Being Liable, Being Brave

Around the time I started this blog, I read a little of Philosophy as Metanoetics (Repentance), and got burgled and twice bingled. The lesson seemed to be that there's no getting away from liability to injury and disappointment. 'Once you're born you can no longer hide.'*

I've actually started to try to digest some current literature on sciencey stuff, and I have to say it hurts. Everything I've felt proud to know, and more, is already known to everyone who publishes. I turn out, once again, to be an absolute beginner. I'm in my mid-thirties, and by temperament an expert, but in practice not master of anything. It's largely because I've been so sensitive to this, the sick anxiety of making an effort yet ending up nowhere (which for me has always equaled 'back in the pack.') And although I'm always trying to be 'intellectual', I am not really clever. Most of my 'insightfulness' is lazily understanding a new thing as something old in disguise. I'm not a great riddler out of problems, mainly because I never did my homework to build the automaticity of skill needed.

So, a little testimony to sadsack vainglory. But you spend your life, one way or another, and spending it learning something about how one exists seems more motivating than other possibilities.

* Film title.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.7