Cobb: Talking to People Without Looking

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September 21, 2005

Talking to People Without Looking

(from the archives: Oct 2000)

i've been told that my face betrays a great deal. i notice that it is rare that i look at people directly in the eye, which i know that i do whenever they have 100% of my attention.

sometime back in the late 80s i spent a lot of time learning to multitask. (now that i am in the mind to think of allan bloom) in my daily journal, i often would take four things that were happening at the moment i started to write and find a way to relate them all together. i would generally do this while listening to music and watching television (preferably news). i am so accustomed to working in this way - rarely does anything hold my attention in that way. i'm sure this isn't unique, but i'm told that i can be very annoying, because sometimes i actually *do* tune people out.

anyway, i'm also not afraid to let things drop. knowing myself that i am generally a very earnest person, i have no overwhelming guilt when i fail other people. it's simply a matter of bandwidth. (you can imagine what my credit rating looks like).

in general, i am very stingy with my time. i am one of those people who requires a strategy that fits with my worldview before i take step one. otherwise whatever it is doesn't get taken seriously. so when i want something done, i focus and do it. again, when people see me get off my ass for something it pains them that i don't do it for them. on the other hand, when i ask about fundamental motivating principles and intellectual frameworks excitedly, i don't get much reaction irl. this is the reason that cmc is so compelling for me, why i am having this conversation in community-time rather than in real-time. i can joots (as hofstadter says) multiple frameworks of reference and go humorous and serious as my mind goes. context can be captured at your leisure. i've always said that this is a wonderful place for people who don't rate a biographer.

on the other hand, cmc life is compartmentalized mostly. i have been a member of [an online community] for just about 18 months or so, i guess. and prior to that i had always purposely crafted personnae for all of my interactions. a significant part of the reason i write in lower case here is to distinguish it from my other writings. for me lower case represents streams of consciousness. although i would say that i am a lot closer to me, and attempting continuously to unburden my more private self in this forum (in this thread in particular), there are still limits. however i am interested in jumping out again, in the context of my dealings with and membership in the middle class, and recontextualizing that which i feel comfortable revealing about my life.

fzample: saul bellow is an interesting point in time. without fail, everytime i have decided to be patient enough to read something considred 'important', it has reached me in precisely the way i imagine i touches those folk paul fussell would call the 'x' class, one of whom i would presume to be. if you understood that i fell off the track of intellectuality somewhere around my 15th birthday for lack of the proper mentorship, you could see how being *actually* brighter than average and rebellious outside of the comfort of academia could isolate me. and although i think there is much more to be detailed in that dimension, suffice it to say that i have this personal history of 'bright moments' in which i confirm my own sense of self in certain writings and yet find those moments devastating. at times i console myself with the notion that the pain of individuality is inevitable for the western man (sophomorically eliding what i perceive to be the message of a yet unread thomas mann). at other times i anguish in the possibility that my would-be colleagues and i have fallen irreparably out of step, and while i scribble within a predictable circle all these years on the internet, they are living cozily within a respectable ghetto. if i were not making 6 figures by this my upcoming 40th birthday, i would certainly be ready for snatching myself out of america. so reading bellow is at once liberating and painful because i recognize that i am ultimately, if not consistently, shutting down the tolerance i must bear for my mediocre company everytime i receive the elevation good writing brings.

Posted by mbowen at September 21, 2005 01:23 PM

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Comments

Heh, its funny that you bring up Bloom/Bellow from this older post. Before i got into Bloom/Strauss, the only philosophy I had prior was a college intro course. Which is weird because I had written philosophy off, then later I was feverishly reading Bloom/Strauss on my own, go figure.

But back in August of '03 when I started first getting into Bloom, I was pretty certain that I was not going to be the same person after finishing The Closing of the American Mind. I was right. Philosophy changes you, not doubt about that. And I totally agree with what you said about having to shut down your tolerance for mediocre company.

To be honest with you, I always compare what you have to say about values to what Bloom says about them in the chapter he devotes to them in -American Mind. By the by, have you read Ravelstien? It's the only fiction I've read in the past year or so.

You come off as a type of black Bloom, only more nationalistic, ha ha.

Posted by: Negrorage at September 22, 2005 10:35 AM

I read about a third of Ravelstein only to get mad because I resonated with it so much. There's a second part to this post that went on that personal tangent. Maybe I'll post it.

Posted by: Cobb at September 22, 2005 08:12 PM