Devotion
I find that several strains of thought that have occupied my mind recently seem to have in themselves a common strand, namely that of pertaining to devotion.
The first strand concerns myself. As time has gone on I find that although the amount of work necessary of me doesn't really increase, I am spending more and more time devoted to what might be called the "total liberal education." I spend more time than ever before engrossed in "studies," whether they be pertaining to a class or not.
The second strand concerns World of Warcraft, and the fact that it still lives, larger and more grotesque than ever, casting an apocalyptic shadow over all my efforts at achievement. I hold steady, but I seem to be alone.
The third strand concerns one friend in particular, and is somewhat related to the first. But I'll get to that later.
When I started reading various "great books" a year ago it wasn't really with a great overall design. It has not been a full year since I started that and the change is immense. I spend most of my days engaged in work, and the days when I am not working on class work I am reading some old text or treatise. It is at the point where every day of the year, unless an extreme exception should occur, I expect myself to read little short of a hundred pages of something. This is, however, not counting the little daily scavenger hunts through news stories and what not that over the past couple months I have created in myself.
Those last words are important. It seems that the more I engage myself in work, the less I feel I am accomplishing. I look back to even a couple months ago and wonder why I wasted so much time. I could have been learning. Now those activities that would have made up the atoms of daily life a year ago are useless in retrospect. I've becomed obsessed with knowledge, it seems.
In some ways it feels like I'm doing something wrong. I wonder, "Am I alone? Why does no one else do this?" For a moment I want to say that they are all lazy bastards and bask in my self-love, and then I reflect on this and basically do as much. I'm a douchebag like that.
But then in a more serious (mental) tone, I start to wonder seriously why no one else seems to care as much as I do. Am I just weird? Or is this kind of devotion the sign of evolution to a better way of living?
From here I make a nice sharp 180 and proceed to the ever popular subject of nauseating devotion, World of Warcraft. At one point I made the mistake of thinking it had passed and that the torment was over, like passing a kidney stone the size of a golf ball. Well, as it turns out, I still have to pass one the size of a cantaloupe. Kind of makes me despise cantaloupes.
I have a friend who plays, with little doubt, at least twelve hours on most days. What the hell is that? I spend all my time concerned with the tangible. He's doing what is essentially the same process, over and over. He can't even be excused for the sake of variety in the game, because he plays so much he by default does the same things over and over. Why would you allow yourself to do this? He knows how useless this is in relation to real life, and yet he doesn't stop. It's tempting to put it, under these circumstances, in with crack cocaine. But this person is the same person who last year was along with me as the hardest worker classwork-wise I knew. Is it just in his personality? Do I really even have a right to criticize him? I would hope so, since at the very least it should be noted that you don't rez in real life.
I separate him, in most respects, from most of the other people who I know who play World of Warcraft. This is mostly because They're just bored college students that I occasionally get angry at because they don't do much with themselves. But perhaps that's just violent self-love seeping through. At any rate, they could at least stop talking about it all day. No one -lives- in Azeroth. Although I'm sure that when Blizzard buys the "immersion chambers" they'll be the first to sign up.
My last instance of devotion is of one of the few that doesn't play World of Warcraft. He is a most interesting personality. I thought for a long time he wasn't much above the average. Does what he has to, prefers what he doesn't have to. But with time came a a new view. He is not so simple as one might be led to believe. Behind the sophmoric humor and easy laughs lie a consistent and amazing meticulous method the likes of which is uncommon to say the least. Every so often a subject will be challenged and he will make an observation that amazes me, or he will pose a question or comment that I usually never expect to hear from people on account of the thought behind it.
This person has his topics of interest, and with them he has commitment. He learns something to its utmost and, as I said before, his thought is meticulous. Yet, despite these talents, he just seems to be lacking that little bit of will necessary to reach the highest of levels. I can't help but wonder what he would be if his focus were altered just a little...
Three topics, three angles, one word that they all share. While in many (if not most) ways they have marked differences, there is within them an element of drive, a sort of push to accomplishment that reaches the point of devotion. The question that remains, in my eyes, is the question that was initially prodded by Aristotle so long ago: how do we put ourselves and our powers to the best use as men? How do we turn these drives in a push for excellence in the human race? And to each case: am I missing a greater point in my supposedly "great" search for truth? What of the devotion to things like WoW: could such energies be deverted to better purposes? Should they, so long as the people in question "do their part"? And what of the third case? Should I leave a person with great abilities and an independent bent to their own work? Am I being a pompous ass in thinking I would know how to better direct his energies? And so, in horribly typical fashion, I finish with far more questions than I start with. And so the process goes on.
The first strand concerns myself. As time has gone on I find that although the amount of work necessary of me doesn't really increase, I am spending more and more time devoted to what might be called the "total liberal education." I spend more time than ever before engrossed in "studies," whether they be pertaining to a class or not.
The second strand concerns World of Warcraft, and the fact that it still lives, larger and more grotesque than ever, casting an apocalyptic shadow over all my efforts at achievement. I hold steady, but I seem to be alone.
The third strand concerns one friend in particular, and is somewhat related to the first. But I'll get to that later.
When I started reading various "great books" a year ago it wasn't really with a great overall design. It has not been a full year since I started that and the change is immense. I spend most of my days engaged in work, and the days when I am not working on class work I am reading some old text or treatise. It is at the point where every day of the year, unless an extreme exception should occur, I expect myself to read little short of a hundred pages of something. This is, however, not counting the little daily scavenger hunts through news stories and what not that over the past couple months I have created in myself.
Those last words are important. It seems that the more I engage myself in work, the less I feel I am accomplishing. I look back to even a couple months ago and wonder why I wasted so much time. I could have been learning. Now those activities that would have made up the atoms of daily life a year ago are useless in retrospect. I've becomed obsessed with knowledge, it seems.
In some ways it feels like I'm doing something wrong. I wonder, "Am I alone? Why does no one else do this?" For a moment I want to say that they are all lazy bastards and bask in my self-love, and then I reflect on this and basically do as much. I'm a douchebag like that.
But then in a more serious (mental) tone, I start to wonder seriously why no one else seems to care as much as I do. Am I just weird? Or is this kind of devotion the sign of evolution to a better way of living?
From here I make a nice sharp 180 and proceed to the ever popular subject of nauseating devotion, World of Warcraft. At one point I made the mistake of thinking it had passed and that the torment was over, like passing a kidney stone the size of a golf ball. Well, as it turns out, I still have to pass one the size of a cantaloupe. Kind of makes me despise cantaloupes.
I have a friend who plays, with little doubt, at least twelve hours on most days. What the hell is that? I spend all my time concerned with the tangible. He's doing what is essentially the same process, over and over. He can't even be excused for the sake of variety in the game, because he plays so much he by default does the same things over and over. Why would you allow yourself to do this? He knows how useless this is in relation to real life, and yet he doesn't stop. It's tempting to put it, under these circumstances, in with crack cocaine. But this person is the same person who last year was along with me as the hardest worker classwork-wise I knew. Is it just in his personality? Do I really even have a right to criticize him? I would hope so, since at the very least it should be noted that you don't rez in real life.
I separate him, in most respects, from most of the other people who I know who play World of Warcraft. This is mostly because They're just bored college students that I occasionally get angry at because they don't do much with themselves. But perhaps that's just violent self-love seeping through. At any rate, they could at least stop talking about it all day. No one -lives- in Azeroth. Although I'm sure that when Blizzard buys the "immersion chambers" they'll be the first to sign up.
My last instance of devotion is of one of the few that doesn't play World of Warcraft. He is a most interesting personality. I thought for a long time he wasn't much above the average. Does what he has to, prefers what he doesn't have to. But with time came a a new view. He is not so simple as one might be led to believe. Behind the sophmoric humor and easy laughs lie a consistent and amazing meticulous method the likes of which is uncommon to say the least. Every so often a subject will be challenged and he will make an observation that amazes me, or he will pose a question or comment that I usually never expect to hear from people on account of the thought behind it.
This person has his topics of interest, and with them he has commitment. He learns something to its utmost and, as I said before, his thought is meticulous. Yet, despite these talents, he just seems to be lacking that little bit of will necessary to reach the highest of levels. I can't help but wonder what he would be if his focus were altered just a little...
Three topics, three angles, one word that they all share. While in many (if not most) ways they have marked differences, there is within them an element of drive, a sort of push to accomplishment that reaches the point of devotion. The question that remains, in my eyes, is the question that was initially prodded by Aristotle so long ago: how do we put ourselves and our powers to the best use as men? How do we turn these drives in a push for excellence in the human race? And to each case: am I missing a greater point in my supposedly "great" search for truth? What of the devotion to things like WoW: could such energies be deverted to better purposes? Should they, so long as the people in question "do their part"? And what of the third case? Should I leave a person with great abilities and an independent bent to their own work? Am I being a pompous ass in thinking I would know how to better direct his energies? And so, in horribly typical fashion, I finish with far more questions than I start with. And so the process goes on.
posted by Derek at 8:51 PM
5 Comments:
I cannot deter you from observations nor can I adequately influence your perspective on the things you've mentioned. However, although fairly good points are brought up in your entry, the tone you deliver it with is something of a "neo-messiah". Although this is a journal, and as such it is a place of personal reflection where such deliveries can be made, I recommend to you, from the view point of a niche you described as well as a spirit-searching philosopher, that such a tone be kept in check if not abolished.
I am not implying that you are wrong to view the immense amounts of time "he" and "we" spend playing WoW as "wasted". Indeed, if you believe that such hours could/should be spent reading, etc., then wasted is how you shall view them. However, plusses and minuses can be found in every facet of life. Although one might play WoW a lot, they are also pseudo-socializing. I would feel an urge to argue that, if anything, WoW teaches the avid player how to be a member of a team: it teaches the player how to depend on someone else to do something that the player is completely incapable of doing alone. This is done while simultaneously focusing on the player’s own strengths in order to help the ones helping him/her. Going with the same idea of plusses and minuses, reading immense amounts every day may expand your vocabulary (something WoW does detrimentally), but it also shelters you from social interaction during that time. A common argument is that WoW also shelters one from social interaction, which I agree with physically, but to go any further would be to imply that chat rooms and message boards are not social interactions, when in-fact just like WoW, their basis for function is social in nature.
A major objective point to be understood is that because you *choose* to partake in reading for a majority of your time does not make you just and it does not make you right; it makes you you. Because someone chooses to play WoW for a majority of their time awake does not make them wrong. Unless playing immense amounts of WoW is harming someone else, the person who plays such amounts is not "in the wrong", but rather makes a choice that others may or may not view as ideal for themselves. Yes, he could use that time to pore over his class work and know it front to back, but he is comfortable with his position and his position has no direct effects on anyone else other than himself. In fact, he could also use the time to go murder people, drink, smoke, etc. Of course, when one's position begins to encroach upon others, then a true problem exists (i.e. drug addicts stealing).
Thus, whether or not someone takes things in extremes is their choice and hopefully such a choice does not lead to negative effects. However, an addiction to reading or videogames can bring with it just as many negative consequences as any other addiction. Whether or not the addiction is healthy is not up for debate, but whether or not one is able to pass such self-righteous judgment upon others because their choices for leisure differ from one’s own is.
A final point would be based off this quote from your entry:
“I separate him, in most respects, from most of the other people who I know who play World of Warcraft. This is mostly because They're just bored college students that I occasionally get angry at because they don't do much with themselves. “ (emphasis added)
Do not waste your energy getting angry at someone else because they do not live life as you do.
My intent for this response is not an attack on character but instead insight into another POV. My advice to you from my own life experience is to live your life as you see fit, learning from others mistakes and accomplishments, but not ever thinking that you are objectively better than them or in a position to pass some sort of judgment.
I think the best way to respond here would be simply to repeat one thought:
"For a moment I want to say that they are all lazy bastards and bask in my self-love, and then I reflect on this and basically do as much. I'm a douchebag like that."
There's more honesty in that than the tone says.
Part of the problem is that I think I just feel that people don't try very hard these days in general. I feel this way mostly because I think I was like that up until a couple years ago. Now I just get irritated when I don't see what I would determine as 'improvement'. I could also go into other issues of the past, but will not on account of this being the Internet and no one wanting to hear my life story right now. (Although, now that I think about it, a self-critique would be good entry one of these days).
A second point is the line between leaving well enough alone and just standing back while damage happens. While I do indeed try not to push people and try to maintain reservations, I also feel there is a line. I couldn't tell you where that line is or if it is justified, but it is somewhere in my consciousness nontheless. If it would be said that that line is just my preferences seeping through, that would probably be right (if nothing else I strive to recognize my own missteps for the sake of fixing them and being right later). But I think there is something we can call right and something we can call wrong that exists even at the individual level. To stand nowhere would only let us fall, it might be said. As far as WoW goes, don't take it personally. It's just me bitching into the breeze.
Oh, and lastly, on my "neo-messiah" tone: yeah, I get to be an asshole in my writing most of the time. I wish I wouldn't, but then it wouldn't be me. That's where the self-abuse quoted above is meant to level things. Also, I'm adopting "neo-messiah" as a new descriptor for myself. I think it's appropriate :)
Hello Snurp,
"In some ways it feels like I'm doing something wrong. I wonder, "Am I alone? Why does no one else do this [learn from Great Books]?"
This line of thought was common amongst the philosophy crowd I used to hang with in my undergrad days. So no, you definitely are not alone, just rare.
Your post reminds me a lot of a very close friend of mine. He's very passionate about everything he does. A few of those things stick and become life-long devotions.
I suffer from a the opposite problem. I have an utter lack of devotion to anything. I have a lot of things that I love, but I cannot devote myself to any one of them to make a real contribution.
Is this lack of devotion (or, in the case of your friend, devotion to leisure) laziness? No, I don't think so. I think they are both symptoms of an underlying cause: lack of passion.
You have a passion for learning, therefor you are willing to work, hard, towards that goal. If you asked your friend, my guess is that he doesn't have a passion for WoW, just a love for it. Similarly, I have a love for knowledge, philosophy, religion, mathematics, music, etc. but no passion for any one of them.
"What of the devotion to things like WoW: could such energies be deverted to better purposes?"
Without passion? No. What I've been exploring is how to obtain passion. Any thoughts?
"What I've been exploring is how to obtain passion. Any thoughts?"
A question for the ages, my friend.
Snurp, your tone is acceptable since this is your place and place of thought. Where is the beginning of passion? i think this passion is formed or not, in the family.
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