Assessment of the Current State of this Blog

It is about eight months now since I began publishing this paper. There is as yet no evidence that it has attracted a single reader. The primary goal of this undertaking, to afford me the opportunity to demonstrate, if only to myself, that I was not left hopelessly far behind every capable person in the world in every area of human life that was of value to me, has not been attained. The quality and polish of the writing, which was to be the signature attraction of the blog, have been disappointments. Much of this no doubt is due to the hurriedness and half-attentive process of composition that circumstances tend to impose; however these are the conditions under which everyone operates today; and as with all developments in history, some minds thrive beyond the wildest imaginings of their owners` childhoods under the novel conditions, while others prove completely unable to adapt. Obviously the greatest question facing me over the next decade is how to give my children at least some hope of moving among the agile ones, the ones among whose language and thought all action, all vital life outside our charming but unfortunately isolated household, is led. Of course these vital, world-shaping people know their share of confusion, failure, shame, heartbreak, and all the rest, as these are the experiences that primarily constitute human life at all its levels, but there is still a quality of scale, and of the consolations and compensating activities at the disposal of the better-ordered mind and spirit that makes life worth the trouble, perhaps, I begin to worry, more worth it, than for those minds and spirits that are not so happily developed.

I do hold out hope, however, that these awful ideas, which have only taken possession of my brain because I cannot seem to overcome/disprove them through my own agency, will eventually dissipate. Anthony Powell, whom I have been referring to a great deal lately, wrote of one of his characters (the one the reader can assume is based on himself) that he had never felt so old as when he was in his mid-30s (and he lived to be 95). I suspect this is because at this age one is conscious that there is still a rather long time to have to continue existing set before one while the prospects for one's further improvement or any excitement comparable at least to the possibilities that were conceivable in youth appear increasingly hopeless. At the same time I am reminded also of the ravings of the hapless uncle Carlchen character in the movie Fanny and Alexander. This fellow looks to be in his mid to late 40s, is constantly in debt, though what for is not exactly apparent, the implication being that his income is insufficient with little hope of ever increasing. Among his better lines (in subtitles of course) are "When does a man become second-rate?" and "Why am I such a coward?" Part of the astuteness of this movie is that this speech takes place during the part of the film that will later be looked back on as the happy (or at least a happier) period. There is a lesson I suppose in both of these examples. In Powell the best and liveliest parts of the book, which are set over a fifty year period, are those that take place in this period where we are to suppose the narrator frequently discouraged and on his most uncertain footing. My theory would be that desperation, or some approximation of its sense, plays a part in this, which is of course observable in innumerable other stories as well.

I often wonder that I did not end up like one of those Japanese people one reads about in the papers who never talk to anyone, never leave their bedrooms in daylight, for whole decades, slipping out only in the dead of night to procure food from vending machines (of course the vending machines in Japan are of reputedly of a much superior quality to anything we know here, and you can get beer at them as well). I have been trying in my blog to keep the extreme pessimism, to which I am unfortunately prone, to a minimum. Like everyone else nowadays, I am really a great pragmatist, a man of respectable, rational sense. There is too much information, too much research in human biology, too many breakthroughs in the study of economics, and so on and so on, for anyone of modest sense and awareness to be ignorant of what he is and what he can reasonably expect to be able to do, or even more chillingly, what his children are likely to be and be able to do. Such at least seems to be the consensus and the primary obsession of the age's philosophers, whose tone becomes all the time increasingly impatient with anyone below international-class levels of talent and intelligence; especially such of those in the middling range who instinctly and ignorantly try to resist these salient truths, though it is actually impossible to do so. The demand for talent is so great now, the supply of it so scarce and precious, the search for it on a worldwide scale unprecedented except by comparison to that of minerals in previous ages, that it is become inconceivable that anybody of real worth should go unidentified deep into his life. This is one of the existential truths of any time, I suppose, but ours especially, given the present organization of society and and its peculiar social conditions. This at bottom is of course what this blog is really about; it is also, however, the work of an individual who has had several opportunities to be evaluated for any sign of serious ability by people at fairly high levels of intellect and achievement, and has in every instance failed to make any necessary impression to progress. Thus the blog, as well as the biography and education and activities of its author, are not de facto self-justifying, and indeed in recent years all have been increasingly called to account, both on a personal level and as a general sense of dissatisfaction that has infiltrated the zeitgeist. Thus the deep, dark purpose of the blog, perhaps a hopeless one, has been a stab at justifying my very existence, including the three sons I have propagated, of whose place in anything resembling an identifiable human community or even a normal Western-model economic hierarchy I have no sense whatsoever. I have not yet accomplished this to my satisfaction, to say the least.

I have lamented before the amount of time it takes me to write these entries; though I only post on average once a week I work on this probably five days in the week for an hour or more at a time per day. I cannot work near fast enough. As of now I have at least my next 14 posts planned out all in order, with notes scribbled on various workpads setting out images, ideas I dread forgetting, strategies for ordering paragraphs--but like having a list of hundreds of books before one and being bogged down in a very slow and very long one, you cannot proceed as quickly as you wish if you are going to do it at all well, at least if you are me.

I am literally falling asleep at the computer so I am just going to post and be done with it.