loans and such. I've also edited it down to my just my cogent parts, but keep in mind there was a slight break between these two sentences as we discussed reality being very much a phildickian sort of thing.

I don't think I realized how little anyone actually cared about "important" things until recently, though: real physics, real philosophy, real psychology, real sociology. All that shit? that's just for academics. I went from a part of the world where people can be vehemently anti-intellectual to a part of the world that was at and near a university...and it gave me skewed perspective. Like...people really care about these things, [things I find important,] just certain groups don't. Then I find out that lower Alabama is much closer to average than any of the average ever wants to admit...

But you know, given a chance to get out there and work in some little rinky dinky library with old books and new computers and talking to students who are perpetually 19 about ideas from the 1800s, for years and years, it sounds so much sweeter than trying to get a job in the office and being surrounded by buzzwords and trying to trick customers into thinking that without my product they are going to be left behind. I still am in love with my chosen path, but I know that I'm going to have to tread carefully [to keep it], and use a degree of self-delusion, to achieve it And, frankly, since I think that reality is ultimately flawed, fucked up, and weird at best: I think I'm ok with that.

Just to clarify, I am not saying you have to be delusional to work in a library [though some may look at current trends and think that's the case], it's that you have to be delusional to think that any one life path is the solution. That any one life path is going to fix all the ills in your life, and in society, and that it will make you the most happy you can be. Since I have to choose from one delusion or the other, I will choose the delusion that talking about important things to people who actually want to talk about these important things [see above for what I mean by important things] is more important and more fulfilling than talking to clients on the phone and trying to sell their company on things that 90% buzzwords and 10% actual product. And I know, somewhere, some guy that is selling those products sees them as actual innovations and sees them as making the world better—moving it to a future where things are awesome—while those doddering old academics are stuck in the past. Frankly, the world needs both of us and I think the world probably needs both us to stay deluded...and I'm ok with that.

Is it ok to be ok with that?

OTHER BLOTS THIS MONTH: October 2011