i had a long discussion today with one of the student workers about philosophy, language, and elitism. i know he hates my rought idea for my frist novel- pee on foucault- but that’s because he studies rhetoric and gets excited when you say things like reductive, subscriptive, and praxis. he didn’t even bat an eye when i talked about foucault’s, metonymic slippage. yeah, it was like that.

and the thing is- i don’t hate philosophy. i know a lot of people here at work think that i do, which is wrong. i hate the elitism lots of philosophy buffs take with their ostentatious language, but i think it’s good to think about the world and the self. that doesn’t mean that the world should be viewed from the ivory tower of academia, but people should still live in the world. of course this was a stupid conversation to engage in since the other participants love bekeley for its pedantic nature. i just hate when people remove themselves with the real world- food, work, living- and still try to act like they’re connected. i know my job doesn’t contribute much to society, but it does directly more than somebody wiritng 500 pages about something baudlier thought and derrida’s interpritation of it. i know some people love being academics, but i figure i just don’t have the patience for all that babble. it’s not to say that precise jargon doesn’t have it’s place, just don’t expect people to understand it. putting things in slightly less precise but more accessible terms shouldn’t be seen as a failure, but more like communicating with your audience. i guess it’s easier to pitty them that they can’t appreciate your metonymic slippage.

the thing that really got to me was when the issue of socio-economic class was brought into it. the rhetoric student stated he was in one of the lowest economic classes, which is true, and that his spending money on books rather than sattelite tv shows that everybody in his economic class should be able to. it’s possible, but that’s also ignoring the fact that he’s graduating from berkeley, came from a very well-to-do family background, went to private schools, and is in his poor situation through his own making. i commend him for paying a large portion of his costs himself, working the system and things like that, but he can’t ignore that his background makes it easier. he might make the same as a 23 year old kid from west oakland, but that kid from west oakland hasn’t been pushed the same ways or afforded the same opportunities. i know it’s cool to be lower class, economically, and high-class, socially, but it pretty silly. i know this kid will go on to be some high regarded professor, which is awesome for him since it’s his dream, but he knows the poverty is temoporary and he’s doing it to prove a point more than anything, which is ok if that’s what he likes. just don’t look down on people who work hard just to scrape by and feed their family and never really thought about a way out or foucault because it was more important to eat. (how trite.)

i know i like to read about man and stuff and i know i’m decidedly not post-modern, but it really frustrates me when people are so condescending to “the little people” who can’t be as posh as they are, financially or intellectually. i guess that’s why i studied history instead of philosophy- not that there’s not overlap- i need to feel grounded in the real (physical) world, and it seems that most people who make their living doing that have little regard for that.

is it teetotaler or tedious? it’s hard to say.

beetle beat comments on a daily cal column by the paper’s resident “nerd” about drinking. beelte says,

“Do you really need to come up with a rational explanation including things like “exploratory imaginatory woohooness” for why you don’t drink? Is “I never really felt like it” too hard to say?”

apparently brevity isn’t nerdy like over-analyzing a situation ad nauseum. i suppose that’s right. it’s funny because my answer for not drinking now is usually, “i don’t like it.” short and honest. i know my man joe, much more authentic and nerdier than the columnist, would probably respond along the lines of beetle’s solution, which is fine. i guess sobriety is a personal thing, and it’s great that some people feel the need to expound upon it with lost of allusions to cute pop culture icons of their youth, or try to justify to themselves that it’s ok, but really it shouldn’t matter.

the collumn ends like this:

Unfortunately, most everyone I meet knows no such fear. An empty chalice is still a lonely chalice, and while the sober path may save me from a routinized adulthood, there’s no guarantee that its final destination will be any more satisfying than a frosty Orange Lazarus.

huh? i think the lonely chalice is lonely because people can’t stand trying to wade through such convoluted pretentious (oh no! i used the p-word!) crap. then again, i’m not one for waxing. sobirety can be lonely as a college student if you’re a dick about it. if you don’t make it an issue, usually it won’t be one, but then there’s also no high horse.

in closing- i choose not to drink, end of story.