Imminence

In eight day's I am required by 'the rules' to hand in two pieces of coursework. Both of which will go someway to determining my overall mark, and whether or not I should have bothered with this university malarkey in the first place. I'm yet to start one of these pieces of coursework and to be honest it's starting to bother me.

However I can't summon the motivation to actually get on with it so I thought I'd write here instead. In the end it's all pointless typing that maybe one person will read once. In fact it's more likely that this worthless spew I'm nonchalantly bashing into my keyboard like a shit Virginia Woolf will have more of an audience than the essay I will end up putting several hours into. It's kind of depressing really.

Anyway I've got a topic and a few opinions I could share with you, the internet! So maybe it won't be a complete waste of time. Although I feel like this blog is similar to the unfulfilled past time of praying, in the sense that I spend time trying to engage an audience who isn't there.
But like those religious troopers out there I ain't gonna let that stop me!

As I mentioned I am yet to start ONE of these pieces (notice the emphasis on ONE). Yes I have in fact completed the other assignment (Hooray for me). As a literature student I am required to read a particular text, then read around this text, then write about the text and what other people have written about the text. This means reading literary theorists theories, Philosophers philosophies and Sociologists sociologies... Ok the last one didn't work but no matter because I've decided to use a broader label to categorise all of the above and the many other 'professions' that end with 'ist' or 'pher'. It's a word you may be familiar with, I call them 'Bullshitters'.

 Now this is were it gets kind of tricky because I'm not saying that it's all made up and worthless, but at the same time... It kind of is. To be honest that sentence pretty much summarises all of philosophy and I could stop there but I shall go on to explain why it's all bullshit.

I've noticed through reading and attempting to imitate theorists that there is a underlying problem. This being that you are never right. Nor are you ever wrong... Apart from when you're really wrong.

Anytime a philosopher publishes one of his/her musings it's instantly open for debate and within a decade or two there will be several new papers (each critically acclaimed and published) completely disregarding the original opinion and in fact making a convincing argument to the contrary. As it's just a theory there is no way of proving either of them right or wrong so what's the point?

Of course that's not my argument because there is a point... I think. Through different approaches to an idea or practice we might be able to come up with a solution, providing the idea or practice is something that needs/can be solved (which isn't always the case). So the ideas of theses mystic sages may end up being passed down through the generations and being of some use to some future civilization. Or alternatively they might have some effect on the world today.

I'll use Freud as an example. He came up with various theories to do with the subconscious and how the mind works. This ended up having quite a lot of weight in the world of science and arguably was the basis for treating people with psychological problems such as post traumatic stress disorder. However he was also a cocaine fiend and some of his other theories have always seemed a bit far fetched to me. Like the whole phallic thing where everything's cock-shaped and if you deny this then you love cocks more than anyone or anything and if you're unfortunate enough to be born a women your constantly pinning for a cock of your own, trying to make up for it by buying guns or suggestive looking cactus'.

Obviously not the exact theory but it's close enough for the sake of the argument. So now we have this theory whizzing about when some other recognisably learned individual says "it's all wrong" and implores us "to completely disregard all of that kind of nonsense." 

So now where does that leave us? In exactly the same place! These kind of theories have little to no impact on everyday life anyway they're not even a blip on the radar for most people.
They're bullshit!

However if you study any kind of theory you'll find yourself having to argue with or against the thoerists over and over again until you're sat at your desk red eyed and wired from coffee asking yourself what's the point!?

Well at least that's where I was today. I finished off my first essay and found that every time I made an argument, there was a little voice in my head attempting to contradict or undermine it. Or if made a seemingly intellectual point about a specific niche I realised I could apply that same point to literally everything else in the world so what was the point saying it?

This then got me thinking about whether or not my essay was absolute shit and that I had missed the mark entirely.

I obsessed over this for a short while, repeatedly reading my essay and It seemed like a coherent argument but I couldn't shrug this irking feeling that It wasn't right (I'm worrying about it again just writing this). Despite this inner battle I WAS happy that I had bullshitted well and it was an adequate piece of work. Now I'm not so sure, but fuck it I'm done. The next one can wait til tomorrow.

Peace and Love