I know its supposed to be Octoberween
but I had an outburst of fury during our last seminar, which took up three
pages of my seminar notebook and was sufficient to distract me from anything
that was said in class, which was good, because I was livid and I may or may
not have been close to having a full-scale emotional melt down and throwing my
chair through the window.
Anyway I wrote this during class and I thought I
would share it with you.
For the sake of context, here it is: we
are reading the works of Hegel for class, he is an unintelligible German
philosopher. Well, unintelligible to me anyway a few people seem to understand
it because they have a muse for German nonsense or something.
Here
are my seminar notes since they are extremely stream of consciousness I have
attempted to give a play-by-play of them in italics:
I
began with an odd moment of self-reflection…probably because we kept talking
about self-consciousness and I was mainly conscious of being irate.
Whenever
I am not capable of understanding something I get uproariously angry and throw
a hissy fit. Three weeks of Hegel readings that I don’t understand has pushed
me off the deep end.
Other humble people are like, “I don’t understand this,
but its ok, I can still have an open mind”
Me: “I have no idea what this is saying.
Therefore it is stupid and wrong.”
Which leads me to the following
conclusion: People who think they are smart, are handicapping themselves with
respect to actually being smart.
One might ask: Liz how did you become
such an arrogant twit?
Well, self-confidence is considered a
virtue. Sometimes.
Self-confidence is a virtue that I did
not come by naturally (this became evident in high school where I spewed a
toxic river of self-deprecating humor). So I set out to construct an artificial
self-confidence, which I based on my bright and shiny intellect.
Today
as I sit in this Hegel seminar, not understanding a word anyone is saying, I
find myself wishing that I had a time machine. I would go tell myself, “listen,
don’t put all your eggs in that intelligence basket, you’re just not that
smart.”
And previous me would say, “I don’t have any
eggs, or baskets... and I wouldn’t take your advice even if I did.”
After
that period of soul searching I proceeded to draw an angsty cartoon, which went like this:
(note this endless spiral of screaming insanity)
More
whining:
In high school people would tell me
things like, “hey I really like your cartoons! You should do that for a living,”
And I would respond, “No. no one will
like them. I think I will be a smart person. Maybe a Professor.”
8 years of higher education later, and
now I am saying, “turns out I am not good at being smart either I think I will
draw cartoons”
A return
to a commentary on the misery of seminar and some sort of self-help guide to Hegelian
depression:
No amount of tea could restore my
emotional state.
How to help your friends who are
depressed by Hegel:
- Telling them that Hegel is awesome = the
worst plan ever. You: “no Hegel is great and really makes a lot of sense if you
kind think about it sideways.” Depressed friend: “I can’t think sideways.” Result: depressed
friend tries to murder you.
- Compliments = not helpful, “no! you’re
smart!” … no really I have just have had a frickton of evidence that I am in
fact not smart. I don’t believe you or your compliments.
- Sympathy cards = acceptable, they should
say things like “sorry for the loss of your intellect” and “during our senior
year my mind leapt into a black abyss of despair just like yours, I believe
that with the help of bourbon milkshakes you can make it through this trying
time” these are helpful statements.
See how many times I said self? I am
practically Hegel.
