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Saturday, October 03, 2009

The Inscrutable Other

Anyway, I wonder where he is.  This consciousness, this energy that I used to think meant something less prosaic than the utterly prosaic thing that it means, meant ...which was just:  Yes?  What?

I thought a lot of things might mean more than they do, so it’s not just that.  In the long run, one of the few remaining questions is, “WHY did I think that?”  Was it nature or nurture?  Books I’d read, or books that had been read to me?  What’s with this hope springing eternal thing?  Where did I get all my disappointed hopes, and the things to hope for?

It’s, at first blush, disappointing when people don’t turn out like what they’re supposed to be.  When people don’t turn out like what they seem.  But then you have to think, most things are like that.  We start out ignorant and become, ahem, wise.  It’s not clear that we should be disappointed rather than somewhat embarrassed for thinking things that were cute and naive, but dumb. Whose idea was this, anyway?  It can’t have been mine; I was minding my own business.  Etc.  For gawd’s sakes, I was a BABY.  I was a FETUS.  What can I have done to deserve this?

Anyway, it’s not like he hasn’t turned out like he seemed.  I couldn’t make heads or tails of him in the first place, but I suppose at one time I thought that no one could really be inscrutable in the long run, and that one of the modes of explanation I had at hand would ultimately prove fruitful.  And to some extent, I guess, these all have.  If something doesn’t work, then it doesn’t work.  You can’t prove that philosophical and scientific hypotheses are TRUE. But, you CAN prove they are false, via counter-example and chemistry experiments where you predict that the solution will turn blue and then it doesn’t. 

To my credit, I was never really so arrogant as to actually predict that he would turn blue (or even that he was the solution).  He would, in fact, actually turn blue upon occasion—unpredictably, though, from my point of view.  Inscrutably.  The best I can say is that I was always left thinking (based on induction—ie. “The future will [probably] be like the past…”) that he would be somewhat likely to turn blue again.  But you know how THAT works.  The sun will rise tomorrow because it always has in the past.  I am immortal because I’ve not died so far.  I still BELIEVE these things, but I’m worried about the way it’s going, lemme tell you.

Being puzzled about somebody else is just a way of being puzzled.  I’d be puzzled even if he had never been.  It’s probably just self-indulgent clap-trap on my part, even to imagine that he ever was.