Wednesday, May 24, 2006
(9:22 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Stunted Growth
Do I do personal posts anymore? It seems like all I ever do that's "personal" is to rattle off a list of things that I need to do. To wit:- Write a review of The Parallax View for JCRT
- Write up notes for Nancy directed study
- Read Derrida materials about Nancy; take notes on those
Perhaps this is connected: I've been feeling nostalgia of late for my sojourn in Kankakee, in large part because of the intellectual exploration. Interestingly, though, that was also the place where I was most miserable. Yet there's a certain nostalgia for the misery, because it seemed to lend life a certain kind of meaning or urgency that it lacks right at the moment. I'm perfectly happy and content, and at the same time, I'm bored. There are certain kinds of misery I don't want, of course -- the deeply distressing money problems I faced over the course of last summer did not grant me any existential insight, for instance. But there was just something about the way problems presented themselves in Kankakee, a certain (largely unwarranted) weight that they had there -- due almost entirely to the involvement of religion.
Here in Chicago, for example, it doesn't matter that I'm not married. I'm with someone right now, and I know that I'd be deeply sad if we were to break up for some reason, but still, it seems clear that after the mourning process had run its course, the experience of singleness would be different -- a simple absence. By contrast, in Kankakee it often felt as though there was some deep religious significance to marriage, as if I was not only failing to discharge my duty, but was missing out on a uniquely meaningful experience. Since I am a person who read Jude the Obscure at a very young age and followed it up with far too much Kierkegaard, I obviously looked at marriage with quite a bit more skepticism than some of my peers -- despite the fact that my parents have been happily married for my entire life. In Kankakee, however, this very skepticism about marriage had to take on a religious significance -- it couldn't just be one choice among others, but instead had to be some kind of statement, perhaps an ascetic observance, perhaps a prophetic witness.
The language of self-actualization never made much sense to me, probably because my religious frame made the stakes seem too small. A failure to self-actualize may present a deeper meaning -- a decision to allow myself to remain emotionally stunted as a protest against God would have been a possibility, for instance.
Now, ironically enough, I'm too much of a Christian. People find me incomprehensible for that reason.
I'm going to read a novel. The Zizek review can wait until tomorrow.
