Cross-posted from my LJ...I really need to set up a real blog with Movable Type.
So I logged onto my Livejournal today intent on making a post more based in politics than existential/intellectual frustrations, but Livejournal surprised me by asking if I wanted to restore from draft. Not knowing what I would see, but also not wanting to loose anything I had written, I said yes. I'm not sure where I was going with this post; though, I'm certain it was intended to go further than it does. Both the post's beginning and what memories were revived by rereading it suggest a culmination with much more philosophic underpinnings. Either way, I leave what was written here, as I can no longer finish it without worry that the result will be dishonest to the post's original intent, and I do not want to erase what was written. I'll write the post I originally intended to later. For now you can look at the title of this post for a hint of what it is about. (Note, the title was, "The George we barely knew.")
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I generally disagree with Nietzsche not out of any philosophic disapproval, but because I don't want to agree with him. I was a remarkable cynic as a child. My faith in humanity was not particularly high and was only hindered by both the area I grew up in and the people I met. I generally never stopped wanted to get to know and get along with other people, though. I don't know how this contradiction managed to exist with my general disregard for humanity, but it did. To a great extent, I think I was just lonely. While the standard teenager, perhaps against all proof, believes no one understands them, I was quite certain of the matter because of the overwhelming evidence. I had thoughts swirling in my head I could scarcely lay out coherently, and those I could were not understood by most others. Everyone vocal about their believe that they understood me and what their understanding of me was was simply horribly wrong. In the end, I simply contented myself with having understandable conversations about the simple, everyday things one deals with on the surface. Sometimes my situation would overwhelm me, and though I knew my troubles were effectively insignificant to the world, I allowed them to be very significant to me. It would be much later that I would hear the thoughts I had as a teenager and child repeated back to me in my classes on politics and philosophy, while I would conceal my exasperation that these concepts were so new and shocking to others in my courses. It wasn't until the influence of a particular girl that I began to think it would be better to care for humanity than ignore or hold them in contempt, regardless of their follies. It wasn't until after the girl left that I would meet people with whom I felt I could hold a conversation with and be understood. It wasn't until somewhere in the middle of all this I began to have faith not in humanity, but in the potential of humanity. I wasn't until I was walking to the place I was staying on the other half of the world that I made the pledge, for better or worse, to do whatever I could to heal the troubles of the world even at the expense of myself.
So I logged onto my Livejournal today intent on making a post more based in politics than existential/intellectual frustrations, but Livejournal surprised me by asking if I wanted to restore from draft. Not knowing what I would see, but also not wanting to loose anything I had written, I said yes. I'm not sure where I was going with this post; though, I'm certain it was intended to go further than it does. Both the post's beginning and what memories were revived by rereading it suggest a culmination with much more philosophic underpinnings. Either way, I leave what was written here, as I can no longer finish it without worry that the result will be dishonest to the post's original intent, and I do not want to erase what was written. I'll write the post I originally intended to later. For now you can look at the title of this post for a hint of what it is about. (Note, the title was, "The George we barely knew.")
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I generally disagree with Nietzsche not out of any philosophic disapproval, but because I don't want to agree with him. I was a remarkable cynic as a child. My faith in humanity was not particularly high and was only hindered by both the area I grew up in and the people I met. I generally never stopped wanted to get to know and get along with other people, though. I don't know how this contradiction managed to exist with my general disregard for humanity, but it did. To a great extent, I think I was just lonely. While the standard teenager, perhaps against all proof, believes no one understands them, I was quite certain of the matter because of the overwhelming evidence. I had thoughts swirling in my head I could scarcely lay out coherently, and those I could were not understood by most others. Everyone vocal about their believe that they understood me and what their understanding of me was was simply horribly wrong. In the end, I simply contented myself with having understandable conversations about the simple, everyday things one deals with on the surface. Sometimes my situation would overwhelm me, and though I knew my troubles were effectively insignificant to the world, I allowed them to be very significant to me. It would be much later that I would hear the thoughts I had as a teenager and child repeated back to me in my classes on politics and philosophy, while I would conceal my exasperation that these concepts were so new and shocking to others in my courses. It wasn't until the influence of a particular girl that I began to think it would be better to care for humanity than ignore or hold them in contempt, regardless of their follies. It wasn't until after the girl left that I would meet people with whom I felt I could hold a conversation with and be understood. It wasn't until somewhere in the middle of all this I began to have faith not in humanity, but in the potential of humanity. I wasn't until I was walking to the place I was staying on the other half of the world that I made the pledge, for better or worse, to do whatever I could to heal the troubles of the world even at the expense of myself.