On one hand this makes me desperately sad because I feel a large hollow space in my soul where a lot of really amazing information is begging to be. Sure, I can call up the image of Nazi soldiers on hang-gliders any time I want for entertainment but part of me knows that there’s so much MORE to be had for the assiduous pursuer of knowledge. There are eight million stories in the Naked City and I want to know every fucking one of them. As song lyrics from songs that were popular before I was born blast through my head, I ponder reading a biography of Nelson Mandela. But the pang of sadness is palpable as I realize I had to do a Google search to verify the Nazi hang-glider story I remembered from high school history wasn’t apocryphal… another to recall that there are eight million stories in the Naked City and not just one million… and a third to get rid of the second L that I tried to put in Mandela. And of course the spellchecker corrected my spelling of apocryphal. Christ but I’m getting soft…
The problem seems to be that there’s just so damn much to KNOW. It’s always been my goal to pursue breadth of knowledge not depth. I don’t really need to know the exact structure of a Benzene molecule but it would be nice to know enough to at least have an intelligent discussion about chemistry. (As a side note, I completely bite ass at chemistry. My mind works conceptually and I never found enough logic in chemistry to make it properly hang together in any reasonable structure to actually remember anything aside from tidbits from the Periodic Table.) The problem though even with a depth-wise view of human knowledge is that it’s still impossible. Some topics are just too deep to skip over and you become hopelessly mired in detail. Eighteenth century Italian Opera you can hit the highpoints on but Quantum Mechanics not so much. If you condense some topics to their fundamentals you lose them entirely. Distilling World War II down to: “An embittered Germany, after being let off far too easily after World War I, seeks continental dominance.” Is at best a hollow summary and at worst raises far more questions than it answers. Some things are worth a year looking into. Unfortunately, we just don’t have enough years.
So what’s the answer? How do we all keep from feeling like hopeless mental failures? In general, and simply put, we specialize. I know a lot of people who have one area in which they are simply legendary whether it’s sump pumps or some arcane technical topic. Personally that seems unsatisfying. I’d go insane if I were the foremost expert on the world on subject web browser compatibility testing but knew little to nothing about anything else. Even so, I would feel like I knew something. As it stands, I look at the vast open plains of my lacking intellect and I feel vacuous and in need of more, More, MORE!
Returning to the long-neglected other hand, does it really matter? What point would there be in owning even the entire breadth of human knowledge? Perhaps a bit of focus, not so razor sharp that you can unravel the secrets of the universe but forget how to button your shirt in the morning, is a good thing. Picking a few things to be reasonably good at and quietly being at peace with ignorance of the rest seems a good and healthy attitude to have in a world that offers so many options that they exceed the human lifespan to consume them. If I can practice a trade and write a bit of prolix triteness to my own satisfaction and capture a sunset with the great-great-great-grandson of the daguerreotype, then what else need I worry about? I can spend my life fighting and being at odds with my own ignorance or I can walk down the hall and sing quietly to myself…
“Don't know much about history
Don't know much biology
Don't know much about a science book
Don't know much about the French I took…
(Never underestimate the wisdom of songs that were popular before you were born…)
4 comments:
Wow you haven't changed a bit! :-) Of all the personal demons to be afflicted with... This is a nice problem to have.
"How do we all keep from feeling like hopeless mental failures?" -- I see you arrived at much the same answer I was going to opine: GIVE UP on literally impossible goals. Surf the ocean of knowledge via the changeable wind of whim. To say that what there is to learn 'exceeds a human lifetime', is like explaining the ocean via similarity with a raindrop.
What's happening with you, *imo*, is that what you want to learn *vastly* exceeds your capacity and availability to tackle it all. I think for most people who want to pursue knowledge, their thirst exceeds their capacity only by about one and a half times. Maybe twice. You -- 20 to 30 times at least!
So, if you're going to drink from a fire hose, you're going have to learn to accept missing *a lot* of water. I think most other 'intellectuals', or 'bookish' people, 'nerds' or whatever you want to call people who like to learn and know stuff, only attempt drinking from garden hoses. Often at full blast -- but garden hoses, not fire hoses! :-)
As usual, you're right on. One thing I'm starting to realize is that my real interest doesn't lie so much with the macroscopic as it does the the microscopic.
The larger world of knowledge is great, but ultimately it's been done before. What fascinates me really is the tiny relationships that people have with each other. I've been struck repeatedly with image of finding a package of letters at the side of the road between two people 100 years ago and spending a year analyzing them and writing about them.
Similar to my post about the Fourth Reich, I find myself just wanting people's stories. Not private ones but just how they think. What they think. What motivates them. These should be easy to come by but I just don't have the skills to extract them from people.
Africa is big - maybe start with just South Africa, or Ghana :)
Sarah, you joke but I've considered it. Kinda like when I started reading the biographies of the Kings of England beginning in 1066. :)
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