Hello, World!
A famous man once coined the term, 'emotional pornography', to describe the voyeuristic, guilty joy of experiencing someone else's life through their eyes (does that make it a sort of Munchausen's Syndrome in reverse?).
I lied. it wasn't a famous man; it was David Mamet. I suppose he's written some fairly decent plays (by 'modern' standards, at least - although it's very much a case of better far to be the poor servant of a poor master than the King of all those who dwell below) but he certainly isn't the first person who springs to mind when looking for philosopher Kings.
So why did I suddenly call this delicious phrase to mind? Well, I think it was partly a comment that Belle De Jour made a while back about the way in which her parents' lives were so boring that it was as if they were living out excitement through her. The other reason was that, at School, there was this Leavers' book that each Scholar was supposed to write a page or so in upon leaving to state their thoughts and feelings or, arrogantly, to pass on whatever 'pearls of advice' they had gleaned - a mixture of living historical record and emotional pornography, as it were.
Those volumes were extremely illuminating to read - some boiled over with hatred directed at 'authority' figures long since hidden in the mists of time, some were full of the ideological leanings of youth, some wrote poetry, some drew pictures (aha! anaphora strikes again!) and it's hard to say exactly how many were themselves.
Nonetheless, these things are worth keeping safe and reading on the off-chance that you find the one in a hundred or so who went on to make something of their life. Boris Johnson's entry showed him to be as bullish and boisterous a Captain of School and Wall Game player in the early 80s as he is in his oh-so0different capacity as loveable, mop-headed Conservative. Among the other gems I discovered in my long hours poking around College Library were amusing reports on A.J.Ayer playing the Field Game (a quick left-winger, for anyone who wants to read political significance into that), Harold Macmillan and Aldous Huxley playing on the same house cricket team (does misery really acquaint a man with such strange bedfellows? Macmillan even scored 160 one game), not to mention the absurdly tall J.M.Keynes. Eric Arthur Blair was conspicuous only by his absence; strange considering that he of all people must've known that "he who controls the past controls the future."
Still, I quite like the idea of all personal accounts as exhibitionist emotional pornography for others and, somehow, even if he decided to cite 'the impossibility of direct self-knowledge' as his excuse, I'm sure Derrida would've enjoyed reading people's diaries for the same reason.
Said the straight man to the late man,
"Where have you been?"
"I've been here and I've been there
And I've been in between."
I'm on the outside looking inside
What do I see
Much confusion, disillusion
All around me.
You don't possess me
Don't impress me
Just upset my mind
Can't instruct me or conduct me
Just use up my time.
From 'I Talk to the Wind' by King Crimson