I am excited, about an occurrence that is not to take place until next year, though doubt exists but nonetheless I wish to expatiate on it for the sake of divagation. I have never been keen on road trips. Perhaps it is because being one of those undiagnosed ADD sufferers, my being is unable to bear the weight of the monotonous repetition of retrograding landscapes. Although there may be changes in it, at one point the variations are blended together into one state: past. Or perhaps it is fear and acknowledgement that no road trip will ever be equal in intensity and idealism to the road trips of my childhood; these are the times to remember. Though I do not remember all that I feel, I feel what I remember – intensely.
One memory that always surfaces is the one of travelling through the empty wastelands of that ancient and desiccated Californian desert that is the Central Valley. En route to a place that I rather not share, not because of selfishness, but from a desire to retain that personal mien shrouded in that pseudo-mysticism that the child of the mind (I initially did mean mind of the child but this order alludes to the more mental and therefore idealistic interaciton a child has with the real world) colors everything, e.g., insignificant inches of humanity are transformed into giants of Titanic proportions, we parted the darkness of the night. Around 3 in the AM, we pulled over into one of those gasoline stations that are bastions of civilization in an otherwise emptiness. And to my surprise, my ethos driven by untrammelled desires and hunger to satiate these alloyed (desires are pure and proper, but society makes them immoral, hence the word alloy) by the camoflage of innocence and childish impishness, I was allowed to have a whole pint of ice cream. Thus in that replicated world independence and isolation I called my own in the vehicle, I delighted my essence in the taste of the Häagen-daz vanilla with chocolate chip.
Now that I recall, I was no child but an adult of 18! hah! But then again, I have always been slow to develop in certain fields. I am a tessellation of primitive and naïf virtues and pseudo-realitistic-purportedly-cynical decadent worldliness. I never believed in Santa Claus, but I did believe in the vicious myth of Love. Ouch! But lies must be transcended and incorporated. Thus, to quote one of my favorite saints, “I believe in Love, but not Love for a lifetime,” and by saint I do mean, myself.
But now I am to look forward to the future. You are to be my Virgilio, Allora, andiamo. I am fascinated by what, ostensibly, will prove to be the greatest road trip of my life, i.e., transporting my insignificant but dear possessions to the East Coast. And I must sincerely confess that I am stoked by the mere thought of this all-too-me odyssey, a wonderful reunion with these things, objects of enslavement of myself to this earth, that I shall soon leave behind as I move to Maryland and return to a life of dormitories.
Yet, for the moment I must turn my mind to something that fills me both with fear and joy: my thesis. I must soundly reject my indagation into the interesting idea of the transition from the irrational, i.e., religion, to the rational as I have recently seen one of my heroes turn into a villain if not the el Gran Inquisidor of free thought. The fantastic edifice constructed upon this Tomás de Torquemada, once sound and stolid now trembles with the waves of mere whispers. The Attic philosopher is turned into an openly virulent enemy of truth, democracy and humanism. I dare not mention his name for I am still assimilating this new-found reality. But in my defence, I must confide this, I did not admire sans criticism. In fact, it is this germ of distrust that was there from the start that has allowed this metamorphosis in my perception ocular and mental.
In stead of this particular idea, I now find myself inspecting the idea of the purpoted freedom that is resoundly obvious when the Republic is juxtaposed to the Principate. According to my miniscule knowledge of Roman history, there is slavery in both political systems, though in the latter it is more acute because of the fact that the state is embodied in the body of a single man and his lackeys, e.g., Tiberius and Sejanus. But this is no place for my academic intellectualism. Like a coward, I publish here those ideas that I know will only offend and cause sensation at university rather than being something for the intellect to nibble on and further its liberation. It’s all very noble, like Jesus Christ and his “Love one another.” Yes, very noble indeed.
Perhaps it is this same dastardly character that compels me to renounce any thesis on this Philospher of Philosoophers. Instead of writing on the transition from the irrational to the rational, I could explore his anti-democratic and anti-humanist attitudes. To think that Western thought and therefore by consequence Western society, a society that is deeply intoxicated and dependent on democracy, is based upon the ideas of an outright enemy of such a political system? The paradox and the irony, it’s too much! Indeed. We ideal him too much; perhaps, when we encounter those things that insult our intellect and our democratic sensibilities, we simply brush them aside as I did when I saw Nietzsche’s criticism on vegetarianism. But there is a difference between a chosen condition, e.g., vegetarianism, and one that is invented and is externally imposed, e.g., inferiority.
Ah choices! The mind of the